My Lords, it is usual for our one-off debates to highlight a problem or defect that requires attention. That is not the case with this issue. I simply want to celebrate a small, specialist, highly productive sector of the economy, namely the flour milling sector. I have a minor technical interest, which I will come to in a moment.
The UK is self-sufficient in flour. More than 99% of households use food products that contain wheat flour, which is more than use toothpaste, by the way. Flour provides the biggest intake of iron in the diet, more than red meat. Since World War II, flour in this country has been fortified by law on health grounds with iron, calcium, niacin and thiamine. This is checked about once every 10 years to make sure it is still needed on health grounds. I should declare that the current regulations, the Bread and Flour Regulations 1998, have my signature on them as the English Minister at the time—there were four Ministers, as it is a devolved area. Food is devolved, but the industry is UK-wide due to the location of the mills—for example, there are none in Wales—so you cannot ask questions about the UK. I have therefore gone to the UK Flour Millers.
From 2013, when I left the Food Standards Agency, until last year, I campaigned for the addition of folic acid to flour on health grounds. It had been recommended by scientists for many years. The Medical Research Council report of 1991 found that a lack of folic acid was the prime cause of neural tube defects leading to brain and spine defects in newborn babies. The new Government in 2024 adopted the plan announced by the previous Government to change the regulations and in November 2024, they did so to add folic acid to the other four fortifications. So effective from 9 January 2025, the industry has two years to fortify wheat flour with folic acid to the level set in the regulations. The UK will then join more than 80 countries in fortifying flour with folic acid on health grounds, following UK research. As usual, the UK is late to the table. We did the research, published it in 1991 and the world followed it, but we did not.
A report on the flour milling industry by Policy Points in 2024 stated that 9,000 people are directly and indirectly employed in it, the annual turnover is £2 billion and the added value to the economy £700 million. The gross added value per employee is £141,000, which is greater than all other sectors, except finance and insurance. It is greater than real estate, manufacturing or construction, for example. Millers buy more than £800 million-worth of milling wheat from UK farmers. There has been capital investment of more than £250 million in the past decade. Bakers use flour for the obvious things, such as bread, cakes and biscuits. Some 12 million loaves, 10 million cakes and 2 million pizzas are made every day.
Flour milling supports food security. In a normal year for weather—a bit tricky these days, of course—that gives an average harvest, more than 80% of the wheat that millers use, or 3.8 million tonnes, was bought from UK farmers. It is not simple: there are over 40 variations of milling specification wheats to grow. Continuous testing and traceability are the norm in this industry. The sector also has zero waste. For every 100 tonnes of wheat, we get 75 to 78 tonnes of flour and 22 tonnes of by-products for animal feed. Flour millers are a cornerstone of national food security, providing an essential ingredient to UK food manufacturers; the wheat goes into a lot more than just making bread. In short, flour milling is one of the most productive sectors of the economy. It is a fairly small sector, but I am not arguing about its size. That is not the point; I just want to celebrate a small sector of the economy.
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to take part in today’s debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to whom I offer my profound thanks for putting the UK flour-milling sector on the agenda of the House of Lords. As he well knows, I always try to take part in his debates because we share a birthday, 5 June, and I know this because for years his birthday appeared in the Times and mine did not. The other person with whom I share a birthday is my noble friend Lord Dundee, who I regret cannot be with us today. This is a debate where 50% of the Peers taking part share the same birthday, which is fairly unique. I turn to the subject at hand.
I know a bit about flour mills and what they mean to the communities they serve because for 14 years I was lucky enough to be the Member of Parliament for Wantage, which has a flour mill. It was called Wessex Mill and sat on, amazingly enough, Mill Street, barely 200 metres from the market square. It was owned by the Munsey family who had been milling grain there for more than a century, five generations in all, using local wheat from neighbouring farms. It printed the names of its supplying farmers on the back of every bag of flour, which I always thought was a lovely touch. In 2022, Wessex Mill sadly closed. The flour had not got worse, and demand had not fallen. In fact, it had won Great Taste awards. What happened, of course, was that energy prices increased five-fold almost overnight, wheat costs were soaring, and the capital required to upgrade ageing machinery was simply beyond reach.
