The Government agrees that robust official Government data is required to understand the full scope of the food security picture and support future policy decision making. The report, under the Agriculture Act, which will be published at the end of 2021, will provide a comprehensive analysis into a range of current issues relevant to food security. The key themes as set out in the Agriculture Act include Global Food Availability, Supply Sources for Food, the Resilience of the Supply Chain for Food, Household Expenditure on Food, and Food Safety and Consumer Confidence in Food. This section will include an assessment of food poverty in terms of economic and physical access to food, along with the ability to afford nutritious foods. Available data will be combined with case studies to demonstrate the impacts that Covid-19 has had on food poverty. The report is a major undertaking, drawing on evidence and trends from a wide range of sources. Many of these trends are slow-moving and do not change significantly year on year, but over a longer period of time. The Government agreed to reduce the frequency of the report from five to three years following debates in Parliament. Any period shorter than this would not allow for sufficient time to effectively analyse key trends from a variety of sources. The report is not the only source of evidence on food security and will draw on a range of regularly reported and publicly available statistics and data, many of which are produced annually. The Government routinely tracks such data to spot any unexpected changes and the Government intends to use such data to provide a deeper analysis to help identify long-term trends to support policy development in this area. In order to provide an analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impacts on the UK’s food supply, the Government has also committed to publishing the first report before the end of 2021. Due to the nature of how these reports are produced and the forward-look attached to the analysis, it would be more appropriate to update the committee on progress for specific themes through other Parliamentary instruments, such as Written Ministerial Statements. Alongside this, the Government also introduced the internationally recognised food security questions to the annually produced DWP Family Resources Survey. The Family Resources Survey questions were developed in consultation with users, including experts from academia and others with experience of the subject, and with the Office for National Statistics, who deliver the survey for DWP. The first set of results of this survey were produced in March 2021. Conclusion and Recommendation 8: Ensuring everyone, and especially the vulnerable, have access to enough food is a fundamental duty of society and Government. We recognise that this is a goal the Government shares, even if there are differences over how best to achieve it. Although there have been failings, Ministers have mobilised their departments to support vulnerable people’s access to food during the pandemic, giving a sense of what would be possible if the issue was prioritised in normal times. Therefore, we reiterate our previous Second Special Report of Session 2021–22 7 recommendations that a Minister for Food Security is created to maintain this momentum after the pandemic. This Minister needs to be supported by robust cross-Government structures to ensure that all interested departments prioritise the issue of food insecurity. (Paragraph 33) Response: Since the start of the pandemic, Government departments have come together to coordinate support for the most vulnerable. For example, the Food to the Vulnerable Ministerial Taskforce was set up in Spring 2020 to respond to some of the initial challenges of Covid-19, for a limited time and with a defined remit. The taskforce’s membership spanned Departments across government including Housing, Communities and Local Government, Work and Pensions, and Ministers from the Devolved Administrations. The taskforce was instrumental in putting in place support for the most vulnerable individuals. This included: • £63 million for the Local Authority Grant Scheme, delivered by Defra with support from MHCLG, to enable Local Authorities to provide further support for individuals struggling to afford food and essential items; • £10.5 million to the food redistributor FareShare; • £1.8 million to the Covid-19 emergency food redistribution scheme, delivered by Defra and the Waste and Resources Action Programme; • £3.4 million to support individual charities through the Food Charity Grant Scheme. Defra, DfE, DWP and DHSC also worked together on the Covid Winter Support Package in November 2020 – ensuring that we could provide support to those impacted by the pandemic throughout the winter period. This principle of cross-departmental collaboration will guide us as we recover from the pandemic. Through the priority outcomes that accompanied the 2020 Spending Review, departments committe