Report uncovers concerningly opaque nature of food industry ministerial lobby

New report from The Food Foundation uncovers concerningly opaque nature of food industry ministerial lobbying in the UK

A new report from The Food Foundation looking at food industry lobbying has concluded that lack of available information in the government's transparency registers makes it impossible to understand the extent of industry lobbying on specific policies.

Lobbying, the process through which corporations, organisations and citizens can make their views known to policymakers, is an important part of the democratic process if done transparently.

However, The Food Foundation report reveals a system in the UK that is opaque and risks undermining democratic accountability, eroding public trust and disproportionately benefiting those with more financial or political resources or influence.

The report identified several issues with the current system:

1.    There is a great deal of undocumented lobbying that can’t be tracked. Current transparency rules only apply to meetings that take place within ministries or departments. Meetings held outside government buildings – for example, on a corporation’s premises, at the offices of a public affairs company, at conferences, on the golf course etc – are not logged. Neither are emails, phone calls or texts⁽¹⁾.

2.    Aside from meetings with Ministers, currently only meetings with a department’s highest-ranking official, the Permanent Secretary, are also routinely made public. Meetings between food businesses and high-ranking civil servants who may have a significant impact on policy (such as Directors General, Directors, Deputy Directors and Chief Scientific Advisers) are not available for public scrutiny.

3.    Very little information is available for the meetings that are disclosed. This means awareness of corporate lobbying is significantly limited by the lack of information on the content of the meetings between food industry representatives and policymakers. The report found descriptions of these meetings are minimal e.g. 'Intro' or 'catch up'. This clearly goes against the Minister’s Transparency Guidance (2024) which states that regarding the disclosure of a meeting’s purpose: “Departments should make every effort to provide a meaningful and clear description of the ‘purpose of the meeting’, succinctly capturing a. the key topic(s) discussed and state any specific area(s) of government policy/ legislation etc., affected. Broad descriptions such as ‘general discussion’, ‘introductory meeting’, ‘informal catch-up’, ‘bilateral meeting’ etc. should not normally be used” (Cabinet Office, 2024).

4.    There is no uniform way of referencing meetings which makes analysing the large volumes of data documenting ministerial meetings difficult for third parties, with for example, no consistent or uniform use of company names used.

Due to lack of available data, The Food Foundation report focuses only on ministerial meetings with the UK food industry and their major trade associations as documented on the ‘Transparency and freedom of information releases’ register on the UK government website.

The Food Foundation analysis found that:

• Of ministerial meeting registers during the last term of government (January 2020-June 2024) at Defra, the department responsible for food and farming, ministers met with food businesses and their trade associations 1,408 times – 40 times more than with food NGOs and ministers.
• Across all nine departments analysed, 39% of the total number of ministerial meetings with the food and drink industry and their representatives were with trade associations (1,083 meetings), followed by 36% with retailers (1,004 meetings).
• A large number of smaller, livestock-focused trade associations regularly met with Defra ministers. 15% (114 meetings) of all trade association meetings with Defra between 2020 and June 2024 were with meat and dairy specific trade associations.

Analysis of those food companies most regularly meeting with Defra found that overwhelmingly it is the supermarkets who are most often in the room with ministers. Deliveroo and Unilever are the only non-retailers in the top 10 companies found to be most frequently meeting with ministers.

Of those companies and trade associations meeting with DHSC during the 2020-24 period, retailers were once again the sector most likely to be meeting with ministers, with 42% of all business and trade association meetings with the retail sector.

While the period of time analysed in this report (2020-24) is notable for covering the Covid pandemic, which had far-reaching impacts on the food supply chain and the retail sector in particular, supermarkets were found to be much more likely to be in the room with ministers from both Defra and DHSC than others within UK food industry.

While a smaller number of meetings between the food industry and DHSC were identified compared to Defra, which is encouraging, it is notable that all three of the largest online food delivery apps and two large companies from the Out of Home sector (McDonald’s and Wetherspoon’s) feature among those businesses most likely to be meeting with health ministers.

The 10 companies in our analysis recording the highest number of ministerial meetings with DHSC from 2020-24 

Sarah Buszard, The Food Foundation's Responsible Investor Engagement Lead, said: "The lack of transparency and available data on corporate lobbying in the UK is worrying, and frankly the current ministerial meeting registers are not fit for purpose. They could and should be substantially improved.

"To ensure public trust in the government and to enable good public policymaking, there ought to be transparency and fair access in decision-making processes.

