Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she provides additional resources to community groups and water companies in areas with excellent or good bathing water status to help maintain water quality.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government does not fund water company investment, water companies raise funds through private mechanisms and customer bills which is highly regulated. However the EA works closely with partners to help maintain water quality and deliver bathing water regulations.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
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 impact of financial penalties on water companies on the behaviour of those companies.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government believes that financial incentives reinforced by a strong regulatory framework does make a positive impact on water company behaviour. During the 2019 price review (PR19), Ofwat set specific performance commitments for water companies. These commitments set the minimum standards of service that companies are expected to attain. In November 2022, Ofwat announced financial penalties of almost £150 million applying to 11 water companies, as a result of underperformance in areas such as water supply interruptions, pollution incidents and internal sewer flooding. This money will rightly be returned to customers through water bills in the next financial year.
Additionally, where companies have failed to meet their statutory or licence obligations, regulators can take more formal enforcement action. For example, in 2019, Ofwat imposed a £126 million penalty package on Southern Water, following failures in the operation of their wastewater treatment works and misreporting performance information at these sites. This package included a rebate of £123m to customers through their bills and a £3 million fine. Following this, Ofwat has pushed Southern Water to improve financial resilience and outcomes for customers and the environment, which, in September 2021, resulted in a £1 billion injection of equity from Macquarie Asset Management. Macquarie have acknowledged the performance issues of Southern and have committed to delivering a turnaround showing how strong financial regulation can positively impact performance.
On Wednesday 30th November we announced we will be channelling money from water company fines into schemes to improve the environment.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many sewage release incidents took place in the UK in 2021.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Sewage release data is available online: https://environment.data.gov.uk/dataset/21e15f12-0df8-4bfc-b763-45226c16a8ac
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many (a) non-disclosure and (b) other confidentiality agreements relating to (i) employment, (ii) bullying, (iii) misconduct and (iii) harassment cases have been agreed by their Department in each year since 1 January 2010; and how much money from the public purse has been spent on (A) legal costs and (B) financial settlements for such agreements in each year since 1 January 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
No payments for non-disclosure or other confidentiality agreements relating to employment, bullying, misconduct or harassment cases have been agreed by the department since 2019. Information for the years prior to that is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of (a) the number of officials in his Department involved in recording retained EU legislation for the purposes of the Retained EU Law Dashboard in the latest period for which figures are available and (b) the cost to the public purse of recording that information.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Defra has a large body of Retained EU Law (REUL). To ensure as much of this as possible was captured, a central coordinating function was responsible for ensuring completion of the Cabinet Office commission. In addition, numerous officials from across Defra were involved in producing and contributing information for inclusion in the dashboard. This work was carried out as part of officials’ normal business activities, and we did not record the amount of staff time spent specifically on this work.
Since it has not been possible to make an accurate estimate of staff time, we cannot give an accurate estimate of costs. All costs associated with data collection were met as part of Defra’s normal administrative budgets.
There has been no additional non-pay cost to the public purse by creating the dashboard. The process was led by the Cabinet Office, who commissioned Government Departments to find REUL within their legislation and compile an authoritative account of where REUL sits on the UK statute book.
The dashboard itself is made by the Government Strategic Management Office and is hosted on Tableau Public, which is a free platform for hosting public dashboards. The dashboard will continue to be updated at no additional cost.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to prevent stop tourist companies promoting holidays that support cruel treatment of captive Asian elephants.
Answered by Jo Churchill
This Government takes the welfare of all animals seriously and the Government has been made aware that animals including Asian elephants, that are part of tourist attractions, can be subjected to cruel and brutal training practices to ensure their compliance.
As set out in our Action Plan for Animal Welfare, we are committed to promoting high animal welfare standards, both at home and abroad. We have engaged with the travel industry and other stakeholder organisations, and we support measures which ensure that money from tourists from this country is not channelled towards animal experiences abroad that involve the unacceptable treatment of animals.
The Government is committed to exploring available options to deliver the action plan, including to limit the advertising and offering for sale of these experiences.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding his Department has made available to support local authorities seeking to apply for bathing water status for beaches and waterways in their areas.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
There is no funding made available but there is guidance to help applicants on gov.uk. The information requested is the minimum needed to assess whether the site meets the requirements of the Bathing Water Regulations 2013. My department has committed to revising its guidance to make it clearer and we will reduce burdens where possible.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding his Department has made available to support organisations and charities seeking to make applications for bathing water status.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
There is no funding made available but there is guidance to help applicants on gov.uk. The information requested is the minimum needed to assess whether the site meets the requirements of the Bathing Water Regulations 2013. My department has committed to revising its guidance to make it clearer and we will reduce burdens where possible.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
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 impact of proposed reforms to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 on small burial grounds across the country.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
From September to December 2021, Defra held a public consultation on the proposed amendments to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 (EPR). The consultation proposed that the EPR should be amended to allow the Environment Agency to issue an exemption from permitting for small-scale cemeteries in low environmental risk settings. The consultation set out a draft of these exemption conditions that defined the circumstances where cemeteries could be exempt from needing a groundwater activity permit.
The Government assessed that the introduction of exemption conditions for small scale cemeteries would have only a small impact on the sector because there are no fees associated with this new approach. If an operator can comply with the rules as set out in the exemption conditions, they do not need to apply for or pay for a permit. There would be some small familiarisation costs incurred, but the exemption conditions and accompanying guidance will be concise and easy to understand for a non-technical expert.
We received a range of responses during the consultation, including from the cemetery sector. The Government is reviewing consultation responses and is undertaking further stakeholder engagement to assess the proposed cemetery exemption conditions accordingly. Our Government response to the consultation will be published in due course.