Call for Evidence

The Committee is seeking views in the following areas:

Structure and operation of the food supply chain

1. To what extent is the UK’s food supply chain currently operating effectively and efficiently?

2. How could structural relationships between farmers and fishers, food producers and manufacturers, handlers and distributors, retailers and consumers be improved for both domestic and foreign foods?

Market power and regulation

3. How does the market power of UK supermarkets and manufacturers compare to other participants in the food supply chain, and how does this compare to equivalent relationships in other advanced economies?

4. Is existing regulation appropriate, for example the Groceries Supply Code of Practice and the Groceries Code Adjudicator for supermarkets’ direct suppliers, as well as the Secretary of State’s powers under Part 3 of the Agriculture Act 2020?

5. How effectively has the Government conducted reviews of contractual practice in specific sectors, for example in the pig and dairy sectors, and should other sectors be reviewed?

Food prices, security and fairness

6. What is the relationship between food production costs, food prices and retail prices? How have recent movements in commodity prices and food-price inflation been reflected in retail prices?

7. What are the consequences of current relationships in the supply chain for:

a. risk-sharing

b. prices paid and profit margins of farmers, food manufacturers and other suppliers

c. prices for consumers

d. quality

e. healthy food for consumers

f. animal welfare and the environment

g. competition between retailers?

8. Does the structure of the UK food supply chain support overall domestic food security (both self-sufficiency and the availability of imported foods)?

Affordable and healthy food

9. How successfully are supermarkets promoting affordable and healthy eating in the current high food inflation environment and what steps could they take to increase the take-up and affordability of healthy options? How are promotions, such as multi-buy offers, supporting healthy eating including for those on low incomes, and also affecting levels of food waste?

10. What challenges do low-income households face, in both urban and rural areas, in terms of accessing affordable and healthy food from a choice of retailers?

11. What measures could be taken by central and local government, and others, to enhance cooking skills to reduce reliance on processed food and improve access to self-grown food, in particular for lower income households? What challenges do such ambitions face given the pressures of modern living?

Please contribute your views by 23.59pm, 28 July 2023.

Submissions on the terms of reference set out above should be received by 23.59pm on 28 July 2023.

If your submission is accepted by the Committee, it will usually be published online. It will then be available permanently for anyone to view. It can’t be changed or removed. If you have included your name or any personal information in your submission, that will normally be published too. Please consider how much personal information you want or need to share.

If you would like to ask the Committee to accept your submission anonymously (meaning it will be published but without your name), or confidentially (meaning it won't be published at all), you can make this request when you upload your submission.

Please note that the Committee can only formally consider submissions which have been written specifically for its inquiry. This means that reproduced material which has already been published elsewhere will be treated as background information; the submission will be shared with the Committee but it will not be accepted or published as written evidence. If you wish to share material with the Committee which has already been published elsewhere, you may do so by emailing it to efracom@parliament.uk.

If you have any questions, please contact efracom@parliament.uk

Important information about making a submission

Written evidence must address the terms of reference as set out above, but please note that submissions do not have to address every point. Guidance on giving evidence to a select committee of the House of Commons is available on the website.

In line with the general practice of select committees the EFRA Committee is not able to take up individual cases. If you would like political support or advice you may wish to contact your local Member of Parliament.

The Committee will decide whether to accept each submission. If your submission is accepted by the Committee, it will usually be published online. It will then be available permanently for anyone to view. It can’t be changed or removed. If you have included your name or any personal information in your submission, that will normally be published too. Please consider how much personal information you want or need to share. If you include personal information about other people in your submission, the Committee may decide not to publish it. Your contact details will never be published.

Decisions about publishing evidence anonymously, or about accepting but not publishing evidence, are made by the Committee. If you would like to ask the Committee to accept your submission anonymously (meaning it will be published but without your name), or confidentially (meaning it won't be published at all), you can make this request when you upload your submission.

The Committee has discretion over which submissions it accepts as evidence, and which of those it then publishes on its website. We may anonymise or redact some of your submission if it is published. The Committee may decide to accept evidence on a confidential basis. Confidential submissions remain available to the Committee but are not published or referred to in public. All written evidence will be considered by the Committee, whether or not it is published.

If your evidence raises any safeguarding concerns about you, or other people, then the Committee has a duty to raise these with the appropriate safeguarding authority.

If you have immediate safeguarding concerns about yourself or someone else, you should contact the Police on 999.

We can’t publish submissions that mention ongoing legal cases – contact us if you are not sure what this means for you.

Submissions on the terms of reference set out above should be received by 23.59 on 28 July 2023.

If you wish to submit evidence after this time, please email efracom@parliament.uk for more information.