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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to require large food businesses to publicly report on their levels of food waste.

The Government committed to consulting on options to improve reporting of food waste volumes by large businesses in England. As set out in our published response to the consultation, the Government has decided to enhance the voluntary approach to food waste reporting. Around a third of large food businesses already provide evidence to WRAP on their food waste and we propose to increase this number.

A regulatory approach has greater total costs to businesses and the public sector than the voluntary approach and is not suitable at this time, when any additional costs may be passed on to consumers.