Happily, the story has more than one chapter. The Wessex Mill brand was taken on by Michael and Clare Marriage, and relocated to Hungerford in Berkshire, where it now employs around 130 people drawn from local communities of the North Wessex Downs. It still sources its grain from local farmers, many of them long-standing suppliers, and still prints the farmers’ names and the grain variety on every bag. The flour reaches customers across the country, including through local food networks such as Shropshire’s Own, a delivery service connecting rural communities in the Marches with quality British produce.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. It is of particular interest to me as one of my acquaintances in Oxfordshire mills heritage and ancient grains, and I understand the huge benefits of a strong and stable UK flour milling sector. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey rightly flagged, almost one-third of the food products on our supermarket shelves contain flour as a primary or secondary ingredient. To help put that into perspective, more families eat flour-based products than have access to the internet. I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for flagging toothpaste as well, which I did not realise. Flour’s ability to go everywhere is truly amazing.
It is clear that the 51 flour mills across the country contribute strongly towards our food security in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment that contributes to fragile global supply chains. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Vaizey flagged that with more than £2 billion in annual turnover, flour mills generate £770 million in value added to the economy and are one of the UK’s most productive sectors. We also touched on the fact that flour milling is a near zero-waste process, since the by-product can be used by the animal feed industry. Millers rely heavily on UK farmers of wheat, who keep traceability records and are independently audited. It is clear that the industry is well integrated with our agricultural sectors and critical to our food security.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Leong, with his extensive business experience, will agree that we owe it to the 9,000 employees that the sector employs, directly and indirectly, to back them with a supportive policy environment. The industry faces challenges and it is the responsibility of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and other noble Lords to highlight the obstacles to growth that the Government have inflicted, unintentionally, on farmers and the flour milling sector. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, correctly highlighted that many flour milling businesses are family owned and are therefore especially vulnerable to reductions in business property relief for inheritance tax.
My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate. I thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for securing it, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for their contributions. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Rooker for all his invaluable work and interest in food safety; he has long been a champion in this area and I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that.
I declare an interest in that my family have constantly used Wessex Mill flour for our baking; we love baking bread using that flour. I am well aware of Wantage town square and the King Alfred’s Head pub which is there. Wessex Mill flour is sold in most of the farm shops in Wantage and Woodstock, so I am very familiar with it. I thank my noble friend for bringing this up today.
I pay tribute to UK flour millers nationwide who work every day to produce high-quality flour and help feed the nation. Flour may not always attract attention, but it is fundamental to our daily lives. Flour is a key component of the UK diet, essential not only for industrial bread production and home baking but for a wide range of supermarket foods, as several noble Lords mentioned.
Together, the farming, milling and baking supply chains are critical to national food security. The scale of that contribution is striking. The Federation of Bakers reports that around 12 million loaves of bread—I think it is 12 million, rather than 10 million—are supplied to consumers every day in the UK. That does not happen by accident; it relies on a dependable, resilient milling sector that can operate day in, day out.
The UK flour milling sector processes around 6 million tonnes of wheat each year, and about 85% of that wheat is grown here at home. This means that the sector is near self-sufficiency and provides a stable, reliable market for British farmers. That matters economically and strategically: it supports farm incomes, strengthens rural economies and reduces our exposure to global market volatility. In economic terms, the flour milling sector contributes several hundred million pounds in gross value added each year and supports thousands of skilled jobs. These jobs in not only in the mills: they span farming, transport, storage, engineering, packaging and food manufacturing. Many are located outside major cities, sustaining local economies where alternative employment opportunities can be limited. The sector is also capital intensive and long term in outlook.
My Lords, this has been an interesting, if short, debate. I hope that the Committee will join me in wishing the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, a happy joint birthday on 5 June; I wish everyone else a good February Recess. In the meantime, the Grand Committee stands adjourned until 4 pm.
Noble Lords will be aware that the clock is not working. We are reliant on Back-Bench speakers sticking to their six minutes, and we also expect the Front Benchers to keep to their allotted time. The Whip will, if she needs to, do her best to indicate if people go further than their allotted time.
Last June, I had an update from UK Flour Millers, the trade body that knows what happens UK-wide. It confirmed to me this week that 85% to 90% of UK flour is now fortified with folic acid. This is a year in advance of the requirement by law; an excellent amount of work has been done. However—this is my bit of a moan, in a way, but I want to put it on the record—the Department of Health needs to accept that key scientists do not believe that the level of fortification is as high as it should be. The neural tube, which forms the spine and the brain, closes at 27 days after conception, before many women know that they are pregnant. For this reason, the advice to women planning a pregnancy is to take folic supplements; in fact that advice continues, even with the new regs.
