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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on tackling food price increases in March 2023.

Tackling inflation is this Government’s number one priority, with a plan to more than halve inflation this year.

Farmers and growers across the UK are facing global challenges from Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, in addition to the unprecedented Avian Influenza outbreaks occurring across the world. We are undertaking a range of actions to respond to these global challenges, including:

• Paying Direct Payments in England in two instalments each year to help farmers with their cashflow.
• Improved the Avian Flu compensation scheme for farmers to help farmers through the worst global outbreak in many years and eased marketing rules to give certainty over business planning.
• Removed 25% tariff on maize imports from the USA to help with feed costs
• Introduced measures to help with global impacts on fertiliser supply chains including short term support to protect vital CO2 production

• Announcing 45,000 seasonal workers visas for the horticulture industry (an uplift of 15,000 compared with the start of 2022) with scope for up to 10,000 more if there is clear evidence of need, so that labour is not a limiting factor.
• Provided £168 million in grants to drive innovation, R&D and improve productivity through greener equipment, robotics and automation.
• Helping businesses with their costs through the Energy Bill Discount Scheme, business rates relief and extending the cut to fuel duty by 12 months, and small businesses will be fully protected from next year’s rise in corporation tax.
• Provided 10,000 farmers with help and advice through the Future Farming Resilience Fund, which provides farmers with free advice to help farmers work out what to do for their business.

Further information on action we have taken to support our farmers and growers: Our record on farming: 30 actions we have taken to support our farmers and growers - Defra in the media (blog.gov.uk)

On 11 May 2023, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury met supermarkets to discuss the cost of food, and the Chancellor is meeting them again shortly to discuss how we ensure that consumers have access to a range of affordable food, in recognition of the pressures that people and producers are feeling.

We are keeping the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors all key agricultural commodities, so that we can work with the food industry to address the challenges they face.

Through regular engagement, 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.