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 and Trade on introducing mandatory reporting for food businesses on (a) health and (b) environmental metrics.

This Government is committed to tackling the challenges faced by our health system with the shift to prevention central to this ambition. Under the Government’s Health Mission we are considering what preventative action is needed to support people live longer, healthier lives, to reduce the amount of time spent in ill health, tackle health inequalities and drive economic growth. We face an obesity crisis and will explore the most impactful interventions to shift food business sales to healthier food.

Defra is not planning to introduce a sector-specific legislative requirement for food and drink companies to report metrics related to the environment such as greenhouse gas emissions. This is because the Department for Business and Trade are currently considering the endorsement of the International Sustainability Disclosure Standards, to create UK Sustainability Reporting Standards that may include reporting against some environmental metrics. The Government and Financial Conduct Authority will consider whether to mandate these Standards for certain economically significant entities across all sectors.

Through the Food Data Transparency Partnership, Defra is supporting food and drink businesses with greenhouse gas emissions reporting by standardising the data and methods used by the industry. The initial focus has been on GHG emissions, where the science and the reporting requirements are most mature. Moving forwards, the ambition is to consider a broad range of environmental metrics beyond carbon.