The fact of the matter, though, is that the advice to take supplements has been a spectacular policy failure—otherwise, we would not have gone for fortification of our flour. Half of our pregnancies are unplanned, so it is no good talking to the half of the population who are not affected. We have a new fortification policy because the previous policy failed. That is a good thing. We have gone modern, which will save some distress.
Over the years—I was a scientist as well as a parliamentarian—my role has been exclusively to try to get the regs changed, after I became convinced that was required when I was at the Food Standards Agency, and previously at MAFF, but I have never got involved in the level of fortification. I do not intend to do so now, but scientists such as Sir Nicholas Wald, who is currently an honorary professor of preventive medicine at UCL and was the leader of the Medical Research Council’s 1991 study, wish that the level were higher. Others, such as Dr Jonathan Sher, who is a former deputy director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland, have called for “full fortification”.
We commend UK Flour Millers on its speedy action on fortification. It has done a fantastic job, showing what a well-run and well-managed industry this is. However, it would be useful if the Minister could confirm the monitoring process for the new fortification regs. I have never heard a Minister make a speech on health prevention that includes this area of policy; that applies to both parties, by the way. Nobody speaks about preventive health as a major policy issue and, if it has been touched, this issue has never been raised.
Currently, on average, 200 babies are born per annum with long-term disability due to neural tube defects and 800 pregnancies are terminated at the 20-week scan, so about 1,000 pregnancies are involved. Over the years, Ministers have told me, “Jeff, the numbers are so low that we’re not going to bother to do any work on it”, but think of those 200 babies. Over 10 years, that is 2,000 babies with lifelong disabilities—and because of the American medical system, we know what the cost is. We do not do costing like the Americans, but we know that they have saved $600 million a year since they fortified in 1998. So there are some big figures to save, besides lessening the distress of those families who have gone through terminations and those who have allowed births to continue.
Full fortification could cut these figures by 80%. The current level will not cut it that much, but it has to be monitored. Once we know the fortification is in, I expect the monitoring system to check the policy effects. The regulations talk about the monitoring system, and that is important.
Finally, I have one question I should like to put on the record because it is nothing to do with this. I was contacted by the Nature Friendly Farming Network as a result of the debate. It asked whether anybody is looking at the possibility of a technical change to growing wheat to make it even more productive. I understand that if the protein requirement was reduced even from 13% to 12.5% without affecting the benefits, it would make a tremendous difference to the amount of nitrogen that enters the soil.
I congratulate the industry, which has done a fantastic job and will have saved distress in the health field for many years to come. I wanted to celebrate its success, and that is why I have this debate today.
I am pleased to tell noble Lords that at the old Mill Street site a new enterprise has sprung up, the Oxford Flour Mill. It was incorporated in January 2023, just weeks after the Wessex operation ceased, and is once again milling locally sourced wheat from the same premises. So, the site in the town where King Alfred was born is where grain has been ground for more than 900 years, and it is milling again. The building has outlasted its trouble, even if the original business could not. I mention all this because the Wantage story illustrates something important about the flour milling sector as a whole, that it is resilient, resourceful and woven into the life of the communities it serves, but it illustrates that there is some fragility. One sharp rise in energy costs was enough to close a mill that had survived two world wars.
The figures for the national industry are genuinely impressive. According to UK Flour Millers’ economic impact report published last January, this is a sector that generates £2.2 billion in annual turnover, contributes some £770 million in total value added to the economy, supports more than 9,000 jobs and pays taxes, directly and indirectly, of roughly £270 million a year—all of that from just 51 mills. The productivity numbers are worth dwelling on. At £141,000 of gross value added per employee, flour milling outperforms manufacturing, construction and the economy as a whole.
The milling industry has invested £250 million in the past decade, including in eight brand new mills. These are serious, modern and capital-intensive operations. An important point is that 80% to 85% of the wheat that British millers use is grown domestically, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out. In a good harvest year, that amounts to some 4 million tonnes, roughly one-third of the entire arable crop. The result, as the noble Lord pointed out, is that we are essentially self-sufficient in flour. Some 12 million loaves of bread reach British consumers every day, and flour goes into roughly one-third of all supermarket products beyond that. More British households buy bread than use the internet, which, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Katz, is a statistic I confess I was not expecting to find.
