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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress the Government has made on implementing the recommendations of the report by Dr Peter Bonfield on a plan for public procurement of food, published in July 2014.

The Government is committed to providing food produced to British standards or their equivalent in all its canteens, restaurants and cafeterias by the end of this Parliament. Defra is working closely with other Departments and businesses to implement the Plan for Public Procurement of Food, including a balanced scorecard. The Ministry of Justice launched a tender for supplying food to prisons earlier this year, worth £500 million, which requires bids to use the balanced scorecard. Their current supplier has agreed that the 30 million portions of UHT milk served in prisons each year will be sourced from UK producers. We are working with the Ministry of Defence to develop the best way to incorporate the balanced scorecard into their forthcoming contracts. We are working with all central government departments to ensure that their food and catering contracts comply with the balanced scorecard approach.