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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress is being made on ensuring that government departments buy more British food.

All fresh milk served in government establishments and more than 90% of butter and cheese served is made from British milk. This represents £11 million of business for British dairy farmers.

We are working with all central Departments to ensure their food and catering contracts comply with the balanced scorecard approach.

The Ministry of Justice recently launched a tender for supplying food to prisons, worth £500m, which requires bids to use the balanced scorecard. From April this year all 30 million portions of UHT milk supplied to prisons each year is 100% British milk. We are working with MoD to develop the best way to embed the balanced scorecard into their forthcoming contracts for the Armed Forces at home and abroad.