Andrew Bingham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Bingham on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress has been made on implementation of the recommendations of the Bonfield report on public procurement of food; and if she will make a statement.

George Eustice

The Government is committed to providing food produced to British standards or their equivalent in all its canteens, restaurants and cafeterias by the end of this Parliament. Defra is working closely with other Departments and businesses to implement Dr Peter Bonfield’s Plan for Public Procurement of Food, including a balanced scorecard. The Ministry of Justice recently launched a tender for supplying food to prisons, worth £500m, which requires bids to use the balanced scorecard. Their current supplier has agreed that the 30 million portions of UHT milk served in prisons each year will be sourced from UK producers. All new Central Government food and catering contracts will use the balanced scorecard approach.