Transport Minister Baroness Kramer, right, announced a new competition to develop new forms of biofuel during a visit to a company at Milton Park, Didcot.

The £25m initiative will involve coming up with a new generation of fuels that are not reliant on using food crops, so freeing up agricultural land.

Baroness Kramer toured facilities at Future Fuels, which itself won a Government-backed competition to develop fuels from waste materials such as wood chips and straw.

She said: “Sometimes we get very pertinent ideas from this process — the competitive nature of it creates that level of success.”