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Written Question
Ivory: Sales
Tuesday 26th April 2022

Asked by: Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effect the restrictions on antique ivory sales coming into effect on 1 June will have on the market for portrait miniatures; and what plans they have to consider (1) reducing, or (2) dropping, the £50 fee for exempting items like portrait miniatures to ensure the sale of such items remains economic.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

The Government published an impact assessment for the Ivory Act when the legislation was introduced as a Bill in May 2018.

The registration fee for items that fall under a section 10 exemption, which includes pre-1918 portrait miniatures that have a surface area of no more than 320cm2, is £20 per registration. Groups of three to twenty portrait miniatures that meet the requirement of the exemption and are being dealt as part of a single transaction may be registered together for a fee of £50. The fees have been set at a manageable level to encourage compliance and meet the principle that costs should not be borne by the taxpayer. We will keep the fees under review.


Written Question
Recycling
Wednesday 26th May 2021

Asked by: Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made towards improving recycling and reuse in England; and what steps they have taken to ensure their policies in this regard are compatible with the policies of (1) the Welsh Government, and (2) the Scottish Government.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

The 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy sets out the Government’s ambitions for increased resource efficiency and a more circular economy in England. These ambitions require changes in how we produce and consume products and materials, as well as how we treat and dispose of them at end-of-life.

Waste is a devolved issue and the devolved administrations have their own arrangements for waste prevention, household recycling and waste collections.

Our Waste Prevention Programme (WPP) for England has been in place since 2013, outlining actions for the Government, industry and others around the top of the waste hierarchy. This focuses on how to prevent waste, for instance through reusing goods and materials already in the system. We are now consulting on a new WPP for the future – Towards a Resource Efficient Economy. This will help Government departments as well as industry work together to accelerate action in this area for the future. Ministers in the devolved administrations are fully aware of our consultation on a new WPP, and the policy proposals it contains are being discussed at official level.

We are also consulting on our collection and packaging reforms: consistency in collections for recycling, Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR) and a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).

Our reform to consistent collections will make recycling easier and ensure that there is a comprehensive, consistent service across England. This will help to reduce confusion with recycling, ensure that there is more recycled material in the products we buy and that the UK recycling industry grows. It would also constitute a significant step towards meeting our 25 Year Environment Plan commitment to eliminate avoidable waste by 2050 and contribute towards meeting our commitment of 65% of municipal (household-like) waste to be recycled by 2035.

Our DRS will ensure that significantly more drinks bottles and cans are recycled and reused and not condemned to landfill or littered in our communities. With consumers paying a small deposit when purchasing an in-scope drinks container, they will be incentivised to take their empty bottle or can to a return point to get their deposit back. The DRS will be for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a separate scheme under development in Scotland, although we will continue work to ensure that both schemes can operate coherently together.

Our EPR scheme for packaging will apply across the UK and will see producers meeting the full net cost of managing the packaging that they place on the market once it becomes waste. Higher fees will be paid by those producers who use packaging that is more difficult to recycle or reuse, producers will need to meet higher recycling targets, and we are proposing that firms will be incentivised to reduce litter and keep our communities clean.


Written Question
Waste: Coronavirus
Monday 12th April 2021

Asked by: Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the levels of waste associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has not been collecting data specifically on covid-related waste – waste classifications are determined by content rather than context. These figures are published on a regular basis.

We have been working closely with the local authorities and the waste industry to monitor the impact of the pandemic on their services. We have run a regular survey on the impacts of COVID-19 on local authority waste operations, including on levels of waste, the output of which can be found at www.adeptnet.org.uk. We also collected informal data through industry discussions and internal surveys across a range of areas such as waste arisings and throughputs.


Written Question
Plastics: Recycling
Monday 12th April 2021

Asked by: Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of progress towards (1) increasing recycling and reducing waste, (2) increasing recycling of plastic waste, and (3) reducing plastic waste.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

The Government is committed to increasing recycling rates and reducing waste, including plastics.

Our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy outlines our commitments to:

  • eliminate avoidable waste by 2050;
  • achieve 65% recycling rate for municipal (household-like) waste by 2035;
  • work towards all plastic packaging placed on the market being recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025;
  • eliminate avoidable plastic waste by 2042.

