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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will provide support to the agricultural sector for food production to replace food supplies in other countries from hostile states.

The Government continues to support farmers to improve productivity in a sustainable manner and have developed a range of measures which will enable investment, support innovation and increase capability and skills.

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain which has coped well in responding to unprecedented challenges. Our food import dependency on the Eastern European region is very low, so Defra does not expect any significant direct impact of this conflict on UK food supply.

Our initial assessment is the principal impact on UK farmers will be an increase in the cost of a range of inputs including red diesel, animal feed, fertiliser, and energy.

We are working with the industry to identify where mitigations are available and continue to keep the situation under review.