Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023, what consideration they have given to the possibility of that legislation causing further welfare problems through the stress to cats caused by (1) trapping, (2) confinement, and (3) euthanasia.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Under the draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023, only owned cats are required to be microchipped. The Regulations will not apply to free living cats that live with little or no human interaction or dependency, such as farm, feral or community cats.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023, what consideration they have given to providing exemptions for (1) older cats, (2) cats with long-term health issues, and (3) cats fitted with collar trackers.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023 permit an exemption from the requirement to be microchipped where a veterinary surgeon certifies that the procedure should not be carried out for animal health reasons.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023, what consideration they have given to the issues surrounding the data privacy of cat owners in relation to that legislation.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The draft Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023 will require cat keepers to register their details with a database operator which holds itself out as compliant with these Regulations. These operators are all commercial enterprises independent of Government and they have a duty to comply with data protection requirements.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the changes made to their second Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy on 10 March, whether it is still their aim that half of all journeys in towns and cities will be cycled or walked by 2030.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Yes. The changes simply corrected a data error in a funding table and in no way affect the Government’s aim.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to work with international partners to establish a UN investigation into the mass poisoning of school children in Iran.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We continue to monitor closely reports of mass poisonings of school girls across Iran. On 3 March 2023 I, as Minister for the Middle East, called on the Iranian authorities to investigate these incidents urgently. I underlined it is essential that all girls can exercise their human right to education without fear. The authorities have announced a number of arrests in connection the incidents; we expect Iran to now be transparent about what has happened and show it is holding those genuinely responsible to account. The UK will continue working alongside our international partners to ensure the facts are established.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government when the National Trust applied for, and when National Highways agreed to provide, £3 million from the environment and wellbeing designated funds to support a grassland reversion project in the Stonehenge landscape; what the terms of the grant are; and whether the grant has already been distributed in its entirety.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The application to National Highways Designated Funds Investment Decision Committee regarding a grassland reversion project in the Stonehenge landscape was submitted and approved by the Committee on 6 June 2020. The grant agreement was signed by both parties on the 3 February 2021.
National Trust will effect change in the management of the relevant project land and will carry out the grassland reversion works to deliver at least:
The grant has not been fully paid. The payment schedule of the grant extends from March 2021 to March 2025.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the report by the Animal and Plant Health Agency Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Report: Bovine TV in the Edge Area of England 2021, County: Hampshire, published on 7 October 2022 and updated on 28 November 2022, and (2) the implications for their policy on the timing of the badger cull in Hampshire; and what steps they will take to end the badger cull in that county as a result of the findings in that report that "badgers only accounted for 11 per cent of weighted risk pathways".
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are committed to achieving official freedom from Bovine TB for England by 2038 and intensive badger culling in areas where badgers are an important factor in spreading disease to cattle has been an important part of this. The badger cull has led to a significant reduction of bTB in cattle herds, with research showing a 66% and 37% reduction of new herd breakdowns in the first two cull areas.
Defra has published analysis by APHA on where in Edge Area counties, such as Hampshire, there is considered to be a local reservoir of infection. This analysis includes data from previous badger found dead surveys alongside information on cattle breakdowns and other sources: Bovine TB: local reservoirs of Mycobacterium bovis infection in the Edge Area of England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Badger culls are licensed by the licensing authority Natural England (NE) who take local reservoirs into account. NE licensed the final intensive cull areas last year, and Government is gradually building government-supported badger vaccination and surveillance. Badger culling would remain an option where epidemiological assessment indicates that it is needed.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will report on the outcome of the Government Oversight Group review of the stewardship regime for professional use of Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides in the UK after five years of operation; and what steps they are taking to end the use of previously banned substances still being deployed in the countryside to poison wildlife.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The detailed work of the review of the stewardship scheme for anticoagulant rodenticides is ongoing.
The Government Oversight Group for Rodenticides, chaired by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the industry’s representative body, the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use met in December 2022 to discuss the existing stewardship regime and agree areas of focus for its review. Discussions also included establishing a timetable for the work required to take the review forward during 2023.
With respect to the issue of wildlife poisoning, there are robust, multi-agency arrangements in place for enforcing the illegal supply and use of chemicals; with the illegal poisoning of protected species investigated by a dedicated Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the Metropolitan Police Service adopted the Selection Entrance Assessment for Recruiting Candidates Holistically (SEARCH) vetting process; if not, why not; and if so, (1) when the application started, and (2) whether it is still in use; and if it is not still in use, when its use ceased.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Decisions about police recruitment, including how recruitment and selection processes are run, are a matter for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, in the case of the Metropolitan Police the Mayor of London, and are therefore managed locally by forces. This is done within a national application, assessment and selection framework, in line with national guidance maintained by the College of Policing.
The SEARCH assessment centre was introduced as the national assessment centre for police officer candidates in 2002. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) used SEARCH as its assessment until April 2018 when a new assessment centre pilot was introduced in the MPS called Day One.
In May 2020 the College of Policing introduced the Online Assessment Process (OAP) in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was adopted by all forces who now use the OAP for assessing candidates.
Vetting of police officer candidates is a separate post assessment stage carried out by forces as part of mandatory pre-employment checks.
Police forces carry out their vetting in line with the College of Policing’s statutory code of practice on vetting and vetting authorised professional practice (APP) guidance which were introduced in 2017. The Home Secretary has recently asked the College of Policing to strengthen the statutory code of practice on vetting to make the obligations all forces must legally follow stricter and clearer.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay on 2 November 2022 (HL2728), what was the basis of the advice to the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) that “61 archaeological sites, including a substantial part of the Stonehenge Avenue, [were] all under extreme risk of loss due to ploughing”, and that "if the purchase did not go ahead Scheduled Monuments on the site would be lost completely within 10 years”.
Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
As part of the application process for grant funding to the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the National Trust provided a condition survey which highlighted, among the 61 at-risk archaeological sites, that 15 scheduled monuments and 34 unscheduled monuments across both parcels of land were at imminent risk of loss. These included the Stonehenge Avenue, Conebury Henge, the Conebury Anomaly, Neolithic burials and occupation sites, and numerous Bronze Age round barrows. The report concluded that, unless arable cultivation ceased, it was likely that much, if not all, of what remained of these monuments could have been lost to the plough within a decade.
In assessing the application, the National Heritage Memorial Fund sought expert advice, which concluded that, if these important sites remained under arable cultivation, they would continue to be at risk and subject to denudation and ultimately loss, as there was no alternative strategy that could be readily agreed to secure the survival of these sites and features.