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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has considered providing fiscal incentives to local authorities that prioritise British food in their catering contracts.

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. We have already published a new national procurement policy statement. It sets expectations for government contracts to favour products certified to high environmental standards that we think high-quality British producers are well-placed to meet.