Responsibility and involvement in food policy making in English government has been mapped out by the Food Research Collaboration in research released today. In total, sixteen different departments were identified that hold responsibilities from feeding prisoners through to taxation.
Carried out by Dr Kelly Parsons, the report has been produced by trawling public documents and interviewing key stakeholders. Bringing all of this information into one place, for the first time, gives both the public and policy makers a chance to see how responsibilities are spread out across government.
A map like this is an essential first step in understanding how food policy is ‘done’ by governments.
Identification of the responsibilities, aims, size and structure of each department shows how food touches every part of government, and also highlights how there is no central mechanism to coordinate these disparate departments.
Following on from this research, Dr Parson’s next publication will look at how policies and departments interact, their coherence, trade-offs and synergies.
The full list of departments identified is as follows:
- Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
- Cabinet Office
- HM Treasury
- Ministry of Justice
- Department for International Development
- Department of Health and Social Care
- Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
- Department for Work & Pensions
- Department for Transport
- Food Standards Agency
- Home Office
- Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
- Department for International Trade
- Public Health England
- Department for Education
- Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
The full report can be downloaded from the Food Research Collaboration website.
