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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has had discussions with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the (a) effectiveness of anti-Trust laws in ensuring global food resilience and (b) potential merits of reforming those laws; and if he will make a statement.

The Government is committed to increasing global food resilience and is working closely with G7 partners to get support to those who need it the most, including cooperating with the rest of the G7 to build on the first G7 Famine Prevention Compact, which was agreed during the UK’s Presidency in 2021.

Mergers and takeovers are primarily a commercial matter for the parties concerned. However, the Government acknowledges that there are instances when such transactions might raise public interest concerns and there is an established process for considering whether there are specific public interest reasons for Ministers to intervene in mergers under the Enterprise Act 2002.