Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Office for Environmental Protection's Progress in improving the natural environment in England: 2021 to 2022, published on 19 January, which concluded on the 25 Year Improvement Plan that "of 23 environmental targets assessed, none were found where Government’s progress was demonstrably on track", what steps they are taking to improve progress against those targets.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
On 31st January 2023 we completed our first statutory review of the 25 Year Environment Plan and published the revised Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23). EIP23 sets out a delivery plan for how we will deliver our goals and targets to achieve our long-term ambition to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.
To monitor the delivery of EIP23, the Government will report annually on implementation. To do this, we will continue to publish an Annual Progress Report setting out the progress we have made towards the targets and wider commitments, over the previous 12 months.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of raw sewage discharged into rivers (1) annually between 2010 and 2022, and (2) annually up to and including 2030.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) provides information on when and for how long sewage discharges have occurred. All EDM data is published online. More information on EDM is available here (copy attached to this answer). The Environment Agency will be publishing the annual EDM dataset for 2022 in March 2023.
We have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 5% in 2016 to almost 90% now monitored, and we will reach 100% cover by end of this year. Therefore, it is not an accurate reflection to compare the number of discharges across 2010 to 2021 given monitoring was not installed at all sites at the same point in time.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on (1) tourism, (2) tourism-related jobs, and (3) the environment, by (a) the planned building of Sizewell C, (b) offshore wind farms, and (c) the associated infrastructure in the Suffolk coastal area.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
No individual pre-emptive assessments are made by the Government to avoid prejudicing planning decisions which are taken on the merits of each individual case.
All projects are consented after thorough consideration of all relevant information, including cumulative impacts. Environmental and socio-economic impacts are considered in line with policy in the National Policy Statements.
The rationale for the Secretary of State’s decision for development consent in relation to Sizewell C, consented offshore wind farms and associated infrastructure are set out in the published decision letters available on the relevant project pages of the Planning Inspectorate’s National Infrastructure Planning website.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government what factors prevent the establishment of the National Grid Future Systems Operator by 2023.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
In the Government’s consultation response published in April 2022, we proposed the creation of a new, independent Future System Operator (FSO). Depending on a number of factors, including timings of legislation, updating licensing arrangements, amending industry codes, and discussing timelines with key parties, the FSO could be established by, or in, 2024.
The Primary Legislation required to establish the FSO is contained within the Energy Bill 2023, which is currently passing through Parliament. Subject to reaching Royal Assent, we aim to establish the FSO as soon as practicable, while maintaining the safety and stability of the energy systems and ensuring a smooth transition.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the planned fivefold increase in the target for offshore wind power production by 2030, what plans they have to amend the criteria for assessing the related cumulative impact.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Ensuring environmental protections are maintained is a key component of work being undertaken by Government to facilitate the acceleration of offshore wind. The Energy Bill makes provisions to deliver the Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package (OWEIP), which was announced in the British Energy Security Strategy.
