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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 9 June 2025 to Question 54984 to Government Departments: Catering, whether he has made an assessment of the merits of (a) an annual report and (b) a public tracking system to provide transparency on how much local produce is being procured from (i) Lancashire and (ii) other regions by public sector bodies.

The Government is open to considering all lawful means of achieving its ambition that half of all food purchased across the public sector should be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards. This could include approaches designed to improve transparency in the way procurement is carried out.