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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the 2019 Food Waste Strategy on levels of food waste from major retailers.

The UK Government has not published a 2019 Food Waste Strategy. The hon. Member’s question may refer to the Scottish Government’s Food Waste Reduction Action Plan from 2019. The following answer describes other strategic documents which are relevant to the question.

In 2019, Defra commissioned Henry Dimbleby, its lead Non-Executive Director, to lead an independent review of the food system to develop recommendations to shape a National Food Strategy. Part One was published in July 2020, with Part Two due in Spring 2021.

To help tackle food waste, Defra and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) launched the UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap (FWRR) in September 2018. The roadmap sets out a clear direction for what all large businesses in the UK need to achieve in order for us to achieve our international targets for food waste reduction and provides a basis to track progress. It also allows a wider population of food businesses to show their commitment to implementing the Target, Measure, Act (TMA) approach.

The Resources and Waste Strategy (published in December 2018) sets out the Government's approach to tackling food waste, building on the direction set out in the FWRR. The 2020 annual progress report for the FWRR, published by WRAP and industry experts IGD, shows growing adoption of the TMA approach to food waste prevention with more than 70 new organisations committing to the Roadmap in the last twelve months.

Following support from respondents to our public consultation on increasing consistency in recycling, we are legislating through the Environment Bill to ensure that businesses and other organisations in England will be required to arrange for the collection of a core set of materials for recycling, including a separate food waste collection where this material is produced. We will be consulting further on this in 2021. We also committed in the Resources and Waste Strategy to consult to introduce mandatory reporting of food waste by businesses. We are currently engaging with industry and related stakeholders to inform the development of this consultation.