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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much of the £16 million allocated to FareShare on 8 November 2020 has been allocated to frontline food aid providers (a) within and (b) beyond the FareShare network to date.

Building on the significant support given to the most vulnerable during the initial months of the pandemic, the Government has announced a winter support package of interventions to support the economically vulnerable. This package includes increasing the value of Healthy Start Vouchers, the national rollout of the Holiday Activities and Food programme, and a £170m Covid Winter Support Grant to local authorities which started in December to support households with food and other essential costs.

The winter package also includes £16m of funding for Defra to support food charities with the purchasing and distribution of food to the vulnerable over a 12-week period starting from the beginning of December. This funding stream is being managed by the food redistributor FareShare.

After 8 weeks of the scheme, FareShare have purchased 4,391 pallets of food which is equivalent to approximately 6.8 million meals. The food has so far been distributed directly to 3,942 charities across England.

3,449 of these are within the FareShare network. These organisations have received 1,762 tonnes of food, which is equivalent to around 4.2 million meals.

493 organisations from outside of FareShare's network have also been supported. These organisations have received 435 tonnes of food, which is equivalent to around 904,000 meals.