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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent small farmers being pressured into signing unfair food supply deals by large supermarkets.

The Government is committed to tackling the unfairness that can exist in the agri-food supply chain. Powers in the Agriculture Act allow us to introduce statutory codes of conduct which increase the transparency of business relationships and protect farmers from imbalanced commercial terms. We intend to use these powers in a targeted way where there is clear evidence of unfair practices in specific agricultural sectors and statutory codes will help address the issues.

A public consultation exploring the dairy supply chain was carried out in June 2020 and we are in the process of developing regulations which we intend to introduce later this year. In the coming months we are also launching a public consultation exploring how fairness and transparency can be improved in the pork sector.

The Government will continue to work closely with all sectors to discuss any supply chain issues and any regulations will be developed alongside industry with the close involvement of stakeholders.