Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the requirement set for companies by the Environment Agency that new flow monitors be installed on wastewater treatment works, what update can they provide on the progress of these installations.
Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller
Water companies are installing new monitors at sewage treatment works that have storm overflows which control the flows of sewage that they treat. These monitors will record when there is an overflow of the incoming sewage into storm tanks and other flow monitors will record the flow that is being passed forward for treatment while the overflow is operating. Around 400 sewage treatment works have had both of these monitors installed so far in AMP7, all such discharges will be fully monitored by the end of 2026.
These monitors are being installed to ensure that when these overflows operate, they only do so when the required flows are being treated by the works.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential of extracting valuable secondary materials from scrap steel.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
Defra has not made a formal assessment of the potential of extracting valuable secondary materials from scrap steel.
Through the critical minerals strategy, the Government is committed to accelerating the UK’s domestic capabilities and developing a more efficient circular economy for critical minerals in the UK.
The flagship, four-year, £30m National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research Programme (NICER) is targeting funding to support innovation in advanced metal sorting techniques to promote a circular economy for metals.
Also, Innovate UK’s Circular Critical Materials Supply Chains (CLIMATES) programme is committing £15 million towards recycling critical minerals through R&D investments, skills and engagement with international partners.
Our forthcoming document “Maximising Resources, Minimising Waste” will also consider how best to prevent waste in several key economic sectors, including construction, and we are working with groups such as the Green Construction Board to realise those ambitions.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the environmental impact of exports of scrap steel from the UK.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
The export of waste from the UK is subject to strict requirements set out in Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006 on Shipments of Waste (WSR). The objective of the WSR is to facilitate trade in recyclable waste while protecting the environment and human health.
The WSR establishes a control system for shipments of waste based on the level of risk posed by the export to the environment and human health. Waste considered low risk to the environment is called ‘green list’ waste. Steel scrap exports for recovery are considered to pose a low risk and are, therefore, generally subject to ‘green list’ waste controls. If the steel scrap is contaminated, however, then it will be subject to ‘notification controls’ which require the relevant authorities in the countries of dispatch and destination to approve the shipment of waste prior to export.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what new proposals they have undertaken to improve the health and welfare of farmed animals within their annual health and welfare review.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
As part of the fully funded annual health and welfare review eligible cattle, sheep and pig keepers are able to access bespoke advice from their choice of vet alongside access to diagnostic testing for key endemic diseases and conditions. This advice includes recommended actions to take and signposting to further support available. This will support farmers to continually improve the health and welfare of their livestock and the increases in productivity that comes with this.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to stimulate market demand for higher animal welfare products within the (1) transparency, and (2) strengthening, of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' regulatory baseline.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
Stimulating market demand for higher welfare products is a key strand of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway. We are continuing to work with industry to explore how we can harness the market to improve food information to consumers and build on our high standards of animal welfare, while aligning with wider food labelling priorities such as eco-labelling.
Alongside this we are investigating where additional regulatory tools may be required to ensure that effective enforcement of our high animal health and welfare standards is maintained.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made to fully fund vet visits for farmers as per their annual health and welfare review.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
The annual health and welfare review opened to all eligible keepers of cattle, sheep and pigs in February 2023, giving farmers access to a fully funded visit to their farm by a vet of their choice. In the coming months we will continue to iterate the service by further simplifying the application process. Further iterations will allow more reviews to take place, by opening the offer to livestock keepers who are not Basic Payment Scheme recipients and to those who keep multiple species or multiple herds and flocks of the same species.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to improve the welfare of farmed animals at the time of slaughter.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
The Government encourages the highest standards of animal welfare at slaughter, and legislation sets out the main requirements to protect the welfare of animals when being slaughtered.
Following publication in 2021 of the Post Implementation Review of the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015, and as part of the Government’s Action Plan for Animal Welfare, we are considering a number of ways in which the welfare of animals at the time of killing could be further improved. As a first step, last year we introduced The Protection of Animals at the Time of Killing (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 which made the non-penetrative captive bolt device available as a killing method for neonate piglets, lambs and kids (within certain parameters), providing an effective method for humane culling on-farm.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that (1) food production is placed at the heart of wider government policies, and (2) domestic food production does not diminish.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
Food supply is one of the UK's 13 Critical National Infrastructure sectors. Defra and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are joint Lead Government Departments (LGDs), with Defra leading on supply and the FSA on food safety. As such we work closely with the Cabinet Office and other LGDs ensuring food supply is fully incorporated as part of emergency preparedness, including consideration of dependencies on other sectors.
The Government Food Strategy was published in June 2022 setting out a plan to transform our food system to ensure it is fit for the future. The Food Strategy is a cross-departmental strategy. Therefore, Defra actively collaborated with and engaged with other Government departments in its development.
Responding to recent events, the Food Strategy puts food security at the heart of the government’s vision for the food sector. It included a commitment to broadly maintain the current level of food that we produce domestically and boost production in sectors where there are the biggest opportunities.
Setting this commitment demonstrates that we recognise the critical importance of domestic food production and the role that it plays in our food security. Domestic production figures have been very stable for most of this century. We produce 61% of all the food we need, and 74% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year, and these figures have changed little over the last 20 years.
Food production is the primary purpose of farming and always will be. Our agricultural reforms in England aim to support a highly productive food producing sector, meeting our commitment to broadly maintain food production, alongside environmental improvements that benefit us all such as improving water quality and species abundance.
Balancing and integrating food production with our environmental land management will support an efficient and sustainable land use without offshoring harms associated with lower production standards. We have a legal duty to assess the impact of all environmental land management schemes, such as Sustainable Farming Incentive and Landscape Recovery, on food production.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have (1) to publish an analysis of the responses to their Call for Evidence on the Fur Market in Great Britain, and (2) to ban the import and sale of fur in Great Britain.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
We are carefully reviewing the evidence gathered both from our Call for Evidence and wider engagement with the fur trade and stakeholders, and a summary of responses will be published in due course.
We will use the evidence gathered to inform any future action on the fur trade in Great Britain, in line with HM Government’s commitment to improving animal welfare standards.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - 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 business and financial challenges, and (2) the barriers to entry to the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, faced by tenant farmers; and what steps they intend to take in response.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
Defra are aware of the challenges some tenant farmers face when seeking to enter our schemes, such as not having sufficient duration of management control to enter long scheme agreements, being limited by the terms of their tenancy agreement as to what actions they can carry out on the land and struggling to obtain their landlord's consent to enter such schemes.
We are aiming to remove barriers to tenants entering these schemes where possible and have already done so in the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). Tenants can enter SFI without their landlord's explicit consent and tenants with annually renewing tenancy agreements can enter if they expect to have management control for the duration of their 3-year agreement. Furthermore, if a tenant unexpectedly loses management control of the land, such as when the landlord serves them a notice to quit, we do not require the tenant to pay a penalty to Defra for ending their SFI agreement early.
The recently published Rock Review led by Baroness Rock acknowledges that our policy on agreement length and no penalty exits when there is an unexpected loss of management control have made the scheme more open to tenant farmers. We are currently considering the Rock Review's recommendation that Defra must continue to design the future SFI standards so that they are open to tenant farmers and will formally respond to this recommendation in due course.