Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the length of time taken by British Wool to provide payments to domestic producers following auctions.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
British Wool is a public body, responsible for the collection, sale and marketing of wool from across the UK. While Defra maintains regular engagement with British Wool and monitors its strategic performance through a framework agreement, the organisation remains operationally independent. As such, Defra makes no assessment on the process by which payments are returned to producers.
Sales are conducted by auction throughout the year and reflect global market developments in price and availability. Payments to British Wool’s producer members are calculated at year end once the full value of that member’s clip is known. Returns are based on the weight and quality of wool delivered and the average value each grade achieved at auction. Payments are available from 1 May at the start of the following clip year and are released automatically when new season wool is delivered or on request from members.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the UK-EU Summit - Joint Statement, updated 19 May 2025, when measures on taking pets on holiday to the EU will take effect.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
As announced at the UK-EU Leaders Summit on May 19, 2025, the UK and EU have agreed to work towards a common Sanitary and Phytosanitary Zone to reduce delays and paperwork at the border. Taking pets on holiday into the EU will be easier and cheaper. Instead of getting an animal health certificate each time you travel, you will be able to get a multiuse pet passport valid for travel to the EU.
Our aim is to start talks straight away and we want to remove barriers as soon as possible.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the UK-EU Summit - Joint Statement, updated 19 May 2025, when (a) fresh sausages and burgers, (b) certain shellfish from domestic waters and (c) seed potatoes will be able to resume trade to the EU.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
As announced at the UK-EU Leaders Summit on May 19, 2025, the UK and EU have agreed to work towards a common Sanitary and Phytosanitary Zone to reduce delays and paperwork at the border. British products that were banned under the last Government’s Brexit deal can resume trade to the EU once the common SPS area is in place. Trade in products such as fresh sausages and burgers, some shellfish from domestic waters, and seed potatoes will be able to resume, increasing markets for these goods and stimulating jobs.
Our aim is to start talks straight away and we want to remove barriers as soon as possible.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the UK-EU Summit - Joint Statement, updated 19 May 2025, when routine checks on (a) agri-foods and (b) imports from the EU of (i) milk, (ii) dairy, (iii) eggs and (iv) other products will end.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
As announced at the UK-EU Leaders Summit on May 19, 2025, the UK and EU have agreed to work towards a common Sanitary and Phytosanitary Zone to reduce delays and paperwork at the border. Once the agreement is in place, routine SPS border checks for goods in scope will be eliminated, so fresh produce can hit supermarket shelves more quickly, with less paperwork and fewer costs.
Our aim is to start talks straight away and we want to remove barriers as soon as possible.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to section 2.1 of HM Treasury's policy paper entitled New approach to ensure regulators and regulation support growth, updated on 31 March 2025, how much the Environment Agency's priority tracked service cost.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency launched the priority tracked service on 1 April 2025. The priority tracked service is an optional service paid for by service users. The service will fully recover its costs and scale up to reflect uptake. Currently, charges are £100 per hour.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to section 2.1 of HM Treasury's policy paper entitled New approach to ensure regulators and regulation support growth, updated on 31 March 2025, when the Environment Agency's priority tracked service will launch.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency launched the priority tracked service on 1 April 2025. The priority tracked service is an optional service paid for by service users. The service will fully recover its costs and scale up to reflect uptake. Currently, charges are £100 per hour.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to section 2.1 of HM Treasury’s policy paper entitled New approach to ensure regulators and regulation support growth, updated on 31 March 2025, which new initiatives have been launched to support priority sectors.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra, jointly with Welsh Government are currently consulting on proposals to streamline the process for setting and amending exemptions within the environmental permitting framework, empowering regulators to operate in an agile and outcome-driven fashion in support of both economic growth and environmental protections.
The regulations the Environment Agency (EA) implements spans aspects of sectors, such as advance manufacturing and clean energy, in the priority list. In April the EA launched a pilot priority tracked service for significant infrastructure and major housebuilding projects, ahead of launching a full service later in the year, to allow developers to work with a dedicated team on their permits and track progress. On 31st March, the EA launched a “standard rules” approach to support research and development activities at industrial installations, this will make it easier to trial and scale-up new technologies and processes to boost investment and productivity.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will commission Ofwat to provide an assessment of the potential impacts of extending competition to the residential retail water market.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Ofwat has a duty to protect the interests of consumers, wherever appropriate, by promoting effective competition and does this through the economic regulation of the sector.
As part of the Independent Commission’s call for evidence, the Commission sought views on the strengths and limitations of existing competition schemes - as well as potential options for reform - to areas including the New Appointments and Variations market and competitive delivery models for large infrastructure projects.
The Commission is planning on reporting to the government by Q2 2025.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of Extended Producer Responsibility fees on trends in the levels of pub closures; and what steps his Department is taking to support pubs in adhering to Extended Producer Responsibility regulations.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In October 2024, the Government published an updated assessment of the impact of introducing the pEPR scheme on packaging producers as a whole. This impact assessment did not split the assessment by sector.
The Government has worked closely with industry, including the brewing sector, throughout development of Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR). Feedback from stakeholders was factored into finalising the regulations, including formally consulting stakeholders on a draft of the pEPR regulations in 2023.
pEPR obligates brands and packaging producers to pay the costs of managing household packaging waste. In most cases, this will not be individual pubs but the business supplying the pub with packaged goods.
My officials have recently attended a number of events organised by the brewing industry, to discuss pEPR and to listen and respond to concerns raised by their members. We have provided extensive guidance to all sectors on how to comply with their obligations under pEPR and continue to work with the brewing sector and others to further refine both the guidance and the wider scheme.
Asked by: James Wild (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that the (a) phasedown and (b) phaseout of fluorinated greenhouse gases takes into account the requirements of the pharmaceutical industry for (i) developing sustainable inhalers using climate-friendly gases and (ii) securing regulatory approval of such medicines.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Defra is in the process of reviewing the F-gas Regulation, which includes an exemption from the hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) phasedown for metered dose inhalers (MDIs). The review will consider the implementation of the current F-gas Regulation and options for future policy development.
To support this work there is ongoing engagement between Defra, NHS, DHSC and other stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry and patient representatives. Through this engagement, Defra will ensure future policy development takes account of the technical considerations and the practical requirements of the key stakeholders in this sector.