Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government believes that the current daylight-saving arrangements represent the optimal use of the available daylight across the UK.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution included nuclear and hydrogen among the 10 priority areas of the £1bn Net Zero Innovation Programme. Low carbon hydrogen and nuclear could both play a key role in meeting our legally binding commitment to achieving net zero by 2050, with potential to help decarbonise vital UK industry sectors and provide flexible energy across heat, power and transport.

(1) The Government’s commitment to advancing large, small and advanced nuclear reactors was confirmed as part of the 10 Point Plan. Alongside entering negotiations in relation to Sizewell C and continuing to engage other nuclear developers on proposals for future projects, we have created a £385m Advanced Nuclear Fund to deploy Small Modular Reactors and an Advanced Modular Reactor demonstrator by the early 2030s. Some AMR designs suggest the production of hydrogen as an end-use, and all nuclear reactor technologies, current and future, have the potential to feed into the hydrogen market either by producing low carbon electricity or heat for increasingly efficient electrolysis production.

(2) The Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan confirmed our aim, working with industry, for 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for use across the economy. As we progress towards this ambition, we would hope to see around 1GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2025.

The UK has expertise and assets to support both electrolytic (green) and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) enabled (blue) hydrogen. Our twin track approach to enable both routes will drive cost effective supply volumes in the 2020s in line with our 2030 5GW ambition, whilst scaling up green hydrogen.

The ambition will be supported by a package of measures, including:

1. The first ever UK Hydrogen Strategy set to be published in Q2 of this year which will set out the key steps needed in the 2020s to deliver our 5GW ambition and set the context for further scale up on the way to net zero.
2. The £240m Net-Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF) confirmed out to 2025, intended to support both green and blue hydrogen production. We are engaging with industry on the design of the fund, and more details will be published alongside the strategy.
3. Long term, sustainable business models and the revenue mechanism to support them, to stimulate private investment in new low carbon hydrogen projects. We will consult on our minded to position for business models alongside the strategy, with a view to finalising in 2022. We will also set out plans for the revenue mechanism this year.

Timelines are ambitious whilst allowing sufficient time for evidence-based policy decisions that will benefit taxpayers and consumers.

The Government has considered this issue in detail in recent years. There were - and continue to be - mixed views on criminal sanctions for unregistered designs, and many design-intensive industries have argued against their introduction.

Taking account of all views, the Government remains of the view that it is not appropriate to extend criminal penalties to unregistered designs.

The Government recently sought stakeholder views on the inclusion of registered designs in the small claims track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court and is currently considering the responses received and the best way to take this work forward.

The IPO commissioned external research into the functioning of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, including the value caps, in 2015. The IPO has also facilitated a series of working groups over the last year looking at the enforcement framework. The cost and accessibility of court processes for IP disputes was considered as part of this review, and questions on these topics were included in the call for views which closed in November this year. The IPO is currently considering the responses received from that exercise and will carry out further assessment as necessary before any recommendations are taken forwards.

Protecting student wellbeing is vital, and we recognise that many students are facing additional mental health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why we have asked providers to prioritise student mental health during this period. The Student Mental Health and Wellbeing working group, convened by my hon. Friend, the Minister of State for Universities, has discussed the emotional and social impact of the pandemic on students in detail and has created a resources document for higher education providers, collating the guidance, tools, and services available to support students’ mental health. This information is now being spread through the networks of the working group members, including university and student representatives, to raise awareness of the support available and enable people to seek help. The Minister of State for Universities also established the Higher Education Taskforce on 18 August 2020, which is formed of various sector representatives to work through challenges that students are facing.

Alongside this, the Office for Students (OfS) has been working closely with the government throughout the pandemic to support students – funding mental health support, monitoring quality, and issuing guidance. We have worked with the OfS to provide Student Space, a mental health and wellbeing platform, which has been funded by up to £3 million. We are pleased that they have been able to extend the platform to support students for the whole 2020/21 academic year, because no student should be left behind at this challenging time.

In the current national lockdown, we have had to take additional steps to reduce the transmission of COVID-19, including by significantly reducing the number of students returning to university after the Christmas holidays, and limiting the number of people travelling to and from university facilities. We are now advising providers that they can resume in-person teaching and education for students who are studying practical or practice-based subjects (including creative arts) and who require specialist equipment and facilities from 8 March 2021. Providers should not ask students to return if their course can reasonably be continued online. The government will review, by the end of the Easter holidays, the options for the timing of the return of remaining students. This review will take account of the latest data and will be a key part of the wider roadmap steps.

The Government published an impact assessment for the Ivory Act when the legislation was introduced as a Bill in May 2018.

The registration fee for items that fall under a section 10 exemption, which includes pre-1918 portrait miniatures that have a surface area of no more than 320cm², is £20 per registration. Groups of three to twenty portrait miniatures that meet the requirement of the exemption and are being dealt as part of a single transaction may be registered together for a fee of £50. The fees have been set at a manageable level to encourage compliance and meet the principle that costs should not be borne by the taxpayer. We will keep the fees under review.

The 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy sets out the Government’s ambitions for increased resource efficiency and a more circular economy in England. These ambitions require changes in how we produce and consume products and materials, as well as how we treat and dispose of them at end-of-life.

Waste is a devolved issue and the devolved administrations have their own arrangements for waste prevention, household recycling and waste collections.

Our Waste Prevention Programme (WPP) for England has been in place since 2013, outlining actions for the Government, industry and others around the top of the waste hierarchy. This focuses on how to prevent waste, for instance through reusing goods and materials already in the system. We are now consulting on a new WPP for the future – Towards a Resource Efficient Economy. This will help Government departments as well as industry work together to accelerate action in this area for the future. Ministers in the devolved administrations are fully aware of our consultation on a new WPP, and the policy proposals it contains are being discussed at official level.

We are also consulting on our collection and packaging reforms: consistency in collections for recycling, Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR) and a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).

Our reform to consistent collections will make recycling easier and ensure that there is a comprehensive, consistent service across England. This will help to reduce confusion with recycling, ensure that there is more recycled material in the products we buy and that the UK recycling industry grows. It would also constitute a significant step towards meeting our 25 Year Environment Plan commitment to eliminate avoidable waste by 2050 and contribute towards meeting our commitment of 65% of municipal (household-like) waste to be recycled by 2035.

Our DRS will ensure that significantly more drinks bottles and cans are recycled and reused and not condemned to landfill or littered in our communities. With consumers paying a small deposit when purchasing an in-scope drinks container, they will be incentivised to take their empty bottle or can to a return point to get their deposit back. The DRS will be for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a separate scheme under development in Scotland, although we will continue work to ensure that both schemes can operate coherently together.

Our EPR scheme for packaging will apply across the UK and will see producers meeting the full net cost of managing the packaging that they place on the market once it becomes waste. Higher fees will be paid by those producers who use packaging that is more difficult to recycle or reuse, producers will need to meet higher recycling targets, and we are proposing that firms will be incentivised to reduce litter and keep our communities clean.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has not been collecting data specifically on covid-related waste – waste classifications are determined by content rather than context. These figures are published on a regular basis.

We have been working closely with the local authorities and the waste industry to monitor the impact of the pandemic on their services. We have run a regular survey on the impacts of COVID-19 on local authority waste operations, including on levels of waste, the output of which can be found at www.adeptnet.org.uk. We also collected informal data through industry discussions and internal surveys across a range of areas such as waste arisings and throughputs.

The Government is committed to increasing recycling rates and reducing waste, including plastics.

Our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy outlines our commitments to:

• eliminate avoidable waste by 2050;
• achieve 65% recycling rate for municipal (household-like) waste by 2035;
• work towards all plastic packaging placed on the market being recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025;
• eliminate avoidable plastic waste by 2042.

To help us achieve this target, we have introduced legislation through the Environment Bill that will require local authorities in England to collect a core set of recyclable materials, including plastics, from households and businesses. By making recycling clearer and easier, we will better preserve material value and help to grow demand for recyclables. We are also seeking a new power in the Environment Bill to be able to place charges on other single-use plastic items to encourage businesses and citizens to shift toward more reusable products.

Together with the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging and the HM Treasury's Plastic Packaging Tax on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content, these reforms will increase demand for secondary material plastic and therefore increase investment in recycling infrastructure. We have recently published consultations on introducing Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging and introducing a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, and will be consulting on introducing consistency in household and business recycling shortly.

We have made significant progress so far to reduce plastic waste, by introducing one of the world's toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products, and significantly reducing the sales of single-use carrier bags by the main supermarket retailers by 95% with our 5p charge. We are extending the charge to all retailers and increasing the charge to at least 10p in Spring 2021. We also introduced a restriction on the supply of plastic straws, cotton buds and stirrers from the 1^st October and we are currently assessing whether there are additional items for which a ban would be a suitable and proportionate measure.

More generally, on 18 March we launched a 12 week consultation on a new 'Waste Prevention Programme for England: Towards a Resource Efficient Economy' (attached). This builds on the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy and seeks to agree a programme which helps with our strategic goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving Net Zero, protecting our natural capital, addressing our resource security, and creating jobs and growth, as well as increasing our resource productivity and minimising waste. The consultation document outlines the potential for, and benefits of, action on waste prevention. It recognises that action is required across society - by Government, businesses, local authorities, consumers and others - for progress to be made.

We published the Litter Strategy for England in April 2017, setting out our aim to deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation. Annual reports of progress with delivery of the Litter Strategy can be found at gov.uk.

We have also published a “litter dashboard” which explains the Government’s approach to understanding the extent of litter and littering in England. The dashboard is available at gov.uk.

The latest Litter Strategy annual report and litter dashboard have been delayed due the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our latest study of litter composition in the UK, carried out by Keep Britain Tidy, is attached.

There has been an increase in number of visitors accessing the countryside since lockdown restrictions were first introduced last year. We know that people’s health, wellbeing and resilience can be improved and strengthened by spending time in the natural environment. We are clear, however, that everyone should follow the recently updated Countryside Code, which is available on gov.uk. A key part of government strategy is to get clear and consistent messages to the media, which highlight the problem and promote better behaviour in the countryside and encourage a partnership response.

In response to COVID-19, Defra has developed a ‘Respect the Outdoors’ campaign to encourage people to follow the Countryside Code and to highlight the impacts of littering. We also supported, and provided funding for, Keep Britain Tidy’s Love Parks campaign, which encouraged people to treat our parks with respect. Preliminary evaluation of these campaigns indicates that they had a positive influence on the target audience’s intended disposal of PPE litter, with anecdotal reports from local authorities that the intervention resulted in a markedly beneficial outcome.

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges facing the marine environment today with plastic pollution found on coastlines accounting for 5% of the plastic that litters the ocean, according to EUNOMIA. Defra funds the Marine Conservation Society to record litter from sections of our coast which helps us to monitor the levels and trends of plastic pollution across several years. As the majority of ocean plastic pollution originates on land our efforts have focussed on preventing plastic entering the ocean in the first place.

As part of the recent funding package provided to TfL, the Mayor agreed to maintain the current temporary changes to the daily charge, operating hours and days of the Congestion Charge as a continuing response to the coronavirus pandemic and ensure that London’s recovery is not restricted by traffic and congestion.

Transport in London is devolved and is the responsibility of the Mayor of London and TfL, including any policy on resident discounts for the congestion charge.

The Government and SAGE do not currently advise virus testing for asymptomatic people, either domestically or at the border, apart from in certain settings, such as hospitals, care homes, and prisons.

The?border health measures will be subject to?review, currently every three weeks, to ensure they are in line with the latest scientific evidence and remain effective and necessary.

The Government and SAGE do not currently advise virus testing for asymptomatic people, either domestically or at the border, apart from in certain settings, such as hospitals, care homes, and prisons.

The?border health measures will be subject to?review, currently every three weeks, to ensure they are in line with the latest scientific evidence and remain effective and necessary.

The Government is carefully considering the concept of ‘international travel corridors’ (also known as air bridges), which have the potential to remove the need for quarantine measures for incoming passengers from low risk countries. It is currently not agreed Government policy.

Ultimately, we will be guided by the science, and the health of the public will always come first.

The importance of physical activity across the life-course is highlighted in the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines published in September 2019, including: good physical and mental development in childhood, prevention and management of health conditions in adulthood and maintaining functionality in later years. A copy of the Guidelines is attached.

Public Health England (PHE) promotes physical activity across the life course, including: resources for healthcare professionals through the Moving Healthcare Professionals Programme; public campaigns such as ‘Change4Life’ and ‘One You’, including digital behaviour change tools such as Couch to 5K; resources for schools, such as the ‘What works in schools and colleges’ guide; and resources for local areas such as the physical activity data tool.

PHE partners with many voluntary sector partners to promote the benefits of exercise, including supporting the new ‘We are undefeatable’ campaign by 16 health charities which aims to support people living with long-term conditions to get more active.

The Government considers all aspects of its support to businesses together and has therefore made no specific assessment of the impact of employers’ national insurance contributions on the sustainability of supply chains.

The Government has provided unprecedented levels of support to businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, tax deferrals, a business rates holiday, and other business support grants.

While the Government keeps all taxes under review, there are no current plans to abolish employer national insurance contributions and to replace them with a payroll tax.

The Home Office are currently considering advice from the independent UK Statistics Authority to make sure statistics on small boats crossing are published in an orderly way, which provides a clear picture of the small boats issue to the public. The Home Office has recently announced its intention to publish a quarterly statistics release on irregular migration to the UK, including the number of people arriving across the Channel in small boats. The first release will be on 24 February 2022. This will ensure regular statistics are released in an orderly, transparent way that is accessible to everyone, meeting the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

No final decisions have been made in relation to the release of small boat numbers, beyond the quarterly publication, and further details will be confirmed in due course. In the meantime, the Home Office continues to provide these to journalists on days where we see arrivals.

We recognise the benefits increased digital checking capability could provide as employers move towards an increase in hybrid and remote working business models.

The Home Office’s online right to work checking service has been in operation since April 2018. It enables employers to undertake free digital checks on prospective employees with a valid biometric residence card or permit, status under the EU Settlement Scheme or the new Points-Based System, and those granted a BNO visa.

Since January 2019, employers have been able to rely on the online right to work checking service to check a prospective employee’s immigration status. From then until the end of March 2021, there were over 1.3 million views by individuals and over 390,000 views by employers carrying out right to work checks digitally.

We are currently evaluating the potential for introducing the option for employers to use specialist technology, including identity document validation technology, to support right to work checks. This may provide a permanent digital option for those unable to use the Home Office online checking service, including UK and Irish citizens.

We are discussing with representatives from employer groups the value of such technology, whilst ensuring we maintain the security and integrity of our system in the long-term.

The current family reunion policy allows a partner and children under 18 of those granted protection in the UK to join them here, if they formed part of the family unit before the sponsor fled their country. Over 29,000 visas have been issued under this route in the last 5 years.

Currently, a person is eligible to sponsor a family reunion application as soon as they have been granted refugee status or humanitarian protection. There is no limit or timescale when they stop becoming eligible, other than if they become naturalised and obtain British citizenship. Once someone overseas applies for a family reunion visa, our customer service standard is 60 UK working days for straightforward cases.

As set out in the New Plan for Immigration policy statement published on 24 March, we are committed to review the refugee family reunion routes available to refugees who have arrived through safe and legal routes. Subject to considering consultation responses, those who are granted the new temporary protection status are proposed to have limited family reunion rights.

We have initiated a comprehensive consultation and engagement process which is open now until 6 May. We will use this opportunity to listen to a wide range of views from stakeholders across the sector, as well as members of the public. All policy development will be undertaken in line with the law, including our equalities duties and international obligations.

All priority services were suspended for all application routes as a result of Covid 19 and the closure of application processing centres in the UK and overseas. Priority services will remain suspended until UKVI is able to ensure service standards may be met and that customers receive the services paid for.

39 UKVCAS service points are now open the UK and 198 VACs overseas are now open and being managed as part of business as usual.

The resumption of priority services remains under review and services will be offered where capacity permits and will be reintroduced on a phased basis. UKVI continues to keep this position under review and will publicise any changes to services on GOV.UK.

Information on processing times for visa applications is published as part of the Migration Transparency data, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data .

All priority services were suspended for all application routes as a result of Covid 19 and the closure of application processing centres in the UK and overseas. Priority services will remain suspended until UKVI is able to ensure service standards may be met and that customers receive the services paid for.

39 UKVCAS service points are now open the UK and 198 VACs overseas are now open and being managed as part of business as usual.

The resumption of priority services remains under review and services will be offered where capacity permits and will be reintroduced on a phased basis. UKVI continues to keep this position under review and will publicise any changes to services on GOV.UK.

Information on processing times for visa applications is published as part of the Migration Transparency data, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data .

On 11 May, the Government published the document “Our Plan to Rebuild”, which outlined the steps it would be taking to ease the lockdown restrictions.

The Government continues to consider how to allow places of worship to reopen for additional uses in Step 3 of its roadmap, which is expected to be no earlier 4 July, subject to further scientific advice. As part of the steps to ease the restrictions, the Government launched a Places of Worship Taskforce to look at how they can reopen and operate safely. Meetings are being led by the Secretary of State for Communities, or the Faith Minister, and comprise of representatives from the country’s major faiths. The Taskforce is working towards the safe reopening of places of worship as soon as possible. It also addresses the specific issues that places of worship will face as they prepare to reopen safely.

As of Saturday 13 June, places of worship are now permitted to open for individual prayer, in line with social distancing guidelines. We have published (attached) guidance to support places of worship to do this in a way that is safe and in line with social distancing. Communal prayers, worship or devotion will not be possible at this stage. The Government will continue to work with the Taskforce towards the full reopening of places of worship as soon as the scientific advice allows.

Places of worship play an important role in spiritual and mental health for many, and in bringing our communities together, which is why we want them to reopen them as soon as we can. However, no place of worship will be able to reopen for further activities before a final decision by the Government and the accompanying changes to the legal position in the published regulations. Even after we permit places of worship to reopen for further activities, some may choose to reopen in stages or at a slower pace depending on their local circumstances.

The current list of permitted activities that can take place within a place of worship can be found (attached) on gov.uk here, and the associated regulations can be found here. These documents will be updated as and when further changes come into effect.