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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what food security planning her Department has undertaken for the UK in times of conflict, crisis and war situations.

Food supply in the UK is a critical national infrastructure (CNI) sector and a sector resilience plan is completed annually by Defra as lead Government Department. The plan sets out the background to resilience of the sector, an assessment of risk, and a plan for mitigation action. A summary of the plan is published by the Cabinet Office at

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/370156/20141103_Summary_sector_resilience_plan_2014.pdf.

Food supply is considered to be resilient because of the size, diversity, and strong contingency planning in the food industry sectors, as demonstrated by the response to potentially disruptive challenges in recent years. There is a clear recognition of the dependency on other critical sectors such as energy, transport, and communications, and Defra works closely with the industry sectors and with other lead Government Departments to mitigate risk.