UK Food Security

Robbie Moore Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) for securing today’s incredibly important debate. It has also been a pleasure to hear the interventions from right hon. and hon. Members.

UK food security is vital to our national security. Strengthening it by supporting our farmers and food producers is a top priority for this Government. Our high degree of food security is built on the supply of food from diverse sources—from domestic production as well as from imports through stable trade routes.

We produce 63% of all the food we need, and 73% of the food that we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year. Those figures have changed little over the past 20 years. UK consumers have access through international trade to food products that we cannot produce here, or at least not on an all-year-round basis. This supplements domestic production and ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease do not affect the UK’s overall security of food supply.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has well-established ways of working with the industry and across Government to monitor risks that may arise. The key forum is the F4, which is chaired by a DEFRA Minister and comprises the National Farmers Union, the Food & Drink Federation, the British Retail Consortium and UKHospitality; it covers the interests of the sector from farm to fork. This extensive, regular and ongoing engagement helps the Department to quickly prepare for and respond to issues that have the potential to cause disruption to food supply chains.

We also continue monitoring of the market through the UK agriculture market monitoring group, which monitors price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments. We have also broadened our engagement with the industry to supplement our analysis with real-time intelligence as required. Domestically, the Government have committed to maintaining, if not enhancing, the level of food that we currently produce. That includes sustainably boosting production in sectors in which there are post-Brexit opportunities.

Food production and environmental improvement can and must go hand in hand. We are already seeing the benefits of our environmental schemes, which are supporting food production domestically and are delivering environmental benefits. For instance, actions through the sustainable farming incentive support the creation of flower-rich buffers that help pollinators, which in turn help to produce a better yields. Our soil management actions ensure that farmers are supported in the foundations of food security, such as the health and the resilience of soil.

The Agriculture Act 2020 imposes the following duty:

“In framing any financial assistance scheme, the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England and its production by them in an environmentally sustainable way.”

We are seeing that through the roll-out of the environmental land management schemes.

[Jamie Stone]

Farmers in my constituency have made the point that when a carbon capture audit is done of a farm, the value of grassland in holding and storing carbon is underestimated. That should be looked at again in the overall audit of these farms, which could help in turn to support the growth of excellent beef on our farms.

[Robbie Moore]

Having been involved in the agriculture sector for my whole life before entering this place, I know just how important pasture and grassland are to carbon sequestration. When we are rolling out environmental land management schemes, it is important that the benefits of pasture land through carbon sequestration are taken into account. That is why the reforms that we have introduced, through coming out of the common agricultural policy, are so important to supporting a highly productive sector that is environmentally sustainable.

In addition to the sustainable farming incentive, the farming investment fund and the farm productivity innovation funding will further improve farm productivity. Our schemes will ensure our long-term food security by investing in the foundations of food production, such as healthy soil, water and biodiverse ecosystems. Backing our farmers is so important, which is why the Prime Minister and the Environment Secretary announced a range of measures at the National Farmers Union conference to boost productivity and resilience in the sector, including the largest ever grant offer for farmers in the coming financial year, which is expected to total £227 million.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister mentions the rolling out of the grant offer, which can be very valuable to many farmers. Is he aware that tenants cannot make those grant applications themselves? Does he agree with his noble Friend Baroness Rock that tenants and landlords should be able to make joint applications for capital grants so that our farmers can thrive and our tenants can remain on the land?

[Robbie Moore]

Baroness Rock’s review produced a fantastic report with many excellent recommendations. My DEFRA colleagues and I are in close interaction with Baroness Rock and are working our way through her many recommendations. If we are rolling out schemes, it is vital that any innovation or productivity grants, along with any sustainable farming incentive schemes or others that fall under the environmental land management schemes, are available to all applicants to ensure that we can get the best out of the land that they farm.

Building on the recommendations made, the £427 million of funding for measures announced at the National Farmers Union conference doubles the investment going into productivity schemes, growing the grant offer from £91 million last year to £220 million this year. We have already awarded £120 million in grant funding to farmers through the farming investment fund and have committed £120 million to 185 projects as part of the farming innovation programme. The Government will also provide £15 million in funding to stop millions of tonnes of good, fresh farm food going to waste, by redirecting that surplus into the hands of those who need it. Together, these funds will support innovation and productivity and will improve animal health and the environment.

We will continue to work across Government to ensure that we carry out the commitments made in the UK food strategy and at the farm-to-fork summit in respect of the national planning policy framework. We want to ensure that this fully reflects our shared food security and climate and environment ambitions. The national planning policy framework sets out clearly that local planning authorities should consider all the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land when making plans or taking decisions on new development proposals. This point builds on the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). Where significant development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, planning authorities should use poorer-quality land in preference to a higher quality.

Food supply is one of the UK’s 13 critical national infrastructure sectors. DEFRA and the Food Standards Agency are joint lead Government Departments, with DEFRA leading on supply and the FSA on food safety. We work closely with the Cabinet Office and other Departments to ensure that food supply is fully incorporated as part of emergency preparedness, including consideration of dependencies on other sectors.

In the Agriculture Act 2020, the Government made a commitment to produce an assessment of our food security at least once every three years. The first UK food security report was published in December 2021, and the next food security report will be published in December 2024. To ensure our continued food security, the Prime Minister has also announced that a food security index will be published annually—that has been welcomed by the sector—and will complement the three-yearly UK food security report. We are currently developing the content of the index, but we expect the index to present the key data and analysis needed to monitor how we are maintaining overall food security. Productivity, resilience and environmental sustainability are incredibly important to domestic food production and are a key element of our food security.

At the National Farmers Union conference, the Prime Minister also made an announcement about ensuring that we are giving internal drainage boards more support. We know how important lowland farmland is for producing food, which is why the £75 million of funding announced by the Government during the spring Budget and earlier at the NFU conference is so important to ensure that we can give our internal drainage boards the support that they need to mitigate flooding downstream as well as possible.

On health and wellbeing, I want to pick up on a point that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome made about the Farm Safety Foundation. I know that James Chapman, the chair of the trustees, is doing an excellent job; he has been involved in the organisation since 2014, I believe. I wish him and his team well with the Farm Safety Foundation, as I know just how important that organisation is to improving not only farm safety, but the general health and wellbeing of our farming community.

The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome referred to the land use framework. I reassure her that the Secretary of State wants to ensure that food productivity is at the heart of the land use framework, which is why we are scrutinising it before it is released. Not only does it have to cover energy security, biodiversity offsetting, net zero and other measures, but we want to ensure that food security is at the heart of it before it is released. Our food security is strong, but we are not taking it for granted; we will continue to work across the supply chain to maintain and enhance it.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. I assure them that the Government consider food security to be incredibly important and will keep it as a top priority for the DEFRA ministerial team.

Question put and agreed to.