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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to assess the causes of food poverty.

We recognise the impact of rising food prices, which are occurring as a result of global shocks, including the spike in oil and gas prices and the conflict in Ukraine. We are keeping the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors all key agricultural commodities.

January 2023 food price inflation was 16.8%, a slight decrease compared to December 2022 where it was 16.9%. This is the first fall in food price inflation recorded in 18 months. Monthly food price inflation was at 0.6% in January 2023, down from 1.6% between November 2022 and December 2022.

Defra analysis, based on ONS data, shows that every one percent increase in food price inflation increases the average annual United Kingdom household food bill by £34. Defra analysis, based on the 2020 1ONS Family Spending survey, highlights that 11% of the total expenditure of the average United Kingdom household is on food. This varies from 14% for lowest income households to 8% for highest income households.

The Government is committed to reducing poverty, of which food poverty is one element, and supporting low-income families. We will spend over £242bn through the welfare system in 2022/23 including £108bn on people of working age. We also recognise the importance of understanding who is experiencing food poverty. That is why we introduced a set of questions into the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to measure and track foodbank usage from April 2021. The first results of these questions are due to be published in March 2023 subject to usual quality assurance.

DEFRA has also increased our engagement with industry to supplement our analysis with real time intelligence. Defra will continue to work with food retailers and producers to explore the range of measures they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food. For example, by maintaining value ranges, price matching and price freezing measures.