Confidence across Britain’s largest manufacturing industry has collapsed to -60% according to the latest State of Industry report. Production costs rose again in Q3. Vacancy rates are running at more than double the national average. Investment intentions have fallen from 84% to 65% in a matter of months. These are not normal numbers for a healthy sector.
Behind those statistics sits a simple truth. The UK will not meet its ambitions for healthier diets, environmental leadership or export growth unless food and drink manufacturers have the confidence to invest. At the moment, too many feel they are sprinting just to stand still.
That context is why last week’s Budget mattered so much. It did little to shift the dial for food and drink. Wage costs are rising, logistics will get more expensive, new sugar levy changes add pressure, and customs reforms will make life harder for smaller exporters. Yet, despite being the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, food and drink barely featured in the government’s growth plan. It was treated as something to regulate, not something to invest in. That needs to change.
But responsibility for change does not sit with government alone. If the industry wants Westminster and Whitehall to take food resilience and long term growth seriously, it cannot rely on technical argument or economic modelling to do the job. It needs a political strategy that fits the Parliament we are in, not the one we have just left.
The Food and Drink Federation is already thinking on the right scale. Its recently published ‘Ambition for Growth’ plan sets out an ambition worth £50 billion to the economy by 2035. It calls for annual investment to double to £12 billion, for exports to reach £35 billion, and for the UK to become the global centre of healthier product innovation. It identifies £14 billion of productivity gains that could be unlocked through robotics and new technology. This is exactly the kind of national economic strategy that is needed in the debate.
The question now is how to turn that ambition into political momentum.
This Parliament gives the industry a rare opportunity. Labour’s majority is so large that most votes should be predictable. That creates space for MPs to think, explore ideas and take on causes that match their local priorities. Public affairs professionals often fear a landslide government, worried that the centre becomes too strong. In reality, a Parliament with almost three hundred Labour backbenchers is a Parliament full of potential allies, if approached with clarity and creativity.
Many of those MPs will have been new to Westminster in 2024 and are still keen to make their mark. Some will have come in with a personal mission, most will be searching for one. A well constructed campaign that links food manufacturing to jobs, investment and local pride will resonate across a broad spectrum of constituencies. The food system is rooted in place. It is local, national and global at the same time. That gives it rare political power.
But there is a deeper political challenge the sector must confront. Ministers do not currently view food and drink as a genuine growth sector. That is why it can be picked off so easily by competing priorities in the Treasury or the Department of Health, or by campaigners who are quicker to frame the narrative. Energy has strategic protection. Housing and planning have a department built around them. Food and drink does not. Unless DEFRA and DBT make a louder, clearer and more confident case for the sector’s economic contribution, it will continue to lose ground in Whitehall. The industry cannot wait for that recognition. It has to help force the shift.
That is where campaigning comes in.
The first is to make the case human. The industry cannot rely on charts or regulatory timelines to shift political behaviour. It needs stories rooted in the real economy: the growers of East Anglia, the dairy producers of the South West, the food manufacturing lines across the Midlands and the North, and the seafood sector that sustains communities from Grimsby to the Scottish coast.
The second is to move early. Most parliamentary initiatives fail not because they are unpopular, but because they arrive too late. Labour MPs are still shaping their interests, choosing committees and defining their priorities for the next three years. This is the moment to influence how they see food manufacturing, not months from now when the political agenda has already crystallised.
The third is to give MPs a platform, not a problem. Policymakers respond better to campaigns that offer solutions they can champion. The FDF’s growth plan gives them exactly that. Doubling investment. Matching Scottish and Welsh export support. Updating outdated rules that block R&D. Removing barriers to robotics funding. These are practical, positive actions that individual MPs can adopt, promote and own - and that will help their budding ministerial ambitions.
There is another reason for urgency. The National Audit Office will publish a major review next summer into the resilience of the UK food supply chain. It will examine whether the government understands the risks, whether responsibilities are clear and whether the country is genuinely prepared for the next disruption. That report will create a rare political opening. The sector must be ready for it.
Which brings us to the Budget.
Regardless of what the Chancellor announced, one truth remains. The start of the conversation about the next Budget in 2026 is not autumn next year. It is today. The political groundwork for growth will be laid over the next six months, not in the frantic run up to a fiscal event. How the industry organises itself, how it builds alliances, how it frames its arguments and how confidently it campaigns will shape the decisions taken long before Treasury officials open their Budget spreadsheets.
Resilience, competitiveness and growth are not achieved through last minute lobbying. They are achieved through patient, confident and early political engagement.
If the food and drink sector takes that approach, this week’s Budget becomes the beginning of a longer and more decisive argument, not the end of it.
Mario Creatura is a government affairs consultant specialising in the food and drink sector. A former Downing Street Special Adviser (2017–2019), he has worked with major manufacturers, hospitality groups and retail supply chains on political strategy, regulation and campaigning.