Defra must do more to protect food supply chains
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) needs to collaborate more closely with households, communities and industry to ensure the UK’s food supply chain can cope with increasingly likely and severe shocks, a new report from the National Audit Office (NAO) has found. These shocks include extreme weather, cyber-attacks and disease outbreaks.
Food has been designated by the government as one of 13 Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) sectors regarded as essential to the country’s functioning.
During recent crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, private sector businesses largely kept the food supply chain operating without requiring substantial government support. However, the risks threatening the supply chain, both in the short and long term, are growing more likely and potentially more damaging. Climate change, for instance, is making extreme weather events increasingly probable. Consequently, Defra is now less certain that the private sector alone could withstand such disruption without stronger government intervention.
The department has made some positive strides towards improving its readiness for food supply disruption, including growing its Food Supply Chain Resilience team and placing greater emphasis on planning for catastrophic scenarios that could severely affect food supply.
Despite this progress, the NAO found that Defra has not done enough in recent years to help businesses, households and communities build resilience and prepare for possible food shortages resulting from supply chain disruption. Government research shows that UK households are less prepared for emergencies than those in several other countries.
Food supply chain businesses commended Defra’s engagement with them throughout the pandemic but told the independent public spending watchdog that this engagement has become less frequent since. These businesses were also given limited opportunity to contribute to Defra’s ‘playbook’ for responding to food supply disruptions, raising concerns that the plans could prove ineffective when tested in reality.
Scenario exercises designed to test Defra’s readiness for catastrophic events that could severely disrupt food supply have largely excluded food supply chain businesses. The most recent national exercise took place in 2023, and some businesses said they would welcome greater involvement in future exercises. Local resilience forums, meanwhile, reported a lack of clarity from Defra regarding their expected role in the event of a disruption.
The NAO report also highlights wider structural challenges facing Defra. Although the department takes part in several cross-government working groups and boards, it admitted in 2025 that it had very little confidence that cross-government resilience efforts were sufficiently joined-up. Defra also lacks certain legal powers that may be needed during a catastrophic event to maintain food supply, such as the authority to direct businesses to take emergency action.
The report suggests Defra could further strengthen resilience by drawing on approaches used in other CNI sectors and in other countries.
To bolster the resilience of the food supply chain, the NAO recommends that Defra refresh its approach to engaging with food supply chain businesses, and assess the potential costs and benefits of resilience-building approaches used elsewhere, considering whether they could be wholly or partly applied to the UK. It also recommends that Defra review its response plans to ensure they would work effectively in practice, examine its current legal powers for responding to a catastrophic event causing severe food supply disruption, and work with the Cabinet Office to ensure future initiatives encouraging household and community preparedness include sufficient detail on food-specific readiness.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Recent disruptions have shown the resilience of the UK’s food supply chain, but risks are increasing in likelihood and severity. Defra should learn from approaches taken in other countries, and strengthen preparedness for emergencies by testing plans with local government and industry.”
Ben Fletcher, Chief Executive of Logistics UK, said: “The UK’s food supply chain is highly complex and interconnected and today’s (4 September) report from the National Audit Office reinforces the position of Logistics UK that it would benefit from a more co-ordinated approach to protect the chain’s long-term security. Food supply chain resilience is directly linked to the overall health and resilience of the logistics industry. Our work with Food 7 Cymru and others shows how important it is to involve all parties from a regional to a national level to test the ongoing resilience of all the elements involved, to ensure that any potential disruption to supply can be minimised.”
