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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the war in Ukraine on the UK's food supply chain.

Our food import dependency on the Eastern Europe region is very low. We do not expect any significant direct impact on overall UK food supply as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

We are, however, working closely with the food and feed industry to understand the impacts of the situation in Ukraine on sunflower seed, oil or sunseed meal supplies, while the Food Standards Agency has informed consumers that refined rapeseed oil, palm oil, coconut oil and soyabean oil may start to replace sunflower oil in some products.

We speak regularly with food industry figures, who remain confident in the food supply chain. We continue to keep the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments. We have also increased our engagement with industry to supplement our analysis with real time intelligence.