Karen Betts speech: FDF Parliamentary Reception 2026

Thank you for your kind words Alistair [Carmichael], and for accepting our invitation to speak today. FDF and our member companies very much appreciate the work you and the EFRA Committee do on behalf of all food producers, including currently on food supply chain resilience and fairness. 

Thank you too, John [Lamont], for sponsoring our event this afternoon. Under yours and Mike Reader’s leadership, the food and drink APPG actively supports, challenges and partners our industry in equal measure, and we’re grateful for everyone’s commitment. If there are any MPs in the room who aren’t part of our APPG, please do consider joining. 

I will shortly introduce Emma Reynolds, Secretary of State for DEFRA, who has also very kindly joined us. Emma, I know you’re a big supporter of a successful food and drink industry in the UK. You well know, including from the food businesses in your constituency, that food and drink manufacturers create so much of what’s in all of our kitchen cupboards, fridges and freezers, as well as playing a central role in our economy. 

But before I hand over to Emma, I want quickly to return to the theme of resilience and food security. Because the UK’s 70 million people wouldn’t have food and drink to nourish and sustain them every day, from breakfast to bedtime, if it wasn’t for the role that food and drink manufacturing plays. Our sites may be largely hidden behind fences and hedges on industrial estates. But we operate them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, in every town, city, region and nation of the UK, to keep shops stocked and restaurants, offices, schools, hospitals and so on supplied.  

As I speak, thousands of our colleagues are relentlessly, determinedly, ensuring that everyone, everywhere, from Shetland to the Scilly Isles, has access to fresh, varied, safe, affordable, nutritious food and drink. Today, tomorrow and the next day.  

The food system we’re part of is hard working, sophisticated and efficient. It’s also complex, and – with wars and climate change to contend with – often looks more resilient than it actually is. What it needs, for resilience and growth, is investment. Because resilience isn’t just about what we grow in the UK, it’s about what we do with what we grow too. Like farmers, to be resilient food and drink manufacturers need to be able to turn a profit and to invest, and those two things are linked. This investment isn’t just in maintaining our operations, it must be in constantly investing in new processes, new technologies, new products, new ingredients, in the energy transition, in sustainability, and in our people and their evolving skills. Without this investment, companies get left behind, they can’t compete, we lose manufacturing capacity, and undermine our food security by importing more. 

But companies across our sector, from small, medium to large, tell us they’re struggling to make these critical investments. Investors are holding back because they see rapidly-changing and increasingly complex laws and regulations, high energy costs and the high costs of doing business in the UK. Companies tell us – large and small – that their investors need clear, proportionate and stable regulation against which they can invest with confidence.   

So we are very attracted to reindustrialisation. Done well, with commitments agreed by government and industry on a regulatory pathway, on skills, R&D and the energy transition, it could renew and revitalise investment in our industry’s heartlands of the north east, the north west, the Midlands, south Wales and central Scotland.  

A partnership like this, a fair deal for food and drink if you like, would be no more than what other sectors – with much less of an impact on our daily lives – already have. Within this too, the right focus on skills could inspire our next generation of food makers.  

Indeed, there is an excellent example of a food and drink skills programme in Greater Manchester right now, which is successfully connecting school leavers with jobs in our industry – once led by Westminster’s newest MP. 

Secretary of State, can I hand the floor to you, assuring you of the enthusiasm and commitment of all the companies here to a resilient future for food and drink manufacturing in the UK, as part of a secure food system, that’s modern, sustainable, healthy and productive.