On Monday in the Parliament there was a session entitled Food Poverty Strategy and the person who organised it was Chris Stephens who is from the SNP and one of the people who contributed during his session was Jo Churchill who is the Conservative MP for Bury St. Edmunds and at the end of her first item she focused on “As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, many use local or national groups to redistribute food at the end of the working day, and many interact with FareShare, among other charities.” Last week there was a discussion which can be seen here and seven other MPs contributed on that about FareShare. The text Jo Churchill she referred to on Monday included this aspect and the whole of the session is available here.

Through regular engagement, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs continues to work with food businesses throughout the supply chain to explore a range of measures that they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food by, for instance, maintaining value ranges, price matching and price freezing. However—the hon. Gentleman would expect me to say this—it is not for the Government to tell retail outlets how to set their food prices, or to tell companies what to do. Retailers have introduced incentives for customers, such as reward cards offering small discounts, and a number of stores are offering meal deals either in-store or in their cafés. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, many use local or national groups to redistribute food at the end of the working day, and many interact with FareShare, among other charities.