Departmental Food
Environment Food and Rural Affairs

Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what proportion of food purchased by her Department was produced in the UK in each of the last five years.

James Paice (Minister of State (Agriculture and Food), Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

Between 2006 and 2009 estimated figures were published by DEFRA in annual reports on food procurement and are available in the Library of the House. The reports gave an estimate of the proportion of domestically produced indigenous food (i.e. excluding food such as pineapple, citrus etc.) in DEFRA as:

2006-07: 79.5%

2007-08: 85%

2008-09: 90.5%.

These figures refer to the contract that at the time covered only the DEFRA and latterly DECC offices in Nobel House and Whitehall Place, London.

Data on the proportion of food procured from the UK were not collected again until DEFRA's current catering contract was awarded on 16 May 2011. Figures show that between May and September 2011 food sourced from the UK under the new DEFRA-wide contract was:

Meat: 43.5%

Poultry: 67.1%

Fruit and Veg: 23.3% of total, 38.5% of indigenous.

In the period between September and December 2011 this had increased to:

Meat: 57% (including 100% beef, 100% fresh pork joints)

Poultry: 90%

Fruit and Veg: 96% of indigenous, in-season products (not including potatoes)

Potatoes: 17%

And in total 61% by value of the food provided was sourced from the UK.

The figures before and after 16 May 2011 do not compare like with like. The figures for the current catering contract are representative of the whole of DEFRA including offices in Workington, Newcastle, York (Sand Hutton), York (Kings Pool), Worcester, London (Nobel House), London (DECC at Whitehall), Weybridge and Lowestoft, in all of which the caterer trades from the premises on a largely unsubsidised, commercial basis.