Nick Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nick Smith on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the annual budget is for food produced for his Department’s offices; and what proportion of food produced for his Department was sourced from British producers in the last period for which figures are available.

Justin Tomlinson

Since 1998 the Department for Work and Pensions has outsourced the provision and maintenance for the majority of its estate to Telereal Trillium under a 20 year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract that expires on 31 March 2018.

Under the terms of the contract, Telereal Trillium provides fully-serviced accommodation, including the provision of catering services. Telereal Trillium provide catering through their Service Partners, Compass Group. The Department pays an all-inclusive facility unit price for sites and we are unable to separate the costs for catering.

The amount of food sourced from British producers for DWP was 42% (Jan – Mar 2016). This figure does not include the considerable spend on non-indigenous products purchased for use in the DWP contract with large volumes of coffee as well as rice, pasta, tea, banana’s, citrus, exotic fruits etc. Additionally as this period falls in winter some UK seasonal products are not available so have been procured from the EU.