Families must be urged to stockpile food to survive increasingly severe shocks including extreme weather, cyber attacks and disease, experts warned yesterday.

Short and long-term risks to food supplies were becoming ‘more likely and potentially more severe’, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

In a report, it urged ministers to work with households and firms to ensure the food supply chain could cope with unexpected events.

The Government has designated food as one of 13 ‘critical national infrastructure’ sectors that are essential for the UK to function.

But the NAO claimed the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is responsible for the country’s resilience, had done ‘too little in recent years’ to encourage firms and families to prepare for food shortages.

It said households were less prepared for emergencies than those in other countries, and firms had warned that Defra was engaging with them less and was not consulting them on future plans.

Read more: Britons are being urged to stockpile food to survive crises as risks to supplies ‘become more likely and potentially more severe’