Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has contingency plans in place to ensure the continued operation of (a) water supply and (b) sewage treatment and processing in the event of a water company no longer being able to fulfill its financial obligations.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Ofwat and the Government take the financial resilience of the water sector very seriously. Ofwat reports annually on the sector's financial resilience and has taken steps in recent years to strengthen the sector's position. This includes action to update the ring-fencing provisions in water company licences to better safeguard the interests of customers and barring water companies from making pay-outs to shareholders and removing money or assets from the business if they lose their investment credit grade rating.
In the event that a water company is no longer able to fulfil its financial obligations, the Secretary of State and Ofwat have powers to apply for a special administration on insolvency grounds. This process would ensure that water supply and sewerage services would continue until the water company is transferred to new owners.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has had recent discussions with the (a) Chancellor of the Exchequer and (b) Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the potential merits of making additional funding available to low-income households to help cover increases in the cost of food.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The Secretary of State has regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues on a wide range of issues, and Cabinet discussions are considered confidential.
We understand concerns about food inflation, and its impact on the costs of living. That’s why tackling inflation is this government’s number one priority, with a plan to more than halve inflation this year, and we’re monitoring all key agricultural commodities so that we can work with the food industry to address the challenges they face.
The Government recognises the pressures people are facing and has acted, providing total support of over £94bn over 2022/23 and 2023/24 to help households and individuals with the rising cost of living. In April 2023 we uprated benefit rates and State Pensions by 10.1 per cent, as well as increasing benefit cap levels by the same amount.
Through regular engagement, Defra will continue to work with food retailers and producers to explore the range of measures they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food. For example, by maintaining value ranges, price matching and price freezing measures.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
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 (a) hen harrier and (b) raptor persecution.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Raptor persecution is a national wildlife crime priority and where hen harriers or any other wild birds of prey are killed illegally the full force of the law should apply to any proven perpetrators of the crime. We have significant sanctions for this type of wildlife crime in place which includes an unlimited fine and/or a six-month custodial sentence.
The Government takes wildlife crime seriously. In 2022 Defra more than doubled its funding of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) from a total of £495,000 over the three previous years to £1.2 million for the three-year period of 2022-25 to target wildlife crime priorities, in particular crimes against birds of prey. The national Hen Harrier Action Plan sets out what will be done to increase hen harrier populations in England and includes measures to stop illegal persecution. We are committed to securing the future of the hen harrier as a breeding bird in England. We also support the work of the Bird of Prey Crime Priority Delivery Group, which brings together police, government and stakeholders from conservation and country sports organisations to tackle raptor persecution and we provide funding to Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) to develop DNA forensic analysis for the police and other organisations investigating crimes against peregrine falcons.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
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 she has made of the adequacy of the UK’s biosecurity arrangements on farm animal to human disease transmission.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Zoonotic infections threaten both human and animal health. For zoonotic diseases, we have systems in place to detect and manage outbreaks, for both endemic (those that are already found in the UK) and exotic infections, collaborating closely with the public health agencies.
There are several pathogens of animals which can potentially spread to humans as a result of the close interactions between humans and animals on farm, including Salmonella and Mycobacterium bovis, but incidents of this nature are rare. Nevertheless, we take biosecurity and protection of public health very seriously.
Employers are required by law to prevent ill health to workers that may occur as a result of their business activities. Employers should undertake a risk assessment to help decide what actions they need to take to do this. The Health and Safety Executive regulates this.
The Government is committed to the strongest possible standards of protection against animal diseases including zoonotic pathogens. It is investing £1.4 million (including £200 million in this Spending Review period) to secure the long-term future of the Animal and Plant Health Agency Weybridge facility. This substantial investment recognises the essential role of this laboratory and will enable its excellent scientists to continue to protect the country, boosting our resilience and strengthening our understanding of health risks to, and from, animals and plants.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to introduce a national scheme for social tariffs on water bills.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
I refer the Honourable Member to the answer given on 3 February 2023 to PQ 135453.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
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 her Department has made on whether individual water companies can achieve targets set out the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan was launched in August 2022. Water companies are currently preparing their business plans as part of the planning cycle for 2025-2030 (PR24), setting out how they will achieve Government targets over the next five years.
Government is committing to review the targets in the plan in 2027. This will allow us to establish if companies can go further and faster to achieve the storm overflow targets in this Plan without having a disproportionate impact on consumers bills.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate her Department has made of the number of slurry stores that will receive funding from successful applications to the first round of the Slurry Infrastructure Grant.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Defra has allocated £33.9 million to the first round of the Slurry Infrastructure grants. In March 2023, the Rural Payments Agency invited 374 projects to submit a full application. We plan for most projects to complete the full application process and receive a grant.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent estimate her Department has made on the average amount added to domestic water bills as a result of constructing new sewer systems.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Water infrastructure is funded through customer bills. Every five years, Ofwat sets an overall cap on the total amount that each water company may recover from their customers, through a process called the Price Review. As part of this process Ofwat balances the interests of the consumers with the ability for companies to finance the delivery of its services, including the removal of sewerage from homes and its treatment.
The current price review period runs from 2020-2025 and the level of investment in this period is £51 billion. The average household bill is £448 in 2023-24, of which £233 is spent on sewerage services, which includes building and maintaining sewer pipes, pumping sewage to treatment works, treatment, flowing cleaned and treated wastewater back into rivers and the sea and converting solid material from sewage into gas for energy.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions her Department has had with (a) Ofwat and (b) other regulatory bodies on linking the pay of senior water company executives and directors to performance.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Government have been clear that companies must be transparent about aligning water company bonuses payment to delivery of services for customers, including environmental performance.
We have had discussions with Ofwat on company performance, including the need to increase transparency. We are pleased that, in December 2022, Ofwat strengthened its powers on executive pay awards by setting out that shareholders, and not customers, will fund pay awards where companies do not demonstrate their decisions on pay awards reflects overall performance. We support Ofwat’s new guidance on the scope and implementation of this new measure, published in March 2023.
This new measure will provide positive steps to protecting consumer interest and our environment.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)
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 she has made of the spread of Avian Flu amongst domestically-kept bird flocks.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Defra’s approach to avian influenza disease prevention and control measures are based on risk assessments containing the latest scientific and ornithological evidence and veterinary advice. To facilitate this the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) carry out routine surveillance of disease risks both in the UK and around the world to help Government anticipate future threats to animal health and understand the risk of spread of avian influenza in both kept and wild birds in Great Britain during outbreaks.
The latest APHA outbreak and risk assessments are published and available on GOV.UK through the 'Animal diseases: international and UK monitoring' collection. In summary, APHA currently assess the risk of incursion of highly pathogenic (HPAI) avian influenza H5 in wild birds in Great Britain as very high (i.e. event occurs almost certainly). The risk of poultry exposure to HPAI H5 in Great Britain is currently assessed as high (with low uncertainty) where there are substantial biosecurity breaches and poor biosecurity and medium (i.e. event occurs regularly) (with medium uncertainty) where good biosecurity is applied.