Watchdog: UK Unprepared for Food Shocks — Minister Says Stock Up
The National Audit Office warned that climate, disease and cyber-attacks pose growing risks to food supplies Britain is not prepared for — over a third of UK food is imported, most through four ports — and said Defra has “not done enough” to get citizens and industry planning. Angela Eagle’s advice was unusually direct: with “probably the largest El Niño that has ever been seen” coming, “if you’ve got a store of a bit of food that can keep you going… you’re going to be a lot better off.”
A cabinet minister advising households to lay in food would once have been a gaffe requiring correction by lunchtime; that it is now considered candour measures how far official risk assessment has moved. The NAO’s structural point deserves its plainness: a third of the nation’s food arrives through four ports — Dover, Felixstowe, Southampton, London Gateway — each a single point of failure for weather, cyber-attack or the kind of maritime disruption currently on display in two of the world’s chokepoints, and the department responsible has left resilience largely to supermarket logistics teams. Ms Eagle’s WMO-endorsed El Niño framing connects the warning to a forecast with a date on it. Watch the emergency-preparedness strategy promised for later this year — and whether it survives contact with the Treasury.