No 10 food summit ‘no more than a PR stunt’ and failed to tackle key issues
Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street food summit has been described as “empty" by food and farming industry representatives, who rounded on the prime minister for failing to discuss soaring inflation or set out measures to safeguard British food production.
The Farm to Fork summit, the first meeting of its kind, brought together farmers, food producers and some of Britain’s largest supermarkets.
One representative of a trade body that attended the summit described it as an “empty meeting” with no action on price or inflation discussed. “It was there for the Tories to show they are supporting farmers,” they said.
Another attender said the summit elicited a “low-key response” from those present because it “did not touch the fundamental problems of food price inflation”.
“If you are not doing something about the cost of living, cost of production, access to labour and affordability of food then you are never going to fix the overall problem,” the attender said.
The summit had been expected to tackle topics such as food price inflation, fairness within the supply chain and helping farmers to invest in domestic production, but there was no subsequent announcement on those issues. Ministers offered no commitments in response to a call by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) to stop Britain’s self-sufficiency in food slipping below its current level of 60%.
The summit took place against a backdrop of stubbornly high inflation, partly driven by food and drink prices, which rose 19.1% in the year to March, according to official figures.
In advance, consumer groups had called on ministers to ask grocery bosses to commit to holding down prices to help squeezed consumers, after an agreement by supermarkets in France to cap prices on key food items
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