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 encourage greater transparency for farmers on the price of fertiliser and red diesel.
Food security is a priority for the Government, and Defra are taking the impacts from the Middle East conflict seriously.
The Government has increased the frequency of official fertiliser price reporting, now published by the AHDB on a weekly basis. This will give farmers more timely and transparent information to support decision-making.
The Government asked the Competition and Markets Authority to consider industry concerns about red diesel, including transparency, and has taken further decisive action to support farmers by cutting red diesel duty to its lowest rate in over 20 years, reducing the rates by a third.