Flour is the single largest contributor, as again the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out, to the nation’s iron intake. It beats red meat and provides about one-third of our daily fibre and calcium. It is also highly sustainable. For every tonne of wheat, 78% becomes flour and 22% becomes animal feed. In a world where supply chains from the Black Sea to the Suez Canal can be disrupted overnight, a domestic industry that feeds virtually every household in the country is worth paying attention to.
The Question by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, asks what assessment the Government have made of the economic impact of this sector. Let me suggest to the Minister six areas where the Government could make a difference. The good news for the Minister is that they will not cost him a penny.
First, there is the issue of land use. The single greatest long-term threat to domestic flour production is the loss of productive agricultural land. Millers depend on British wheat farmers. These farmers face competition from alternative uses of their land: solar farms, housing and biodiversity schemes. All are of course perfectly worthy in their own right, but if too much of our best arable land goes under solar panels, we shall find ourselves importing the wheat that we currently grow. This is particularly acute for organic millers. Wessex Mill, which I mentioned a moment ago, is a certified organic processor. It tells me that Britain currently imports a significant proportion of its organic grain, which seems absurd when we have the land and expertise to grow it here. Greater government encouragement for organic arable production would reduce those imports and strengthen the domestic supply chain.
There is a point here, by the way, on transparency. Organic grain must, by law, be free of genetically modified organisms. As precision-bred organisms enter the wheat supply, organic millers will need to be able to identify which grain is which. If the Government do not require clear labelling of all PBO wheat, millers face a considerable burden of additional testing, the cost of which will inevitably be passed on to consumers. Clarity on labelling would be a simple and inexpensive step. More broadly, the Government’s food strategy for England, published last July, sets out high-level outcomes, but does not, as far as I can tell, contain a clear commitment to protecting the most productive arable land for food production. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether the forthcoming implementation plan will address this issue.
Secondly, on trade, Turkey is the world’s largest flour exporter, accounting for roughly one-fifth of global trade. Its milling industry is heavily subsidised, and 76% of the wheat it mills for export is sourced from Russia. I will let noble Lords reflect on the implications of that. Any change to tariff arrangements in a new free-trade agreement with Turkey could potentially have serious consequences for British millers. All the industry asks is that its interests are properly considered at the negotiating table, and that flour is not quietly sacrificed as a concession in pursuit of other objectives.
Thirdly, there is the issue of energy. This is what forced the closure of the Wantage mill, and it worries every miller in the country. Mills operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The industry has reduced its energy consumption by nearly 10% over the past 15 years, and that is commendable, but it is exposed to energy price volatility. The existing support through the energy intensive industries scheme and the climate change levy discount is welcome and must continue. Withdrawing it as the energy transition proceeds would simply make Britain more dependent on imported flour milled in countries with considerably less impressive environmental standards.
Fourthly, on research, the flour milling industry has invested collectively in R&D since the 1920s. I suspect that is longer than most government departments can claim. It works with plant breeders, farmers, and research institutions on everything from new wheat varieties to food safety, but the tax environment for R&D has become, to put it charitably, complex. If the Government are serious about growth, the R&D tax regime needs to be stable, accessible and designed for industries that actually do applied research. I appreciate that many of the points I am making apply to many different industries, but I want to highlight the impact of policy on the flour milling industry.
Fifthly, there is the apprenticeship levy. Flour millers pay into it, but they cannot use those funds to support the specialist training their workforce requires. UK Flour Millers runs an advanced milling diploma and examination system, exactly the sort of high-quality, industry-specific training we should be encouraging, yet the levy system does not recognise it. There are 30 apprentices currently in training across milling businesses. That number should be higher, and it would be higher if the rules could accommodate it. I look forward to the Minister commenting on that.
Sixthly and—I know the Minister will appreciate the following word—finally, I will just raise the issue of inheritance tax. I know it is a vexed issue, but a large proportion of flour mills in this country are family-owned businesses. The recent changes to agricultural property relief will directly affect their capacity to invest for the long term. A family miller contemplating a multi-million pound investment in new plant needs to plan across generations. If the tax treatment of the business makes that planning uncertain, the investment will go elsewhere, or it will simply not happen. I appreciate that this is a broader issue than flour milling alone, but it is keenly felt in a sector where family ownership is often the norm.
