Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many posts there are for (a) press, (b) media and (c) other communications staff in his Department; and what the salary band is for each post.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Defra Group Communications is the first shared service communications team in Whitehall, merging 6 geographically dispersed communications teams from the core department and Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs). Alongside the department, the team works to the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Forestry Commission and Rural Payments Agency.
The teams work across all communications disciplines in support of the policy and operational priorities including a frontline team across the country providing a 24-hour communications response to incidents, working with local media and partners to give communities timely information they need to take action and prepare. This includes local and national media, planning, stakeholder engagement, digital communications and internal.
Defra Group Communications staff work in an agile way to 6 organisations, it is not possible to provide granular full-time equivalent figures for each part of the group.
The communications team employs professionals across all Civil Service grades, you can find more details on the salaries across Civil Service grades here - Civil Service Grades Explained - Defra Jobs - UK Government.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
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 proportion of the (a) primary and (b) secondary legislation sponsored by (i) their Department or (ii) their predecessor Department has undergone a post legislative review in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Information on the number of pieces of primary and secondary legislation that have gone through post-legislative scrutiny by the department in the last ten years is not held by a central team in Defra. It would therefore incur disproportionate costs to obtain this information in full. We do have some information that we are able to provide on the last five years which we have detailed here. We are unable to provide information older than five years without incurring disproportionate costs as this information is not held within the department.
The information provided here is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.
These post-implementation reviews have been made publicly available and links are included below.
Number of post-implementation reviews undertaken for primary and secondary legislation in each of the last five years:
Year | Primary Legislation | Secondary legislation |
2021 | 0 | 3 |
2020 | 0 | 4 |
2019 | 1 | 3 |
2018 | 0 | 1 |
2017 | 0 | 1 |
Links to publications by year publicly available on legislation.gov.uk:
Year | Link to Publication | Type of Legislation |
2021 | The Trade in Animals and Related Products Regulations 2011 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
Year | Link to Publication | Type of Legislation |
2021 | Secondary | |
2021 | The Energy Information Regulations 2011 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Ozone-Depleting Substances Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | Secondary | |
2019 | Primary | |
2019 | The Tuberculosis (Deer and Camelid) (England) Order 2014 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2019 | Secondary | |
2019 | The Products Containing Meat etc. (England) Regulations 2014 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2018 | The Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) Regulations 2013 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2017 | The Tuberculosis (England) (Amendment) Order 2012 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many post legislative reviews (a) their Department or (b) their predecessor Department has undertaken on (i) primary and (ii) secondary legislation in each of the last five years.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Information on the number of pieces of primary and secondary legislation that have gone through post-legislative scrutiny by the department in the last five years is not held by a central team in Defra. It would therefore incur disproportionate costs to obtain this information in full. We do have some information that we are able to provide on the last five years which we have detailed here.
This information is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.
These post-implementation reviews have been made publicly available and links are included below.
Number of post-implementation reviews undertaken for primary and secondary legislation in each of the last five years:
Year | Primary Legislation | Secondary legislation |
2021 | 0 | 3 |
2020 | 0 | 4 |
2019 | 1 | 3 |
2018 | 0 | 1 |
2017 | 0 | 1 |
Links to publications by year publicly available on legislation.gov.uk:
Year | Link to Publication | Type of Legislation |
2021 | The Trade in Animals and Related Products Regulations 2011 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2021 | Secondary | |
Year | Link to Publication | Type of Legislation |
2021 | The Energy Information Regulations 2011 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Ozone-Depleting Substances Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | The Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2020 | Secondary | |
2019 | Primary | |
2019 | The Tuberculosis (Deer and Camelid) (England) Order 2014 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2019 | Secondary | |
2019 | The Products Containing Meat etc. (England) Regulations 2014 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2018 | The Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) Regulations 2013 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
2017 | The Tuberculosis (England) (Amendment) Order 2012 (legislation.gov.uk) | Secondary |
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many pieces of (a) primary and (b) secondary legislation their Department has sponsored in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
(a)
The number of pieces of primary legislation sponsored by Defra over each of the past ten years is publicly available and can be calculated using the Parliament.uk website (https://bills.parliament.uk/).
(b)
The number of statutory instruments introduced by Defra over each of the past ten years is publicly available and can be calculated using the Defra Lex website (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/defralex). This information may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the environmental impact of land use practice in the UK.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government recognises that the way land is used and managed has a range of environmental impacts, both positive and negative. We regularly review and assess these impacts, working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Increasing the public and private benefits of land-use, and of land management, will be critical to achieving our environmental goals – particularly on climate change and nature recovery.
It is critical that the right environmental actions are delivered in the right places, while maintaining food security and sustainable development. In recognition of this, we have recently published our trees and peat actions plans. In addition we are:
o developing new schemes that will reward environmental land management;
o introducing a mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain via the Environment Bill; and
o introducing Local Nature Recovery Strategies across England that will propose priority locations for nature recovery and the delivery of nature-based solutions.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
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 2018-19 Main Estimates, published in April 2018, how much funding his Department has allocated to prepare for the UK leaving the EU.
Answered by George Eustice
HM Treasury has already allocated over £2 billion of additional funding to departments and the devolved administrations for preparations for leaving the EU so far. This includes the £1.5 billion of additional funding HM Treasury announced at Autumn Budget 2017 for 2018/19. A full breakdown of how this was allocated to departments can be found in the Chief Secretary’s Written Ministerial Statement, HCWS540, laid on 13 March (https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-03-13/HCWS540/). This money will be paid out in Supplementary Estimates 18/19 later this financial year.