Asked by: Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the annual budget is for food produced for his Department's offices; and what proportion of food produced for his Department was sourced from British producers in the last period for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) does not set a budget for food served in its offices. Catering services are provided by private companies under contract to BIS which lease facilities in its London offices at 1 Victoria Street, 151 Buckingham Palace Road and Fleetbank House and provide food to staff without subsidy. Spending on food is determined by the contractor based on sales receipts.
BIS has worked with its current suppliers to align the existing contract with the requirements of the “balanced scorecard” for public food procurement.
The amount of food sourced from British producers for the Department’s three London offices is approximately 75% per month on average based on data for the period January - March 2016.
Items that are not available as British produce are fruits (for example – melons, pineapples, grapes, lemons, oranges), continental meats and Fairtrade coffee which is a large part of the sales volume.
Asked by: Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what the annual budget is for food produced for her Department's offices; and what proportion of food produced for her Department was sourced from British producers in the last period for which figures are available.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Energy and Climate Change does not have an annual food budget. Catering services are provided via a DEFRA contract which is operated on a nil subsidy basis.
Annual spend is determined by the contractor and is informed by private sales to members of staff.
Forty-eight percent of food and drink provided through this contract is sourced from UK producers (based on figures for Jan-Mar 2016). This proportion reflects that a large volume of food and drink sold to staff includes non-indigenous products such as rice, pasta, tea, coffee and bananas, and that as this period falls in the Winter season there are out of UK seasonal products procured from the wider EU.
One hundred percent of beef, chicken, lamb, pork, free range eggs, milk and yoghurt is sourced from the UK.
Asked by: Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what proportion of dairy products procured for her Department was sourced from British producers in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the rt. hon. Member to the answer given to him by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs today to Question 35061: