Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps her Department has taken to help ensure small businesses reduce their use of single-use plastics.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Building on the success of our existing restrictions on certain single use plastic items and the single use carrier bag charge, the government will restrict the supply of single use plastic plates, bowls, trays, cutlery, balloon sticks and expanded and extruded polystyrene food and drinks containers from October this year.
We will also, subject to public consultation this autumn, change the law to ban the sale of wet wipes containing plastic.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of food labelling (a) of trans fats in food and (b) generally.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK maintains high standards on the information that is provided on food labels, whether that be mandatory or voluntary, so that consumers can have confidence in the food that they buy.
All food sold on the UK market must comply with food labelling rules. The fundamental principle of food labelling rules is that information provided to the consumer must not mislead and must enable the safe use of food.
Food law provides a robust framework that protects public health and requires food businesses that produce, process, and distribute food to apply food safety controls that ensure food they place on the market is safe.
An assessment of the prevalence or labelling of trans fats in food in the UK has not been recently undertaken.
The most recent data from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, collected between 2016 and 2019, show that average trans fat intakes in the UK are 0.5-0.6% of total energy intake for adults, and 0.5% for children. This is well within the UK recommended maximum of no more than 2% of total energy.
Trans fat intakes in the UK have declined substantially since the 1980s and 1990s due to the voluntary removal of artificial trans fats from processed foods by the food industry; with some additional work to reduce levels of trans fats in food being undertaken between 2011 and 2013.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of water abstraction plans by Thames Water at Teddington.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Teddington Direct River Abstraction is a water recycling scheme considered in Thames Water’s draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 (dWRMP24) and Water Resources South East’s (WRSE) Regional Plan as a supply option for 2030/31.
The Environment Agency has scrutinised WRSE’s plan and has responded to Thames Water’s dWRMP24. Any scheme developed will have to meet environmental requirements, and where possible enhancements. The scheme will need environmental permits that the Environment Agency regulate, and planning consents where the Environment Agency is a statutory consultee.
The scheme is being developed through the ‘Regulators Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Delivery’ (RAPID) gated process and has undergone environmental assessment largely meeting the Regulators’ expectations for Gate 2. Risks have been identified in the Gate 2 submission. There is a risk to scheme feasibility if environmental impacts cannot be mitigated. The Environment Agency has asked Thames Water to undertake further investigations and studies to address these risks by 31 August 2023.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will take steps to help ensure that charity collection bags posted through letterboxes are biodegradable.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In April 2021 we published our response to the call for evidence on the need for standards for bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics. The Government has no plans to make charity collection bags biodegradable. Government measures focus on extracting maximum value from plastic materials by making sure we keep it in circulation for longer, moving away from a take, make, throw model and shifting towards a circular economy.
The Government wants to see the recycling of plastic film (including bread bags and plastic carrier bags) increased and plastic films will be included in the plastic recyclable waste stream required to be collected by local authorities from every household in England by March 2027.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
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 improve the efficiency of supply chains for UK food, drink and hospitality businesses in the context of HGV driver shortages.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The United Kingdom has a highly resilient food supply chain, as demonstrated throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Defra has well established ways of working with the industry and across Government to monitor risks that may arise, and be ready to respond to them, including Government intervention when appropriate.
In the past months, the Environment Secretary and I have agreed a series of solutions to increase the efficiency of our supply chain system and support businesses across the food and drink, and hospitality sectors. These include working with the Transport Secretary. We have adopted a series of measures to train, recruit and retain lorry drivers as well as improve the working conditions in the industry. Our joint-Government actions will continue to build more capacity across the food supply chain.
Some of these Government-led key measures include the Driver Vehicle Standard Agency’s action to increase HGV tests to 3,000 per week, the introduction of 16-week skills bootcamps to train new and returning drivers and the Department for Transport’s action to streamline HGV testing with a minimised regulatory framework adding around 50,000 more tests to be conducted. Defra has also announced that up to 4700 visas will be available for HGV drivers delivering food ahead of Christmas 2021.
In addition to this, the Transport Secretary relaxed driver hours regulation, allowing more deliveries to be made during unprecedented times of national driver shortage to manage food supply chain bottlenecks. This relaxation will last up to 9 January 2022 in England, Scotland and Wales covering the Christmas peak demand period for food across the supply chain.
Overall, these measures will improve the efficiency of the supply chain and the movement of food products across the interlinked food, drink, and hospitality businesses.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding his Department has allocated to support public health campaigns on air pollution in each of the last three years.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
A total of £539,120 was provided to Southampton City Council (with Birmingham City Council, Derby City Council, Leeds City Council, Manchester City Council and Nottingham City Council) through the Air Quality Grant in 2016/17. The purpose of this funding was to run an air quality public awareness and engagement campaign. The campaign was in collaboration with Global Action Plan.
A further £90,000 was provided to the Global Action Plan in support of Clean Air Day in 2018.
The government already provides information on local and national air quality. A multi-day air quality forecast service is available to the public on the government’s UK-Air website. It provides up-to-date information on air pollution and has a postcode search facility to enable information to be provided at a local level. We will work with media outlets to improve public access to the air quality forecast and continue working with our technical partners to improve the accuracy and availability of localised air quality data and forecasts.
The government also provides health advice to support vulnerable individuals during episodes of poor air quality and we also work closely with a network of key health stakeholders to provide alerts during high pollution episodes. In addition, Public Health England has published updated information about air pollution and health impacts:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution.
In the Clean Air Strategy, which will be published in due course, we commit to improving the information we provide about air pollution, health impacts and the simple actions people can take to reduce their exposure and improve air quality. We will also work in partnership with health organisations to review where improvements can be made to the Daily Air Quality Index (DAQI) and associated health advice, for periods when pollution levels might be elevated.