The OWEIP will streamline Habitat Regulation Assessments, develop and implement Offshore Wind Environmental Standards, and create a Marine Recovery Fund to enable environmental compensation to be undertaken at a strategic level. This ensures developments are located where there are lower environmental sensitivities, and/or where impacts can be avoided, reduced, mitigated, or if required, compensated.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment has been made of the suitability of the use of Modular Offshore grids in the North Sea corridor to transport power closer to demand; and what assessment they have made of the implementation of Belgium’s offshore grid in this regard.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Electricity System Operator has undertaken consideration of the best approach to coordinate offshore transmission infrastructure to deliver greater efficiencies, reductions in planned infrastructure and accelerate the offshore wind delivery. Belgium’s Modular Offshore Grid connects several wind farms via a single cable. The UK’s Holistic Network Design delivers a similar outcome at greater scale, covering 21GW of offshore generation in its first round and 23GW in its second. Our approach will utilise shared connection points for multiple generators and aims to use multipurpose interconnectors to transmit energy from generators to consumers; reducing costs and impacts for developers, communities, and bill-payers.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government why, in contrast to other regions, the Holistic Network Design impact criteria are not being used to assess the suitability of sites for offshore wind power infrastructure in East Anglia.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Holistic Network Design (HND) was published in July 2022. For offshore wind projects that do not yet have firm connection contracts, the HND recommends network solutions that deliver coordination, cost and efficiency benefits and an overall reduction in new infrastructure. However it cannot mandate changes to projects with pre-existing connection contracts, including many in East Anglia. For these, the Government has launched the £100m capital grant scheme to support the development of voluntary coordination options.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government why the Offshore Transmission Network Review did not involve a comparative assessment of alternative brownfield sites closer to London for offshore wind power connections to the grid than sites in East Anglia.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Offshore Transmission Network Review seeks address the uncoordinated growth of offshore transmission assets and develop a more coordinated approach to the design and delivery of transmission for offshore wind in Great Britain. For projects that already had firm connection contracts, limited changes could be made without breaking those commercial contracts, which is something the government has no power to do. For these projects, the Government has launched a £100m funding scheme to support developers to develop options for voluntary coordination. This could include reconsideration of some cable routes to reduce landing zones and use brownfield sites.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their target in their Environmental Impact Plan to "restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat", whether they have considered the advice of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) that "habitat destruction and degradation could therefore continue in other areas, with negligible positive change overall"; and if so, what estimate they have made of the amount of destruction and degradation that may occur in other areas.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Due to data limitations, we are not currently able to fully account for habitat lost and so we have not been able to set a target for net habitat restoration and creation. In order to ensure as far as possible that new habitat counted under our target is additional, we will only use reporting from live agri-environment scheme agreements, not count ‘compensatory habitat’ such as new habitat created to replace lost habitat as part of Biodiversity Net Gain, and only count ‘wildlife-rich’ habitats. Furthermore, as the target states that we will create ‘in excess of’ 500,000 hectares, this figure does not limit our ambition for action.
To address the data limitations, we are developing an indicator for quantity, quality and connectivity of habitats as part of the Outcome Indicator Framework under the 25 Year Environment Plan. Work to finalise the methodology to allow the assessment of change in habitat quantity over time, at a national scale, is in development.
The Environmental Improvement Plan set out the actions we are taking that will allow us to meet this ambitious target: we are investing more than £750 million in the environment through our Nature for Climate Fund, we have announced a new Species Survival Fund and we have set a target to raise at least £500 million in private finance to support nature’s recovery every year by 2027, rising to more than £1 billion by 2030.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the (1) loss annually since 2010, and (2) expected loss by 2030, of (a) woodland, and (b) ancient woodland.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The loss of woodland is published in Government statistics. These cover the period 2012-2020 and are available in Table 5 of Components of the net change in woodland area in England, 2012-13 to 2019-20 (Experimental Statistics).
The Government is committed to protecting ancient woodlands. In 2016, the National Forest Inventory report “Preliminary estimates of the changes in canopy cover between 2006 and 2015” found that overall, in England the level of permanent ancient woodland loss to other land uses was 57 hectares or 0.02% between 2006-2015. PDFs are attached.
The England Trees Action Plan (ETAP) published on 18 May 2021, sets out the Government’s future vision for England’s treescape. The Plan committed to updating the ancient woodland inventory to cover the whole of England. This project is now underway and includes mapping smaller ancient woodland sites of 0.25 hectares.
In 2018, the protection of ancient woodlands, ancient trees and veteran trees was strengthened through the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), recognising them as irreplaceable habitats. The NPPF also outlines that any development resulting in the loss or deterioration of such irreplaceable habitats should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and only if a suitable compensation strategy exists. In 2021, the Government committed to reviewing the NPPF with respect to ancient woodlands, consulting on strengthening the wording in the NPPF and introducing a new duty on planning authorities to consult the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities before granting permission for development affecting ancient woodlands.