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 impact of food price inflation on the demand for emergency parcels from food banks in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

We recognise the impact of rising food prices, which are occurring as a result of Putin's illegal war in Ukraine and the aftershocks of the pandemic are having a global impact, with food prices rising at home and abroad. We are keeping the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors all key agricultural commodities.

March 2023 food price inflation was 19.2%, an increase compared to February 2023 when it was 18.2%. Industry analyst expectations are that we are either at or very close to the food price inflation peak. They then expect food price inflation to gradually decrease over the remainder of 2023.This means that food prices are expected to still increase, but at a slower rate than before.

That’s why tackling inflation is this government’s number one priority, with a plan to more than halve inflation this year, and we’re monitoring all key agricultural commodities so that we can work with the food industry to address the challenges they face.

Foodbanks are independent, charitable organisations and HM Government does not have any role in their operation. There is no consistent and accurate measure of foodbank usage at a constituency or national level.

We understand the data limitations in this area, and therefore the Department for Work and Pensions introduced a set of questions into the Family Resources Survey to measure and track food bank usage. The first results, published last week, will help Government to understand more about the characteristics of people most in need and will shape Government to support the most vulnerable.

Latest statistics from DWPs Family Resources Survey show that in 2021/22, 93% of households in the UK were food secure (88% have high food security and 6% have marginal food security), virtually unchanged compared to 93% in 2020/21.

DEFRA has also increased our engagement with industry to supplement our analysis with real time intelligence. Defra will continue to work with food retailers and producers to explore the range of measures they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food. For example, by maintaining value ranges, price matching and price freezing measures.