"While lobbying in and of itself is not necessarily a cause for concern, the extent to which endemic power imbalances within the food system are warping democratic processes and hampering the ability of governments to intervene in support of people and planet is now a serious cause for concern.

"What information we do have suggests that large food businesses and their trade associations are often in the room with ministers – something that ought to be very closely monitored with better frameworks in place for scrutinising this activity."

Nikita Sinclair, Head of the Children's health and food programme at Impact on Urban Health, said; "We need progressive food policies that protect children's health, but, as a result of opaque lobbying practices by the UK food industry, we can often be left with unambitious policymaking that instead protects the interests of big corporates.

"As this new research highlights, the approach to lobbying requires substantial improvement to ensure that our food system is set up to make healthy and affordable food available for everyone.

"We need an approach that involves the people most affected by current inequities, that also provides opportunities for industry engagement to find the best and fairest solutions."

FOOTNOTES
⁽¹⁾ Due to the lack of clarity around the disclosure rules, it is possible that some meetings taking place outside of government buildings could be captured in the "ministerial gifts" or "ministerial hospitality" disclosure records, or not disclosed at all. The Food Foundation's analysis has focused on the "ministerial meetings" disclosure records.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Please contact Juliet Grant on 07929075489 or email juliet.grant@foodfoundation.org.uk

AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW
Sarah Buszard, Responsible Investor Engagement Lead, The Food Foundation 

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ABOUT THE FOOD FOUNDATION
The Food Foundation is a charity working to influence food policy and business practice, shaping a sustainable food system which makes healthy diets affordable and accessible for all. We work in partnership with researchers, campaigners, community bodies, industry, investors, government and citizens to galvanise the UK’s diverse agents of change, using surprising and inventive ideas to drive fundamental shifts in our food system. These efforts are based on the continual re-evaluation of opportunities for action, building and synthesising strong evidence, convening powerful coalitions, harnessing citizens’ voices and delivering impactful communications.        
Registered Charity Number 1187611.

METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE OF THE BRIEFING
The Food Foundation, acting on behalf of the Investor Coalition for Food Policy, conducted a pilot study in 2024, with further follow-up in January 2025, to understand the extent of food industry lobbying in the UK. Inspiration came from InfluenceMap's LobbyMap, which is a global database on corporate and industry association climate policy engagement. Our focus to date has been on ministerial meetings with the UK food industry and their major trade associations as documented on the ‘Transparency and freedom of information releases’ register on the UK government website.
While we initially intended to focus on the food and beverage industry response to a package of high fat/salt/sugar (HFSS) policies that have been legislated for in the UK over the past five years, it quickly became apparent that such is the scarcity of information in the government's transparency registers that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to understand the extent of industry lobbying on specific policies. 
As a result, we broadened out the initial scope of our research to look more broadly at the frequency of ministerial meetings with the UK food industry and their major trade associations, comparing this to meetings between ministers and food and health focused NGOs. Initially, all lobbying activity was analysed by assessing ‘gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings’ documented between 2020 and 2023 for 11 government departments:

1.    Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)
2.    HM Treasury (HMT)
3.    Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
4.    Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)1
5.    Department for Business and Trade (DBT) 
6.    Prime Minister’s Office (PMO)
7.    Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
8.    Department for Education (DfE)
9.    Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)
10.  Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
11.  Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) 

Two departments (DLUHC and DfE) were subsequently excluded from analysis as no (obvious) meetings on food were recorded. Our analysis therefore focussed on the remaining nine government departments. In January 2025 we analysed the meetings recorded for these nine departments from January 2020 up to and including Q2 2024 (only data up until Q2 2024 was available at the time of the analysis).

According to the (UK) Government Digital Service and the Central Digital and Data Office, information on ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings constitutes "departmental core transparency data" which must be released on a quarterly basis. There is official guidance available (2024) on publishing this information (UK government, 2024).

We pre-identified companies assessed in our Plating Up Progress benchmarking analysis, in addition to pre-selecting the largest food and beverage trade associations in the UK and key associations for the meat and dairy industry, to search for in the registers. Additional relevant companies and trade associations identified as part of searching the registers were also included in the final analysis.

Private sector information was also accessed from the websites of the following pre-identified associations: Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), British Retail Consortium (BRC), Dairy UK, Food and Drink Federation (FDF), Hybu Cig Cymru/Meat Promotion Wales, National Farmers Union (NFU), Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), and the Country Land and Business Association (CLBA).