(Secretary of State for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs): Coronavirus
presents unprecedented challenges to the businesses we rely on to
provide essential services which keep people safe – including
food supply, water and waste.
Many businesses in these sectors have benefited from Government
schemes to support all businesses, including the Coronavirus Job
Retention Scheme, Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme,
and the Small Business Grant Scheme and support for the
self-employed.
Beyond this, the Government has taken specific action to support
the food, farming, water and waste sectors in the delivery of
critical services.
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Fisheries: The fishing sector has seen
considerable impacts because of the closure of restaurants
both here and in Europe and severe market disruption. Last
week we announced a new £10 million support scheme to help
the catching and aquaculture sector in England and boost
local supply chains. Vessel owners and aquaculture businesses
will receive payments to help cover their fixed costs. On
Monday we began to contact eligible vessel owners. The MMO
has published the details of the scheme on gov.uk.
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Dairy: In particular, the dairy sector has
felt a significant impact as a result of the coronavirus
pandemic. Between 5 and 10 per cent of total milk production
goes to the food service trade and there is therefore a small
proportion of milk production that currently has no home. The
vast majority of Britain's 10,000 dairy farmers continue to
supply their contracts at the usual price and larger
processors have been largely unaffected by the market
disruption because of their scale and diversified nature. In
order to support the affected farmers, on Friday we announced
that we will set aside some elements of competition law to
make it easier for processors to come together and
voluntarily work out how to ease production down in order to
create the space in the market for that milk that currently
has no home and to support a recovery in the spot price. We
have asked the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board
(which supports the interests of dairy farmers and the wider
farming industry) and Dairy UK (which represents the
processors) to coordinate a proposal and discussions are
already underway.
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Livestock: There has been a drop in demand
in various cuts, for example steaks, leading to carcass
balance problems in the beef, poultry meat and pig meat
sectors. We have encouraged supermarkets to put steaks on
promotion and, while the price of beef cattle has reduced in
recent weeks, retailers are also reporting an increase in
meat sales. Although the price of beef cattle, poultry and
pigs has dropped, it still remains higher than in previous
years. Quite a lot of beef, poultry meat and pig meat has
gone into storage so we continue to monitor this market
closely.
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Waste: The waste sector has been impacted
by social distancing, staff shortages and an increase in
waste produced by households compared to a decrease in demand
for commercial collections. Defra has published guidance to
local authorities to help them prioritise their waste streams
to keep important services like black bin bag collections
moving, and worked with the waste sector to develop an online
platform called WasteSupport which facilitates the sharing of
resources between local authorities and commercial operators.
This was launched by the sector at the end of last week. We
are looking at how we can keep other services operating such
as household waste recycling centres, and are aware of
reports of increases in fly-tipping.
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Supermarkets: following a significant spike
in consumer demand, we have now seen stock levels in
supermarkets improve and panic buying has stopped. To support
the food sector, the government temporarily relaxed
competition law and regulations relating to driver hours and
delivery times so that the sector could work together to keep
putting food on the shelves.
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Ornamental horticulture: the closure of
garden centres has had an impact on some specialist plant
producers in the ornamental horticultural sector. Online
sales have been able to continue and the Government is
keeping the situation under review but concluded last week
that it was too early to ease any restrictions on such retail
environments. The First Secretary set out the five tests on
which the Government would base any assessment of easing the
current measure. We must all continue to stay at home, in
order to protect the NHS and save lives.
The Government will continue to support these essential services;
I want to thank all those who have rallied in an extraordinary
way to respond to this unprecedented challenge.
