Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to support hop growers affected by the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The Government recognises the UK's proud hops growing tradition. We recognise the challenges that the sector has faced and continues to face due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
To support businesses impacted by Covid-19, the Government made available financial support under several schemes during 2020. In April 2021, the Government also launched the Recovery Loan Scheme. This is intended to help give UK businesses ongoing access to finance as they recover from the economic impact of the Covid-19. In addition to this, Defra officials have also engaged with the relevant local authorities to assist the hops sector in accessing financial support under the discretionary Additional Restrictions Grant Fund.
Defra officials continue to meet regularly with the British Hop Association to discuss the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the hops industry and are working closely with them to help preserve the long-term future of the sector.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to include provision within Environmental Land Management scheme proposals to pay farmers and landowners to create active travel routes, including on old disused rail lines.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Beauty, heritage and engagement with the environment is an important part of our new environmental schemes.
These could support the creation of active travel routes through providing funding for access to infrastructure or for educational visits, for example. We will engage with a range of stakeholders as we develop the scheme. This includes through our tests and trials programme. Several tests and trials are considering how access can be incorporated in the new schemes.
We are working with stakeholders and end users to determine the specific land management actions that will be paid for under the Environmental Land Management scheme. We will set out more details on this later this year. 'The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024' set out examples of the types of actions that we envisage paying for under the scheme.
We'll also be testing and piloting key aspects of the new schemes in real situations with farmers and land managers beginning in 2021. This aims to learn and innovate prior to the start of an early prototype of the Sustainable Farming Incentive Scheme in 2022.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to make ecocide a crime.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
This Government is committed to improving the environment in the UK and internationally. Environmental laws and other safeguards are in place and monitored by effective regulators and tiers of Government.
The Environment Bill will create a new, independent statutory body (the Office for Environmental Protection) with the principal objective of contributing to environmental protection and the improvement of the natural environment.
The Government is also consulting on a new law designed to prevent forests and other important natural areas from being converted illegally into agricultural land. If approved, this will require a relatively small number of larger businesses to ensure that the ‘forest risk’ commodities they use – commodities that can cause wide-scale deforestation – have been produced legally.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what payments have been made from the Flood Recovery Fund to farmers in (a) West Worcestershire and (b) Worcestershire.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The window for applications to the Farming Recovery Fund closed on 1 September 2020 and claims under successful applications can be submitted by farmers into spring 2021. Payments are made once the recovery work has been completed and claimed. All applications from the Worcestershire area have been from farmers in West Worcestershire.
To date, one agreement has been paid in full, totalling around £750. There are 35 successful applications, from which we expect to pay around £217,000. We have a further 19 applications, valued at around £300,000, in appraisal.
These figures will continue to change as projects move through their lifecycle.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many and what type of applications to the Farming Recovery Fund he has received from farmers whose crops were affected by flood damage in Worcestershire in 2019-20.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The Farming Recovery Fund offers funding for the repair of infrastructure and land recovery, which may include crop damage, and agreements can include a range of recovery work. Sixty applications to the fund have been received from farmers in Worcestershire, of which twenty-six cited land recovery as the principle work area.