Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to classify keepers of animals in zoos and conservation centres as key workers so that they can continue to care for animals in the event that their site is closed during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
We value the very important work undertaken by zoos in ensuring that the health and welfare needs of the diverse range of animals they care for are well met. Zoos support much appreciated conservation and educational activities which are highly valued by society.
The Government has published guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/full-guidance-on-staying-at-home-and-away-from-others/full-guidance-on-staying-at-home-and-away-from-others which clarifies that zoos are not on the list of businesses and venues that have been ordered to close. This guidance also confirms that people may travel for work purposes where they cannot work from home. Those caring for zoo animals are unable to do so from home.
The Government has published guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision which indicates which workers may secure places in schools and nurseries to enable them to continue to work. This includes those essential to the running of charities and workers delivering key frontline services.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the feasibility of relaxing restrictions on the transportation of pets for British nationals repatriating to the UK as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra is monitoring the situation and at the current time we do not consider there to be a need to relax restrictions on the transportation of pets for British nationals repatriating to the UK as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. We will continue to monitor this closely and will consider specific cases where individuals are not able to fulfil the requirements. Protecting biosecurity and the health of the UK pet population remains a high priority.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with representatives of the supermarket industry on introducing mobile supermarkets to enable key workers to shop for food at (a) hospitals, (b) schools, (c) police stations and (d) other places of work.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government has well-established ways of working with the food industry during disruption to supply situations. Our retailers already have highly resilient supply chains and they are working around the clock to ensure people have the food and products they need. Industry is adapting quickly to these changes in demands, and food supply into and across the UK is resilient.
The Government has not had discussions with industry on introducing mobile supermarkets to enable key workers to shop for food. We welcome efforts by supermarkets to ensure that key workers can continue to get the food and groceries they need and will continue to work with industry to discuss any additional support Government can provide.
To help industry respond to this unprecedented demand we have introduced other measures to keep food supply flowing. We have issued guidance to local authorities to allow extended delivery hours to supermarkets so that shelves can be filled up more quickly, and we have implemented extensions to drivers’ hours. We are also temporarily relaxing certain elements of competition law to ensure retailers are able to collaborate effectively in the national interest.
Representatives of our leading supermarkets have asked customers to shop considerately and we echo their call.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he is making to ensure that the UK will maintain food standards in trade policy after the transition period.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra has worked closely with the Food Standards Agency and Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the regulatory regime for food safety remains robust now the UK has left the European Union, in order to protect public health and retain the confidence of consumers and international trading partners. We will continue to ensure that without exception all imports of food meet the stringent food safety standards required of our domestic producers and we will not compromise on this in trade negotiations. Our Food Standards Agency’s independent advice will ensure this will remain the case.
We will keep our existing UK legislation, and the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018 will carry over EU law into UK law. Now that we have left the EU the UK will take its own sovereign decisions on standards and regulations in line with the principles of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and other relevant internationally recognised guidance. The Government remains committed to promoting robust food standards nationally and internationally, to protect consumer interests and ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress his Department has made on the development of the legal recognition of animal sentience.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
I refer my Hon. Friend to the reply given to the Hon. Member for City of Chester, Christian Matheson, on 20 January 2020, PQ 3774.
Any necessary changes required to domestic law will be made in a rigorous and comprehensive way after the transition period.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of dredging rivers on flood prevention.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) prioritises those activities which achieve the greatest benefit in terms of better protecting people and property from flooding. Dredging and clearing channels are important parts of the EA’s maintenance regime, when it improves the channel’s ability to carry increased river flows and manage flood risk.
In 2010, the EA carried out a comprehensive series of trials to review and update understanding of the benefits and effectiveness of dredging as one method for maintaining channel conveyance. The trials showed that dredging can reduce flood risk, but its effectiveness and value for money varies significantly depending on the location. Since then, further studies have been carried out, validating the results of this trial, including the Thames bathymetry review, which reached a similar conclusion. In many cases, rivers naturally return to their pre-dredged state very quickly, and therefore any flood risk benefits are so short lived that the work cannot be economically justified. The implications for downstream communities also need to be considered.
The Somerset Rivers Authority and internal drainage boards have trialled alternative methods for dredging. These included small-scale trials of both cutter suction and water injection dredging, and a full-scale 5km trial using water injection dredging on the River Parrett. The trials demonstrated some potential to reduce costs of dredging in tidal rivers.
In 2014, the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management produced an independent report entitled ‘Floods and dredging, A reality check’. This explored the effectiveness of dredging and is available at:
https://www.ciwem.org/assets/pdf/Policy/Reports/Floods-and-Dredging-a-reality-check.pdf
The EA uses the results of such trials and studies to decide where and how dredging will be effective, on a case-by-case basis.
