Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Natasha's Law costs of enforcement grant.

The New Burdens grant for the enforcement of Natasha’s Law is a non-ring-fenced revenue grant which has been provided to local authorities in England since the implementation of the legislation on 1 October 2021. The grant is jointly funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and was administered in 2021/22 and 2022/23 through a Section 31 grant. For 2023/24 onwards, funding has been rolled into the Local Government Finance Settlement.

The funding for each local authority was calculated to take into account the additional time required during, and the frequency of, routine inspection visits, based on the number of relevant officers and affected businesses within a local authority.

The FSA have recently undertaken an evaluation of the implementation of Natasha’s Law in the United Kingdom which included speaking to local authorities who are responsible for monitoring food business compliance with the new rules. The findings are being assessed and the report will be published in due course.