Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on ensuring all dogs are microchipped.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Under the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015, it is an offence to not microchip a dog. Around 90% of dogs in the UK are now microchipped. The Government works with stakeholders to remind the public of the legal requirement and the benefits of microchipping.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on introducing compulsory cat microchipping.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We plan to lay regulations soon which will bring compulsory cat microchipping into force in England. Once in force, cat keepers will have 12 months to comply with the new requirements.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
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 increase access to green spaces.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and are working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. We committed in our Environmental Improvement Plan published this week to work across government to help ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space.
The Government is delivering a number of policies to increase access to nature including:
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on delivering the 25 Year Environment Plan; and whether her Department plans to takes additional steps to help restore nature.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Environment Act 2021 designated the 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP), published in 2018, as the first Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). As committed to in the Environment Act, on the 31st January the Government published its revised Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23) which continues to use the 25YEP's ten goals as a basis.
EIP23 sets out the progress made against all ten goals, the specific targets and commitments made in relation to each goal, and our plan to continue to deliver existing targets and the overarching goals.
Under the Environment Act 2021, Defra must report annually on the implementation of the EIP and review it every five years, so will continue to publish an Annual Progress Report setting out progress over the previous 12 months, alongside the 25 YEP Outcome Indicator Framework. Our annual progress reports can be found here:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/25-year-environment-plan-progress-reports
This Government is committed to halting and reversing nature’s decline, and the UK has been leading international efforts in developing an ambitious and transformative framework of global targets under the Convention of Biological Diversity. EIP23 sets out how the Government plans to restore nature by improving the quality of our environment.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
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 reduce single-use plastic waste.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In October 2020 we legislated to prevent the incineration or landfilling of certain separately collected material, including plastic, paper, metal and glass, unless it has undergone a treatment process first and only if landfill or incineration is the best environmental outcome. This is in addition to existing permit conditions that already prevent acceptance of recyclable material at landfills and waste incinerators.
We also want to make recycling easier. Following support at public consultation, the new s45 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 stipulates that all local authorities in England must make arrangements for a core set of materials to be collected for recycling from households, including plastic packaging. In April last year, we brought in the Plastic Packaging Tax. This will stimulate increased levels of recycling and collection of plastic waste. The introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility in 2024 will also encourage businesses to think carefully about how much plastic packaging they use, to design and use plastic packaging that is easily recyclable and encourage use of reusable and refillable packaging. These measures will reduce plastic waste and divert plastic packaging away from landfill and incineration.
We have restricted the supply of plastic straws, plastic drink stirrers, and plastic-stemmed cotton buds and introduced a carrier bag charge which has reduced the use of single-use carrier bags in the main supermarkets by over 97%. More recently we announced the supply of single-use plastic plates, cutlery, balloon sticks and expanded and extruded polystyrene food and beverage containers will also be banned in England from October this year.
We are committed to going further and addressing other sources of plastic pollution, which is why we also ran a call for evidence to help us gather information to help inform future policy on other problematic plastic items and help inform future policy making. Our response can be found here: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/single-use-plastic-banning-the-supply-of-commonly-littered-single-use-plastic-items/outcome/summary-of-responses-and-government-response.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
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 monitor storm overflows.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No government has done more to tackle the issue of storm overflow discharges. Last year this Government launched The Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan. This will require water companies to deliver their largest infrastructure programme in water company history – a £56 billion capital investment over 25 years.
We are taking action now. Between 2020 and 2025 water companies are investing £3.1 billion in storm overflow improvements. We have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 5% in 2016 to almost 90% now, and we will reach 100% cover by the end of the year. All the data is published online.