Food Import Requirements Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Lord Bellingham
Main Page: Lord Bellingham (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Bellingham's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Food Import Requirements
Lord Bellingham Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
The noble Lord raises a very good point. I do not have the exact details of the requirement he is asking for, so perhaps the best thing I can do is write to him on that.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. The Minister will be aware that we import 45% of the food in this country, and surely one of the lessons from the Ukraine war is the added emphasis on food security. Can the Minister say something about import substitution, and can he also give the House some assurance that the sustainable farming incentive does not always prioritise environmental schemes over food production?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his question. The Government take the issue of food security extremely seriously, and we are absolutely committed to producing high-quality British food for British consumers. Getting the balance right between what we produce through our SFI programme—or our ELMS programme, I should probably say—is a fine judgment between getting the environmental and biodiversity improvements we all want to see, and producing food for the country.