I am conscious that a debate about flour milling may not set the pulses racing like one on artificial intelligence or social media, but I gently point out that artificial intelligence cannot as yet make a loaf of bread and social media has never provided 20% of the nation’s daily energy and protein intake. Flour milling does both, every single day. The Government do not need to do anything dramatic: they just need to protect productive farmland, take care of the trade deals, keep maintaining energy support, make the R&D tax credits stable, tweak the apprenticeship levy and think carefully about the impact of inheritance tax changes on family businesses. I hope the Minister takes these recommendations in the spirit in which they are made. They are six practical steps for an industry that has nourished this country for centuries and deserves government support to continue to do so.
Furthermore, the Government’s trade deal with the US caused significant harm to our bioethanol industry. This, in turn, removed a crucial market for British wheat farmers. Flour millers and farmers have to compete with international producers, suppliers and importers. Of course, we encourage competition, but we must not continually disadvantage British producers by imposing ever more regulation while importing products from abroad that might be produced to lower food safety and quality standards.
During Oral Questions today, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, rightly highlighted that pigs and chickens abroad must experience the same standards as our pigs and chickens in the UK. We must have a fair and level playing field, so will the Minister please clarify whether any further regulatory changes to food standards are planned? We should be proud that in Britain we hold ourselves to such high account, but it is clearly not reasonable or fair on our own UK businesses for the Government to allow double standards to be implemented. Therefore, although many of the Government’s strategies and environmental targets are no doubt well intentioned, new challenges are arising which mean that the Government must prioritise increasing our own domestic production capacity.
I turn to the consequences of the ongoing energy transition. I must be clear that we on these Benches do not wish to carpet the countryside with large-scale solar farms, nor do we want to sacrifice high-quality agricultural land for the benefit of a flawed net-zero policy. However, in some cases, solar energy generation is now seen as more profitable for landowners than wheat production. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted that challenges for wheat producers then become challenges for flour millers, forcing them to rely on imports and putting further pressure on supply chains. We urge the Government to undertake a risk assessment of this impact. If more people eat flour-based products than have the internet, the Government should surely desire to protect this industry and not harm it.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, mentioned energy costs. As we know, flour milling is energy intensive and businesses are especially sensitive to higher energy costs. We have been clear on this issue: we need to bring energy costs down and we must therefore ensure that the Government’s pursuit of an energy transition does not price out flour millers or displace domestic wheat production. In fact, a more supportive policy environment would encourage lowering the industry’s carbon intensity. As the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted, the flour milling industry has a long history of research and development investment. In the past decade, over £250 million has been invested by millers. Further enabling research and development will help businesses to innovate and modernise their practices, while at the same time lowering their carbon intensity.
It would be economically disastrous and environmentally irresponsible for the Government to simply outsource this industry to other countries. At a time when young people are struggling to find jobs, the Government could make more of this economic asset by, for example, allowing apprenticeship levy contributions to fund training and develop opportunities in the milling industry. Will the Government consider that as an option, as was so eloquently asked by my noble friend Lord Vaizey? We really must try to do everything in our power to protect this sector, for a multitude of different reasons, and rural communities are looking to the Government to act at pace with a clear vision for the future.
Mills require substantial investment, high technical expertise and decades of operation. In recent years, millers have invested heavily in modernisation, improving energy efficiency, reducing waste and upholding high standards of food safety and quality. That investment boosts productivity and supports the wider food and drink manufacturing sector, the UK’s largest manufacturing industry, which generates £129 billion in turnover and over £22 billion in exports, and supports more than 4 million jobs.
The Government’s assessment of economic impact also accounts for resilience. Recent years have tested global supply chains through conflict, extreme weather and sharp movements in energy costs. Through it all, the UK flour milling sector continued to operate. That resilience has real economic value, even if it does not always show up neatly in headline figures.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, a highly resilient energy network is fundamental to support this. We acknowledge this and are confident that the system operators have the tools they need to effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios. Our millers rely on high-quality British wheat, so the future strength of milling is closely tied to the future of farming. That is why this Government have made a cast-iron commitment to the security of our farming and food sectors.
