Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I have not seen the report that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, but I believe my hon. Friend the Minister for farming has seen it. In December, we published the 2025 environmental improvement plan, which sets out our ambition over the next five years to accelerate progress towards our targets under the Environment Act 2021. Those include ecosystem protection, wildlife reintroductions, species abundance, reducing species extinction risk, and creating more than half a million hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, which will provide critical ecosystem services. We are also delivering our international commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030, and we will make more announcements this summer about that.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sure the Department is already gearing up for the biodiversity COP in Armenia later this year, but what discussions will the Department be having with the Foreign Office about the equally important desertification COP that is taking place in Mongolia, where important issues such as water shortages, the degradation of land and much more will be on the agenda?

[Mary Creagh]

I know that there will be attendance from Foreign Office officials on that, and I agree with my hon. Friend that the Mongolian COP in August is equally important. It is important with these COPs that we do not look at climate, desertification and nature separately. We need to bring the three Rio conventions much closer together so that we get the synergies. Desertification has not traditionally been seen as a problem in this country but, as the planet warms and our climate changes, we need to take the issue seriously.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

The answer is a huge amount. The EA has carried out over 10,000 inspections of water company sites in 2025-26, compared with the 4,000 before Labour came to power, and we have provided a record £189 million to fund hundreds of enforcement officers, because this Government are actually taking action on this issue.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T6.  Cleaning up perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or forever chemicals, costs water companies and bill payers huge amounts every year. Does the Minister agree that polluters should foot the bill for remediation, and can the “polluter pays” principle be included in the clean water Bill?

[Emma Hardy]

I am really proud that our country has world-leading drinking water quality—in fact, our PFAS standard of 0.1 micrograms per litre is among the tightest in the whole world. I completely accept the “polluter pays” principle, although that is quite challenging for PFAS, because much of it is historical contamination. We are now working through that to make the principle work effectively in practice, while acknowledging that it is sometimes very difficult to identify the original source of PFAS.

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[The Solicitor General]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I commend the work of Kaleidoscopic UK in his constituency—I know how hard many organisations are working to tackle these issues. The Government are committed to rolling out child-focused courts nationally in the next three years, and we are investing £17 million to fund the next expansion, but I will happily pass his comments on to my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice who specifically deal with the issue of family courts.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The first time I met the Prime Minister was when, as Director of Public Prosecutions, he came to Parliament to meet a group of MPs to outline his 10-point plan for tackling female genital mutilation. Since then there have been hundreds of reports of FGM cases but very few prosecutions. What is the Solicitor General doing, whether through prosecutions or a multi-agency approach, to try to rescue young girls from this horrific mutilation?

[The Solicitor General]

I thank my hon. Friend for her really important question. There have been three successful prosecutions for FGM in this country, but that is not good enough. Last month I hosted the first ever FGM summit, bringing together colleagues across Government to discuss how we can tackle FGM by working not just with the justice system, but with health, education, communities and local government. It is really important that we tackle FGM. It is a form of violence against women and girls, and it must be stopped.