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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of staff shortages on the range of food available in Northern Ireland in the next five years

Defra is working closely with industry to help our world-leading growers, farmers and food producers access the labour they need.

The Seasonal Worker visa route is currently available to the horticulture and poultry sectors across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through to the end of 2024. The visa route allows overseas workers to come to the United Kingdom for up to six months to harvest both edible and ornamental crops and to help with the pre-Christmas surge in demand for poultry.

For 2023 and 2024, 45,000 visas have been made available to the horticulture sector (plus 2,000 for poultry), with the potential for a further 10,000 visas available for horticulture if necessary. The additional 10,000 visas are contingent on sponsors and growers improving and abiding by worker welfare standards as previously agreed.

This visa allocation will provide clarity and confidence to Northern Ireland businesses, who are seeking to plan for 2023 and 2024 harvests.

We will keep labour market data under very careful scrutiny to monitor any pressures in key sectors. Defra is also working closely with the Home Office to make sure that the requirements for these sectors are understood across Government.

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.

Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources; strong domestic production as well as imports through stable trade routes. We produce 61% of all the food we need, and 74% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year, and these figures have changed little over the last 20 years.

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.

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. It considers the UK's food supply sources overall, noting that domestic production and diversity of supply are both important to our food security.