Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to increase urban wildlife habitat.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Nature Towns and Cities, a new initiative, supported by Defra, is committed to bringing the benefits of nature and greenspace to everyone in the UK. It has recently awarded £15.4 million to 19 partnerships, covering 40 towns/cities, enabling local authorities, working with their communities to transform their urban environment for people and nature. Birmingham has successfully become the UK’s first official Nature City, with Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole collectively becoming the first Nature Towns.
Natural England’s Green Infrasturcture (GI) Standards include an urban nature recovery standard to expand and connect habitats and species in urban/urban fringe areas and reverse the decline in biodiversity. The GI Mapping Database provides a layered view of England’s green/blue spaces. Designed to support planning, policy, and nature recovery efforts by visualizing how natural assets are distributed and accessed.
Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are a flagship measure in the Environment Act. A good example which is centred around urban nature recovery is NATURE FOR ALL. A Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Greater Manchester.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what purposes their Department has used artificial intelligence in the last year.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In the last 12 months, Defra has explored the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across a range of areas to improve delivery of public services, strengthen resilience, and support innovation. AI has been deployed in habitat maps, such as Living England, and peatland restoration projects, such as AI4Peat, to enhance biodiversity monitoring, and in the Environment Agency’s FloodAI trial to improve flood forecasting, strengthen early warning systems, and protect critical infrastructure.
Before any application is deployed, the department considers data and security protection risks to ensure AI is applied responsibly. Guidance on the safe, effective, and responsible adoption of AI can be found in the Government’s AI Playbook.
The department also acknowledges the mandatory obligation under the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS) to report where algorithms are used in decision-making. As of September 2025, Defra has published several ATRS records, including Local Authority Waste Collection Cost Groupings, Hello Lamp Post, and Living England, covering algorithmic tools in environmental protection and public engagement.
The department is also piloting the use of artificial intelligence to analyse open sources online for emerging civil contingencies risks and issues.
Internally, the department has piloted AI-powered tools to automate the migration of legacy IT systems to modern cloud environments and rolled out Microsoft Copilot Chat to streamline day-to-day tasks, improve productivity, and support staff in working more efficiently.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 Office for National Statistics’ dataset entitled Business demography quarterly, UK Quarter 2 April to June 2025 edition, if the Government will make an assessment of the potential impact of trends in the number of (a) agriculture, (b) forestry and (c) fishing business closures on the supply of food.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government assesses a whole variety of factors that affect UK food supply using readily available data. Two examples include: the Production to Supply ratio last updated in July 2025 (found here Chapter 14: The food chain - GOV.UK) and analysis of the UK’s Seafood Consumption (found here Seafood Consumption 2025 — Seafish and published annually).
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information they hold on the number of workdays that were completed remotely in their Department in (a) 2024 and (b) 2025 to date.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Department does not hold data or information centrally on the number of workdays completed by staff remotely.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 ban foreign supertrawlers from UK waters.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK is committed to protecting our marine environment and ensuring sustainable fisheries. We are taking action through Marine Protected Area management and Fisheries Management Plans, which apply to all vessels in UK waters.
Any policy changes must be evidence-based and consistent with our international obligations, including the non-discrimination provisions of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
We continue to monitor fishing activity closely and will act where there is evidence of harm or non-compliance.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 Office for National Statistics’ dataset entitled Business demography quarterly, UK Quarter 2 April to June 2025 edition, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of (a) agriculture, (b) forestry and (c) fishing business closures since 2017.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra is aware of the Office for National Statistics' quarterly business openings and closures data. There are many factors unrelated to government policy that might explain why businesses would be shown as "closing" in the data source, including purely statistical factors.
Defra monitors data on the number of farm businesses registered with Defra for England published here Structure of the agricultural industry in England and the UK at June - GOV.UK.
This Government is committed to supporting economic growth. We continue to work closely with our agriculture, fishing, seafood and forestry sectors to ensure they are vibrant, profitable, and sustainable.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what guidance his Department provides on the assessments used to decide whether to return a dangerous dog to its owner after it has been seized.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Dogs that are prohibited under section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and which do not have a valid certificate of exemption could be seized by the Police.
In these cases, there is an interim exemption scheme which allows suspected prohibited dogs to remain with their owners in advance of a court hearing. It is for the Police to determine whether to make use of this scheme on a case-by-case basis.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what guidance his Department provides on the assessments used to decide whether to return a dangerous dog to its owner after it has been seized.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Dogs that are prohibited under section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and which do not have a valid certificate of exemption could be seized by the Police.
In these cases, there is an interim exemption scheme which allows suspected prohibited dogs to remain with their owners in advance of a court hearing. It is for the Police to determine whether to make use of this scheme on a case-by-case basis.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 reduce levels of light pollution from large industrial units.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government does recognise that good use of artificial light can contribute to preventing accidents; reducing crime and creating safer spaces and promoting the night time economy, benefiting us all in various ways.
The Government has put in place a range of measures to ensure that light pollution is effectively managed through controls in the planning system; the Permitted Development Regime and the Statutory Nuisance Regime.
The Environmental Protection Act requires local authorities to take reasonably practicable steps to investigate complaints of artificial light emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to human health or a nuisance and they have powers to take action where there is a problem.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions his Department has had with stakeholders on ending farrowing crate usage for pigs.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
This Government was elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans to improve animal welfare in a generation. The Department has met with key stakeholders, as part of the development of our overarching approach to animal welfare, and a broad range of animal welfare issues have been discussed.