More than 18 months since Labour came to power a standout manifesto pledge for half of public sector food to be local or sustainable has yet to materialise. By Nick Hughes.
“We will set a target for half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards.”
It may not have been a pledge that captured the nation’s imagination in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, but it certainly carried resonance for those working to deliver food systems change across the public, private and third sectors.
Better public procurement has long been seen as a key lever for improving health and environmental outcomes linked to food production and consumption – identified as such by charities including Sustain and The Food Foundation alongside independent experts like Henry Dimbleby in his ‘National food strategy for England’.
Dimbleby recommended the government should reform its buying standards for food and catering services “so that taxpayers’ money goes on healthy and sustainable food”. He also believed all public sector organisations should be required to apply the standards, not just those that are currently mandated to do so – namely central government departments, hospitals, army bases and prisons.
Excitement levels rose a notch further when the then Defra secretary of state, Steve Reed, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to the 50% target at the Oxford Farming Conference in January 2025 and announced plans to monitor where food bought by the public sector currently comes from as a first step to achieving the goal.
And since then ….silence. A government that insists it is all about delivery rather than ‘vibes’ has said almost nothing publicly about the 50% ambition during the past 12 months.
Instability at the top of both the government itself and Defra (Emma Reynolds replaced Reed as secretary of state in September 2025) may have contributed to delays – and Labour under Sir Keir Starmer has not been afraid to perform U-turns – but this is a policy that is about as uncontroversial as they come; so much so that the Conservative government’s 2022 food strategy included a strikingly similar commitment to “introduce an aspirational target that at least 50% of food spend must be on food produced locally or certified to higher environmental production standards, while maintaining value for money for taxpayers”.
There’s no suggestion that Labour has abandoned the 50% target altogether. Footprint has established that several large catering companies are currently supporting officials in gathering data on the type and origin of food purchased for public sector contracts. But Defra is unable or unwilling to put a timeframe on how long the data collection process will take. (Sourcing and consolidating detailed procurement data can be challenging for large catering businesses who service a wide range of public sector contracts through multiple brands and are often several steps removed from the food’s origin.)
Slow progress
Frustration is starting to grow among advocates for better public procurement at the lack of tangible progress on what was seen as a standout food-related policy pledge. “Things seem a bit slow,” remarks one seasoned food policy expert wryly.
The government, in its defence, can point to recent steps that establish a clear direction of travel towards using procurement to create social value. The Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on February 24th 2025, allows for contracts below certain value thresholds to be reserved for smaller UK suppliers. Alongside the act, the Cabinet Office published a ‘National procurement policy statement’ in February 2025 which sets expectations for government contracts to favour products certified to high environmental standards. Yet neither document sets an explicit target for sourcing more local, sustainable food against a measurable set of criteria. Achieving “value for money” remains the overarching priority in public procurement, including food.
The 50% ambition is not the only policy that has seemingly stalled in the delivery phase. School food standards are also set for a shake-up more than a decade after they were first implemented. In June 2025, the Department for Education announced it was working with experts and stakeholders to update the standards to ensure they align with the latest nutritional guidance and sustainability goals. The aim was to have the revised standards ready in time for a major expansion in eligibility for free school meals from September this year. Yet two months into 2026, a consultation has still not been published – something the government has said it will carry out in order to gather a broad spectrum of perspectives before the standards are formally adopted. We’ve now reached the point where it’s hard to see how a whole new set of school food standards can practically be implemented in time for September.
Despite the delays, Myles Bremner, CEO and founder of consultancy Bremner & Co and director of the original school food plan for England, remains optimistic that the standards will be a force for good. “Although progress is slow, that doesn’t mean the opportunity is not still there,” he says. “If a consultation on school food standards were to start in the spring that would give caterers time to start thinking about how they might adapt their menus ahead of an implementation period.”
Economic boost
Beyond the opportunity to improve health and environmental outcomes through better food procurement practices, there is potential to create clear economic benefit for businesses along the supply chain, from farmers to caterers. In her recently published ‘Farming profitability review’, former NFU president Minette Batters linked the ambition for more profitable farming to the opportunity to grow “the unique selling point of ‘Brand Britain’” by increasing demand for British produce through exports, supermarket sales, public procurement sourcing, manufacturing of raw ingredients and out-of-home sales – “so farmers and growers sell more and remain the number one supplier of choice to the UK market”.
Meanwhile, a report published last year by Sustain’s Children’s Food Campaign, Bremner & Co and the Ampney Brook Foundation with support from Impact on Urban Health, identified a major opportunity to link expanded free school meal provision with economic benefit to UK food producers and wider public sector supply chains. Their research found that enacting a policy of universal free school meal provision in England could drive up to a 54% uplift in demand from schools for key UK-produced ingredients, worth over £600m annually in food procurement for producers and suppliers. They argued such a policy would also help the government achieve its target for 50% local, sustainable and British produce in public sector food by creating the opportunity to source more carrots, broccoli, potatoes and other ingredients from British growers.
The report’s authors, however, warned the opportunity would be missed without joined up strategies across health, farming and the economy to maximise the impact of public food spending. That includes uplifted funding that reflects the real costs of providing quality meals, and stronger standards that are properly enforced to ensure nutritious, sustainable food is served in every school.
It remains unclear whether schools even form part of the government’s 50% sourcing ambition. In his Oxford speech, Reed namechecked hospitals, army bases and prisons as the beneficiaries of the government using its purchasing power to back British produce. Yet when former Conservative MP Will Quince published his government-commissioned review into public food procurement in 2024, he found that £3.7bn of the £5bn spent annually on public sector food comes from areas not currently subject to the government buying standards, including schools. (Quince, like Batters in her profitability review, called on the government to unify and mandate standards across the entire public sector.)
Nor is it clear how Labour plans to define requirements for “local” and “high environmental standards” once it progresses beyond the current exercise of data collection onto the task of actually rewriting standards.
A year ago, I wrote that a recent history of government failure to enact promised improvements in public food procurement suggests “we shouldn’t hold our breath” that Labour will deliver its 50% ambition. There is still time, but the more months that pass without tangible progress, the more another opportunity to improve societal outcomes by raising public sector food standards looks like slipping by.
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