Liz Truss takes up sausage offer at M5 service station Published duration 12 February 2016

image caption Liz Truss described the sausage as "really lovely"

Liz Truss has taken up "one of the best offers she has had all year" - a sausage at a service station on the M5.

To howls of laughter in the Commons, the environment secretary was promised a "warm welcome and a Gloucester Old Spot sausage" by MP Richard Graham if she ever visited Gloucester Services.

The M5 stop-off spot aims to defy the usual reputation of a motorway services by offering upmarket organic fare.

On Friday she took up the offer, proclaiming her sausage as "very nice".

media caption The offer caused much hilarity in the House of Commons

Gloucester MP Mr Graham made the offer during a Parliamentary debate last week about the role of the Great British Food Unit

Unveiled by Ms Truss in November, the unit brings together "food and drink pioneers" with the aim of helping Britain to become a "great food nation".

During the 4 February debate, Mr Graham told his Conservative colleague that his constituency was not only home to "some of the greatest food" in the world, but said the M5 service station had been described as "probably the best" in the United Kingdom.

Tucking in to a cooked breakfast with all the trimmings on Friday morning, Ms Truss said she enjoyed the "really lovely" sausage, although she had not been "expecting such a huge plate of food".

image caption Ms Truss said she had not been expecting "such a huge plate of food" but it had been "very, very tasty"

"It's very, very tasty, it's local and you can see the passion of the producers who make it," she said of the sausage, made from Gloucestershire Old Spot meat.

She added that Gloucester Services was "a brilliant example of promoting local food, bringing together local producers to something that is an amazing experience to all the visitors that come here".

Opened in May 2014, Gloucester Services features independent shops and restaurants selling produce from 130 local suppliers from within a 30-mile (50km) radius.