UK Food Security: Government Publishes First National Food Strategy Response

The government published its formal response to Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy report, a landmark independent analysis of the UK’s food system that had been commissioned by the previous administration and had sat without a government response for several years. The response, published in 2026, set out the government’s commitments on nutrition labelling reform, farming transition support and food system resilience — areas identified by Dimbleby as requiring urgent policy attention.

The Iran war and its consequences for global food supply chains gave the food security agenda renewed political salience in the period leading up to the publication. The war had exposed vulnerabilities in the UK’s dependence on imported food commodities, fertilisers and agricultural inputs, reinforcing Dimbleby’s arguments about the strategic importance of domestic food production capacity and the risks of a food system optimised for cost minimisation at the expense of resilience.

The nutrition commitments in the government response included reforms to the nutrient profiling model used to regulate the advertising of food high in fat, salt and sugar and to the mandatory labelling requirements for processed food products. These measures addressed longstanding concerns from public health organisations about the misleading information that consumers received about the nutritional content of food sold in UK supermarkets and restaurants.

Farming transition support commitments built on the existing Sustainable Farming Incentive programme, which provides payments to farmers who adopt practices beneficial to the environment, biodiversity and soil health. The response included commitments to ensure that the transition away from the old basic payment scheme left farmers with viable business models and the technical support needed to adapt their operations.