To help us achieve this target, we have introduced legislation through the Environment Bill that will require local authorities in England to collect a core set of recyclable materials, including plastics, from households and businesses. By making recycling clearer and easier, we will better preserve material value and help to grow demand for recyclables. We are also seeking a new power in the Environment Bill to be able to place charges on other single-use plastic items to encourage businesses and citizens to shift toward more reusable products.

Together with the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging and the HM Treasury's Plastic Packaging Tax on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content, these reforms will increase demand for secondary material plastic and therefore increase investment in recycling infrastructure. We have recently published consultations on introducing Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging and introducing a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, and will be consulting on introducing consistency in household and business recycling shortly.

We have made significant progress so far to reduce plastic waste, by introducing one of the world's toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products, and significantly reducing the sales of single-use carrier bags by the main supermarket retailers by 95% with our 5p charge. We are extending the charge to all retailers and increasing the charge to at least 10p in Spring 2021. We also introduced a restriction on the supply of plastic straws, cotton buds and stirrers from the 1st October and we are currently assessing whether there are additional items for which a ban would be a suitable and proportionate measure.

More generally, on 18 March we launched a 12 week consultation on a new 'Waste Prevention Programme for England: Towards a Resource Efficient Economy' (attached). This builds on the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy and seeks to agree a programme which helps with our strategic goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving Net Zero, protecting our natural capital, addressing our resource security, and creating jobs and growth, as well as increasing our resource productivity and minimising waste. The consultation document outlines the potential for, and benefits of, action on waste prevention. It recognises that action is required across society - by Government, businesses, local authorities, consumers and others - for progress to be made.


Written Question
Litter
Monday 12th April 2021

Asked by: Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of progress towards (1) reducing litter, and (2) reducing litter in (a) the countryside, and (b) on the seashore.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

We published the Litter Strategy for England in April 2017, setting out our aim to deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation. Annual reports of progress with delivery of the Litter Strategy can be found at gov.uk.

We have also published a “litter dashboard” which explains the Government’s approach to understanding the extent of litter and littering in England. The dashboard is available at gov.uk.

The latest Litter Strategy annual report and litter dashboard have been delayed due the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our latest study of litter composition in the UK, carried out by Keep Britain Tidy, is attached.

There has been an increase in number of visitors accessing the countryside since lockdown restrictions were first introduced last year. We know that people’s health, wellbeing and resilience can be improved and strengthened by spending time in the natural environment. We are clear, however, that everyone should follow the recently updated Countryside Code, which is available on gov.uk. A key part of government strategy is to get clear and consistent messages to the media, which highlight the problem and promote better behaviour in the countryside and encourage a partnership response.

In response to COVID-19, Defra has developed a ‘Respect the Outdoors’ campaign to encourage people to follow the Countryside Code and to highlight the impacts of littering. We also supported, and provided funding for, Keep Britain Tidy’s Love Parks campaign, which encouraged people to treat our parks with respect. Preliminary evaluation of these campaigns indicates that they had a positive influence on the target audience’s intended disposal of PPE litter, with anecdotal reports from local authorities that the intervention resulted in a markedly beneficial outcome.

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges facing the marine environment today with plastic pollution found on coastlines accounting for 5% of the plastic that litters the ocean, according to EUNOMIA. Defra funds the Marine Conservation Society to record litter from sections of our coast which helps us to monitor the levels and trends of plastic pollution across several years. As the majority of ocean plastic pollution originates on land our efforts have focussed on preventing plastic entering the ocean in the first place.


Speech in Lords Chamber - Tue 22 Sep 2020
Agriculture Bill

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View all Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con - Life peer) contributions to the debate on: Agriculture Bill

Speech in Lords Chamber - Tue 22 Sep 2020
Agriculture Bill

Speech Link

View all Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con - Life peer) contributions to the debate on: Agriculture Bill

Speech in Lords Chamber - Tue 15 Sep 2020
Agriculture Bill

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View all Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con - Life peer) contributions to the debate on: Agriculture Bill

Speech in Lords Chamber - Tue 28 Jul 2020
Agriculture Bill

Speech Link

View all Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con - Life peer) contributions to the debate on: Agriculture Bill

Speech in Lords Chamber - Tue 28 Jul 2020
Agriculture Bill

Speech Link

View all Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con - Life peer) contributions to the debate on: Agriculture Bill