Food security is national security, and it depends on a balance of strong domestic production and reliable global supply chains. It also requires a clear vision for the future of farming. To that end, Defra is developing a land use framework, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, will welcome and which will be published early this year. It will set out a long-term vision for land use policy and guide how decision-makers make better land use decisions on the ground.
In response to the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, I say that the 25-year farming road map will bring together regulation, innovation, skills and investment to show how we will sustain food production, meet environmental goals and deliver a profitable, resilient farming sector. This matters directly to millers, as productivity, quality and sustainability in wheat production underpin the success of the entire supply chain.
Alongside this, Defra continues to invest in farming and innovation. The farmer collaboration fund will provide up to £30 million over the next three years to support farmer groups with expert advice and partnerships that drive growth and deliver environmental outcomes. A new farming and food partnership board, chaired by the Secretary of State, will work across the supply chain to remove investment barriers and improve operations. Through the farming innovation programme, we are supporting projects in key areas, including pest and disease control and alternative fertiliser use, and are committed to investing at least £200 million by 2030.
Defra also supports the crop genetic improvement network, which is a £15 million research platform focused on improving key arable crops. This work is already delivering results, including wheat varieties with improved resistance to diseases such as take-all and orange blossom midge, and progress towards more drought-tolerant, climate-resilient wheat.
In addition, Defra continues to fund the long-standing survey of crop pests and diseases, which provides vital data to support alternative control strategies and to reduce reliance on chemical inputs. These investments support farmers and strengthen the raw material base on which flour millers depend. The milling supply chain has robust traceability standards. Millers buy wheat only from assured suppliers, with farms adhering to best practices and maintaining audited records. This traceability supports consumer confidence and underpins the UK’s reputation for high food standards.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I say that organic farming offers many benefits to the wider environment, and Defra is committed to supporting producers to grow organic crops. We recognise that transparency is essential to maintaining trust in the organic label. Organic grain must, by law, be free from genetically modified material, and Defra recognises that the development of precision-bred products raises concerns for the sector. Defra will work with the sector on retaining confidence in the organic label.
We are also taking action to ensure that supply chains operate fairly. Last year, Defra launched a public consultation on contractual practices in the combinable crops sector, giving farmers and stakeholders the opportunity to share their experiences and to help the Government build a clear picture of how the system operates.
I also welcome the strong commitment from the milling sector to include folic acid in non-wholemeal flour by the end of 2026. The cost of this fortification is low—adding folic acid to flour costs under 1p per loaf of bread—so it is easily affordable for manufacturers. This is a clear example of industry and government working together to deliver public health benefits.
International trade remains important; the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, touched on this point. Arable commodities are traded globally, and food security depends on domestic production and imports, supported by robust global supply chains. Trade can help businesses grow and open new markets, but we are clear that trade deals must not—I stress “must not”—undermine UK producers. As noble Lords know, negotiations with Turkey are ongoing, but we have always been clear that this Government will protect British farmers, secure our food security, and uphold our high food, animal welfare and environmental standards in trade deals; that is exactly what we have done and will continue to do.
On my noble friend Lord Rooker’s point about monitoring, the UK Government and the devolved Governments are putting plans in place to monitor the impact of such changes. The level of folic acid fortification will be kept under constant review. I hope that my noble friend will continue to engage with the department to ensure that this monitoring happens.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, asked about the skills levy. This Government are transforming the apprenticeship offer into a new growth and skills offer, which will offer greater flexibility to employers and learners and support the industrial strategy. The growth and skills levy provides a more flexible offer; I think the noble Lord mentioned various other short-term courses, so I hope that this will give him some comfort.
As I am sure noble Lords are aware, we recently announced changes to inheritance tax. More family farms are now protected from inheritance tax. The Government have increased the agricultural and business property relief threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million, and couples are now able to pass on up to £5 million tax free, meaning that 85% of farming estates will pay absolutely no inheritance tax. This is where the Government are supporting small family farms.
I will have to write to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on R&D tax credits, because that are is more for the Treasury. I will speak to my colleagues and ensure that I write to him, with a copy of that letter being placed in the Library.
In closing, I again thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for enabling this debate. The Government recognise the essential role that the UK flour milling sector plays in supporting British agriculture, underpinning food manufacturing, sustaining skilled employment and strengthening national resilience. Although it is largely out of sight, this economic value is felt across the food system. We will continue to work closely with the sector to ensure that it remains competitive, resilient and able to play its full part in a secure and prosperous food economy.