Typically over each of the past three years the EA has spent between £45 million and £55 million a year on channel maintenance of which between £5 million and £11 million is for dredging. Channel maintenance includes a range of activities to maintain conveyance such as dredging, weed cutting and removing blockages.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to tackle fly tipping in Bosworth constituency.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Fly-tipping is an unacceptable blight on local communities, wherever it occurs, and a crime that the Government is committed to tackling. In recent years we have bolstered local authorities’ powers to tackle fly-tipping.
Local authorities, such as Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, have a range of powers available to tackle fly-tipping. This includes the power to take those accused of fly-tipping to court. If a fly-tipper is convicted in a Magistrates’ Court, the offence is punishable by a fine of up to £50,000 or 12 months’ imprisonment. If they are convicted in a Crown Court, the offence can attract an unlimited fine and up to five years’ imprisonment.
We have cracked down on offenders by working with the Sentencing Council to strengthen the guidance for environmental offences. We will keep this guidance under review as we deliver on our manifesto commitment to secure tougher penalties. We will continue to work with magistrates and the Judicial Office to ensure magistrates are effectively trained in the use of the guidance and are aware of the prevalence of waste crime and the significance of its impact on local communities. This will help to ensure that fly-tippers receive appropriate sentences for the offence they have committed.
Local authorities have powers to search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers, and the power to issue fixed penalty notices of up to £400 for fly-tipping offences and for those who breach their duty of care by passing their waste to a fly-tipper. In August 2019 we published publicity materials aimed at helping householders better understand their responsibilities under the waste duty of care. The materials have been provided to the Local Government Association to circulate to local authorities and published on the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group’s website.
Powers to tackle fly-tipping are also being enhanced through the newly introduced Environment Bill, in particular through amendments to the powers to search for and seize evidence, as well as amendments to the powers of entry in the Environment Act 1995, to make it easier for enforcing authorities to use them. In addition to the measures in the Environment Bill, Defra is developing proposals to fundamentally reform the waste carrier, broker, dealer regime and introduce electronic waste tracking which will ensure those transporting waste can be better regulated, and that we are able to track waste through the system at all points.
Defra is also developing a fly-tipping toolkit, which will be a web-based tool to help local authorities and others work in partnership to tackle fly-tipping. It will cover the use of new technology to report fly-tipping, the presentation of cases to court, the sharing of intelligence within and between partnerships and will promote the duty of care to individuals and businesses.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the farming of puppies.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
In October 2018, The Animal Welfare (licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 came into force which updated and improved the laws on the breeding and selling of dogs in England.
The new regulations require dog breeders and sellers to adhere to strict statutory minimum welfare standards linked to the welfare needs set out in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. This includes prohibiting the sale of puppies below the age of 8 weeks; preventing licensed breeders from selling dogs not bred by them and preventing breeders from breeding dogs if it can be reasonably expected on the basis of their genotype, phenotype or health that this would lead to welfare problems for the mother or the puppies. In addition, licensed breeders must show puppies to purchasers in the presence of the mother and licensed pet sellers must complete the sale of a dog in the presence of the purchaser on the licensed premises. This prevents online sales of puppies.
Any licensed breeder advertising puppies for sale must include their licence number in the advert to improve traceability. In addition, from 6 April 2020, the regulations will prohibit the commercial third party sale of puppies and kittens to directly tackle low welfare, high volume breeding, known as puppy farms. In advance of this ban coming into force, the Government will launch a public awareness campaign on the responsible sourcing of puppies and kittens.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to support farmers to prevent the spread of bovine TB.
Answered by George Eustice
The Government’s 25-year bovine TB eradication strategy published in 2014 aims to secure officially bovine TB free status for England by 2038 and is the basis of all we are doing to combat the disease.
The cornerstone of our strategy is a policy of regular testing and removal of infected cattle from herds. We have also incrementally introduced tougher controls on cattle movements from herds at risk of infection and more sensitive tests. We have introduced measures to encourage greater risk management and more information for the keepers of cattle. We have also deployed wildlife controls in areas where infection in badgers is linked to cattle breakdowns, and we have deployed new biosecurity measures to try to break the cycle of infection between cattle and badgers.
In 2018, the Secretary of State commissioned Professor Sir Charles Godfray and a team of experts to conduct an independent review of the strategy and provide advice on how to take it to the next phase (‘the Godfray Review’). Sir Charles submitted his report to Ministers in October 2018. The Government’s formal response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that (a) pets are protected from violence and (b) people who perpetrate violence against domestic animals are prosecuted.
Answered by George Eustice
Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 it is an offence to cause any unnecessary suffering to an animal or to fail to provide for its welfare needs. Under the Act, anyone can take forward a prosecution if they consider that they have the necessary evidence. Around 800 people are successfully prosecuted each year for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.
The maximum penalty for causing unnecessary suffering or failing to provide for an animal’s welfare needs is six months’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. However, the Government has committed to introducing tougher penalties for animal cruelty. This will increase the maximum custodial penalty for causing unnecessary suffering to five years’ imprisonment which will make it among the highest maximum penalties for such an offence in the world. This will be taken forward when Parliamentary time allows.