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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department is providing to Fareshare to ensure that (a) food reaches poor families and (b) food waste is reduced.

The Government has instigated a variety of actions to increase surplus food redistribution to ensure that it goes to people in need. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), supported by the government, launched the Courtauld Commitment 2025 in March 2016. The Courtauld Commitment 2025 is an ambitious ten year voluntary agreement that brings together organisations across the food system to identify priorities, develop solutions and implement changes at scale, both within signatory organisations and by spreading new best practice across the UK. Business signatories including Fareshare have agreed an ambition to work collaboratively with WRAP to double the amount of surplus food they redistribute by 2020 against a 2015 baseline of 15,000 tonnes.

At the end of 2017, the Government announced a new £500,000 fund to be administered by WRAP to support charities, like Fareshare, to redistribute surplus food to those in need.