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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the role of British agriculture in supporting national food security; and if he will make a statement.

The UK currently has a high degree of food security in terms of access, availability, resilience and variety of food supply. The evidence for this is in the UK Food Security Assessment, published in 2010, which analysed the different factors impacting on UK food supply. UK food security is built on a strong food production base in the UK and access to a wide variety of markets through the EU and an open, rules-based world trading system.

Secure food supplies are derived from being fully integrated into a well-functioning and transparent global market, not just relying on UK production. Reduced access to global markets would heighten supply vulnerability in the event of emergencies such as poor weather, which negatively affect domestic production.

Improvements in productivity which lead to the UK increasing its domestic production will benefit the food chain and the UK economy more generally and are welcome, but are not alone sufficient to guarantee food security.