Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish a new life cycle assessment for disposable and reusable nappies to replace the assessment from 2008.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Work on the environmental assessment of disposable and reusable nappies is nearly complete and peer review of the work is being finalised. No date has been set for publication.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - 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 need to retain regulations on environmental health and food safety when retained EU regulations in other areas are removed.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
HM Government is committed to upholding standards on environmental health and food safety.
Defra is in the process of analysing its retained EU law (REUL) stock and determining what should be preserved as part of domestic law, as well as REUL that should be repealed, or amended. This work will determine how we use the powers in the Bill and therefore inform assessments of the Bill’s impact, including in relation to the above. HMG catalogued and published the ‘retained EU law dashboard’ on 22nd June which includes REUL covering environmental health and food safety.
The independent Food Standards Agency, working with Food Standards Scotland, is playing a full part in the review of all REUL within their areas of responsibility and will advise Ministers, Welsh Ministers and the Northern Ireland Executive (when operational) as appropriate. They will not compromise consumer safety or business’s ability to trade during this review.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to implement additional policies (1) to adapt to, and (2) to mitigate the effects of climate change, in the light of global extreme weather events.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
While we accelerate efforts to end our contribution to climate change, we must continue to take robust action to ensure the country is well prepared to face the challenges the changing climate is bringing.
The Government has extensive plans in place and underway to adapt to and mitigate the risks of climate change, including through our National Adaptation Programme. The next programme (NAP3) will set out the policies the Government will implement to build climate resilience, in light of the latest evidence in the Climate Change Committee's Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk, and will address the risks caused by a warmer climate.
To mitigate further climate change, the UK has driven down emissions by 44% over the past three decades, the fastest reduction of any G7 country. In October 2021 we published our Net Zero Strategy which sets out a comprehensive set of measures to support and capitalise on the UK's transition to net zero by 2050.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what recent discussions they have had with the food industry in Northern Ireland in relation to the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Defra regularly engages with a wide range of businesses and industry bodies including the food industry via various forums, to understand the impacts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Our weekly NI-GB Food Supply Chain Forum regularly attracts over 150 businesses and, during the week commencing 13 June, we held eight distinct engagements with multiple sectors of the food supply chain via dedicated roundtables, forums and 1:1 engagements.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made protecting peatlands in England; and what discussions they have had with the devolved nations and regions about this issue.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
In the Net Zero Strategy, we committed to aim to restore approximately 280,000 ha of peatland in England by 2050, with the Nature for Climate Fund providing funding for the restoration of approximately 35,000ha of peatland by 2025. In the England Peat Action Plan, published last year, we set out the steps we will take to protect and restore our peatland.
In 2021, Defra established the Lowland Agricultural Peat Task Force to explore ways of preserving the carbon stored in our lowland farmed peatlands, both to reduce emissions and to safeguard productive agriculture, and we look forward to receiving its recommendations later this summer.
The Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021 prohibits burning on deep peat in protected sites without a licence and the accompanying guidance sets out the very limited circumstances where burning will be seen as a permissible activity conducted in the right place for the right reasons. We are continuing to engage with stakeholders to encourage sustainable land management practices that reflect our ambitions to restore and protect our peatlands.
Through the England Peat Action Plan, we are encouraging landowners and land managers to adopt or create good quality wildfire management plans and use sustainable land management practices to reduce fuel loads - making the land more resilient to and mitigating the risk of wildfire. Last April we supported the development of a new training program, to consolidate knowledge, skills and understanding of vegetation fires including wildfire incidents. Defra has committed further funding for the next three years and we continue to share learning and good practice with the devolved administrations.
We have consulted on measures to end the use of peat and peat containing products in horticulture, including a ban on the sale of peat in the retail sector by the end of this Parliament. We continue to engage with the industry on making the transition to peat-free alternatives as seamless as possible and will publish our formal response to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to tackle global deforestation.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
The UK continues to take a leading role in working with global partners to halt and reverse forest loss. At COP26, the UK led the way in securing an agreement from over 140 world leaders, representing over 90% of the world’s forests, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. This was backed by almost £14 billion of public and private funding, including $1.5 billion to protect the forests of the Congo Basin, an area of critical importance to global efforts to address climate change.
In February 2021, the UK and Indonesia established the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, bringing together major producer and consumer countries of agricultural commodities to protect forests while promoting development and trade. At COP26, 28 governments including Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, the EU, UK and USA launched the FACT Roadmap, committing to advance sustainable production and trade, and outlining actions to incentivise sustainability, support smallholder farmers, improve transparency of supply chains and drive innovation.
The UK has introduced ambitious due diligence legislation through the Environment Act to help tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. This new law is one part of a wider package of measures to improve the sustainability of our supply chains and will contribute to global efforts to protect forests and other ecosystems. It will make it illegal for larger businesses operating in the UK to use key forest risk commodities produced on land illegally occupied or used.
We have also doubled our international climate finance to £11.6 billion, of which at least £3 billion will be spent on nature, including solutions that protect, restore and sustainably manage forests. FCDO, BEIS and Defra share the forests portfolio which aims to specifically reduce emissions from deforestation and land use change and help forest communities adapt to climate change through sustainable farming and land use practices.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what specific measures they will implement to address sensitive species bycatch in English waters.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We recognise that accidental bycatch in fisheries is one of the greatest threats faced by sensitive marine species such as dolphins and seabirds, and we remain fully committed to tackling this issue. The Fisheries Act 2020 and Joint Fisheries Statement have an “ecosystem objective” which includes an objective to minimise and, where possible, eliminate incidental catches of sensitive marine species.
Since 2020, Defra has funded Clean Catch UK, a research programme which is developing and trialling a range of bycatch monitoring and mitigation measures in Cornwall (a known high-risk area for sensitive species bycatch). This programme has developed a bycatch self-reporting mobile application validated by observers and electronic monitoring and an online ‘Bycatch Mitigation Hub’ with information on different approaches to reduce bycatch. In addition, we are working with the fishing industry to trial various innovative technologies to reduce cetacean bycatch. The government will continue to build on the work of Clean Catch to improve our understanding of bycatch and implement effective mitigation measures to minimise and, where possible, eliminate bycatch.
The UK Government funds a comprehensive and well-respected bycatch monitoring programme which provides essential observer data on incidents of sensitive species bycatch. The programme focuses primarily on gear types with a high expected or known risk of sensitive species bycatch. A new contract for the bycatch monitoring programme is expected to begin in April 2022.