Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Land Use Framework on the availability of agricultural land for food production.

The Government has been clear that food security is national security. The Framework makes a clear, long-term commitment to maintain overall food production in England while increasing resilience to climate change and to protect the most productive farmland.

Defra’s analysis shows that it is possible to achieve the scale of change required without reducing domestic food production. The UK will produce food more sustainably from less land using a mixture of productivity improvements and the expansion of highly efficient sectors.