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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to (a) support food redistribution and (b) reduce commercial food waste.

This Government recognises the environmental, economic and social benefits of preventing food waste and redistributing surplus. Defra's Food and Drink Waste Hierarchy outlines how all businesses should deal with food surplus and waste, preventing food surplus where possible and redistributing any surplus should it arise.

Defra funds the UK Food and Drink Pact, a voluntary agreement with industry to tackle food waste, managed by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). Through the Pact, we support the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, which provides a toolkit to help businesses identify their surplus and waste and take steps to reduce it. This approach enables food businesses to reduce their food waste, and get more surplus to redistributors where it does arise. Defra also engages a working group of supply chain and redistribution sector organisations to develop best practice and overcome barriers to redistribution.

In addition, a £15 million farm surplus fund, is aiming to increase the capacity and capability of the redistribution sector to ensure more farm surplus food gets to those who need it most rather than going to waste. This shall see an extra 17,000 tonnes of food waste diverted to redistribution charities.