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Annual Review 2008: A stronger voice

As an advocacy organisation, communications is clearly at the heart of everything we do. And throughout the year we have ensured that industry's voice has been heard by policy makers, politicians, the media and other opinion formers.

The focus is to build on FDF's profile as the respected advocate of the UK's largest manufacturing sector – ensuring we are seen as an organisation with whom Government and others will want to work in partnership. Our strong profile ensured that during 2008 we were able to hold regular meetings with Ministers and senior staff in key Government departments and agencies including Defra, Department of Health, BERR and the FSA.

We were also represented on a number of key Government committees during the year including the Sustainable Food and Farming Delivery Group and the BSI/Carbon Trust/Defra steering group which developed proposals for carbon measurement. More recently, FDF has been invited to join the FSA's new Food Policy Strategy Forum, the London 2012 Food Advisory Group and Foresight's Food Research Partnership.

Our communications activities are also designed to support the work we are doing in our three policy areas – particularly the Five-fold Environmental Ambition and the GDA labelling campaign.

However, a key theme for our work this year has been building a higher profile for FDF and its issues in Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the European Parliament. This has been achieved through an array of activities, including our monthly newsletter 'The Voice' and highprofile events such as our popular annual reception in the Palace of Westminster. In addition, we joined forces with the National Farmers' Union and British Retail Consortium to host a fringe event at the Labour Party annual conference, and ran a roundtable discussion at the Conservative Party conference. We were also delighted that last year a number of leading Members of Parliament formed an All Party Parliamentary Group focused on food and drink manufacturing, for which we provide the secretariat and support.

We run a number of other activities that underpin our communications work. These include the President's Dinner, at which Andrew Lansley, Shadow Secretary of State for Health was our keynote speaker in 2008, as well as our popular breakfast briefings, which have featured presentations from important influencers such as Dr Susan Jebb of the Foresight team and Andrew Jarvis, who led the Cabinet Office Food Matters project.

At the same time, our attention has been increasingly focused on building our reputation and profile in Brussels, where much of the regulation that impacts our sector is negotiated.

We continue to support the work of our European association CIAA in representing our sector in discussions on important dossiers such as the Food Information Regulation. But our own lobbying efforts included our annual dinner in Brussels and a GDA labelling 'week of action' in June, which involved meetings with MEPs and media and a roundtable briefing in Parliament hosted by Philip Bushill- Matthews MEP.

In Scotland, our devolved division continues to raise the profile and improve the reputation of the industry through its work with the Cross Party Group on Food; involvement in the Food and Health Alliance Steering Committee; providing representation on the Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee; chairing the CBI Scotland Trade Association Committee; and participating in the Government's National Economic Forum.

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