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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department takes to routinely monitor the range of food products available to consumers.

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain, as demonstrated throughout the Covid-19 response. It is well equipped to deal with situations with the potential to cause disruption. UK consumers have access through international trade to food products that cannot be produced here, or at least not on a year-round basis. This supplements domestic production and also ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease does not affect the UK's overall security of supply.

Defra has well established ways of working with the industry and across Government to monitor risks that may arise. This includes extensive, regular and ongoing engagement in preparedness for, and response to, issues with the potential to cause disruption to food supply chains. We speak regularly with food industry figures, who remain confident in the food supply chain.

We continue to keep the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments. Defra has requested weekly data from supermarkets on supplies of the foods to ensure we have the latest available data. Defra’s view is that the most effective response to food supply disruption is industry-led, with appropriate support and enablement from HM Government.

Recognising the importance of food security, 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. This report will serve as an evidence base for future policy work.

In recent weeks some supermarkets applied item limits to a small number of fruit and vegetables due to poor weather affecting the harvest in Spain and North Africa, where a high proportion of produce consumed in UK at this time of year is grown.

Defra is closely monitoring markets and supply chains to explore the factors that have contributed to ongoing supply chain pressures and is considering how government and industry can work together to mitigate them, in the short and longer term.

Defra has requested weekly data from supermarkets on supplies of the foods affected to ensure we have the latest available data.

Supermarkets are confident that supply will be back to normal by the end of this month.