Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
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 make it his policy to impose a moratorium on new build incinerators and withhold any increase in capacity requests to licences already in place until additional research on incinerator overcapacity has been concluded.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Defra has no plans to introduce a moratorium on new energy from waste (EfW) capacity in England. In the Resources and Waste Strategy we committed to monitoring residual waste treatment capacity and we intend to publish a fresh analysis over coming months. Local authorities are responsible for determining their waste treatment capacity needs at a local level via Waste Local Plans and need to factor national policy measures being implemented into their forward planning. A proposed plant must not result in overcapacity of EfW waste treatment at a national or local level.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to manage the capacity of existing waste incinerators throughout the country so that over capacity does not encourage waste destruction rather than repair, reuse and recycling.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Energy from waste should not compete with greater waste prevention, reuse or recycling. Defra is currently working to set the long-term commitments of the Resources and Waste Strategy for England (RWS) into legislation under the 2021 Environment Act through legally binding targets, including a target on waste reduction. Defra continues to engage with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities regarding planning for waste infrastructure and, as per the RWS commitment, continues to monitor England's waste infrastructure capacity and associated infrastructure requirements.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
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 support new entrants into farming.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Attracting new talent into food and farming is vital for a sustainable and productive agriculture sector. As set out in the Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 – 2024, this Government will provide funding to create lasting opportunities for new entrants to access land, infrastructure and support to establish successful and innovative businesses.
The new entrant scheme is being developed through a co-design process with stakeholders, including representatives of local authorities with council farm estates, new entrants, providers of innovation support, cooperative and community land organisations and private landowners.
In January 2022 the Secretary of State announced plans for pilot incubators to support new entrants to trial some of the solutions emerging from the co-design process. The details of these pilots are being worked up, with the aim to launch the pilot scheme this year.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to co-ordinate with (a) the Department for Health and Social Care, (b) the NHS and (c) the MHRA on his Department’s upcoming F-Gas review.
Answered by Jo Churchill
We are engaging with the Department for Health and Social Care, the NHS and the MHRA on considerations for the medical sector as part of our review of the F-gas regulation. This includes one-to-one engagement and engagement through sector-specific stakeholder groups.