Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of the French and German Governments' decision to end the killing of day-old male chicks in the egg production sector; whether the Government plans to bring forward similar legislative proposals; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
We have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and we continue to explore ways to enhance our position as a global leader.
The killing of day-old male chicks from the egg production sector is used to provide a valuable food source for reptiles and raptors. We are aware that alternatives to culling male laying hen chicks are currently being investigated by a number of research establishments around the world. A few systems are being used in commercial hatcheries in some EU countries, including France and Germany, but are not yet scaled up enough to meet the demands of the entire industry. We will be assessing the success of these systems.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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 publish details of the Government's targeted investment for animal welfare charities.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government shares the public's high regard and appreciation for the important work that our animal welfare charities undertake. This extends to the valuable work of their many supporters and volunteers. We remain committed to deliver our Action Plan for Animal Welfare. The Government has made a range of support measures available to businesses and charities across the UK since the emergence of COVID-19, including those charities protecting animal welfare. This includes comprehensive guidance issued by the Charity Commission on running a charity during COVID-19.
Meanwhile it has been encouraging to see the sector working collaboratively and successfully to support itself, establishing various emergency grants schemes for numerous smaller organisations. While organisations have seen a drop in income during the pandemic, the financial sustainability of the sector appears to be improving. We will continue to engage closely with the sector and keep the situation under review.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to announce a moratorium on the incineration of waste to help meet the Government’s climate objectives.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Waste is a devolved area of policy.
There are no plans to announce a moratorium on the incineration of waste in England.
Through the Resources and Waste Strategy we committed to monitoring residual waste treatment capacity. The Government intends to revisit waste projections to help understand future residual waste infrastructure capacity needs, taking account of waste prevention measures, our high recycling ambitions and municipal waste landfill reduction goals. This capacity analysis will also help us to further develop our preferred options for residual waste treatment as we move towards a circular economy and focus on delivering our net zero ambitions.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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 ban the sale of eggs produced from caged hens.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government is examining the future use of cages for all laying hens and I welcome the commitment from our major retailers, with positive support from our egg producers, to stop retailing eggs from enriched colony cage production systems by 2025. I am pleased to state that the UK already has a much larger free-range sector by far than any EU country, with over 50% of our hens kept in free range systems.
The UK is rightly proud of the high animal welfare standards we expect of our farmers. In examining the future use of cages, we will consider the most appropriate tools available to ensure our animal welfare objectives are achieved.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the Government’s policy is on waste incineration.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Waste is a devolved area of policy.
Government’s ambition for the future of waste management in England, as set out in the Resources and Waste Strategy, is to ensure that we preserve material resources through a reduction in the generation of waste and by moving towards a circular economy. We also want to manage any residual waste in a way that maximises its value as a resource whilst minimising environmental impacts.
Our view is that waste incineration with energy recovery should not compete with greater waste prevention, re-use or recycling, however, it does play and should continue to play an important role in diverting waste from landfill and is generally the best management option for most residual waste.
The Resources and Waste Strategy also set out an ambition to increase the efficiency of energy from waste (EfW) plants, by encouraging use of the heat the plants produce and working with industry to increase the number of EfW plants that are formally recognised as achieving recovery status.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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) meetings, (b) telephone calls, (c) emails, (d) letters and (e) other communications have taken place between his Department and officials of the Government of the Netherlands on implementing a ban on hunting trophy imports similar to the ban introduced in that country in 2017.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra officials have engaged with a range of stakeholders to inform our policy on hunting trophy imports, including officials from other governments. As part of this work we have spoken to officials from the Government of the Netherlands. As we develop our policy, we are looking at how other countries have approached this issue, alongside the wide range of views and evidence we have received through our consultation and call for evidence.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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 mitigate the effects of offshore unexploded ordnance disposal on marine mammals.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra recognises the impact that underwater noise from clearing unexploded ordnance can have on vulnerable marine species. We are working closely with other government departments, the Marine Management Organisation, statutory nature conservation bodies and marine industries to reduce underwater noise but must ensure any clearance method for the removal of unexploded ordnance is both safe and effective.
Defra is investigating deflagration as an alternative to detonation in the removal of unexploded ordnance from the seabed. This involves the controlled burning of explosive material in a manner that does not result in full detonation. We welcome the research commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy into the impact of using low order deflagration techniques for unexploded ordnance removal which is ongoing.
The Marine Management Organisation already includes the use of deflagration as an advisory voluntary request within marine deemed licences requesting that developers investigate deflagration as an initial method of mitigation.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how he plans to allocate money from the (a) Biodiverse Landscapes Fund and (b) Blue Planet Fund; and what criteria he plans to apply to determine that supported projects benefit both human development and nature conservation objectives.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Biodiverse Landscapes Fund will deliver poverty reduction, conservation and climate outcomes across biologically diverse, transboundary landscapes worldwide. It will create sustainable economic development for local communities which supports the protection, restoration and sustainable management of these critical landscapes, rather than deriving short-term gains from their unsustainable use.
The Biodiverse Landscapes Fund is currently in development. Funding will be allocated, however, to a range of delivery partners who have demonstrated that they can deliver interventions that will meet the Fund's objectives in a landscape via an open, competitive process. Full details of this process, its timelines and the Fund's objectives will be published in due course.
The Blue Planet Fund aims to help countries eligible for Official Development Assistance (ODA) to reduce poverty through the protection and sustainable management of their marine resources. It will focus on addressing human-generated threats across four key themes: biodiversity, climate change, marine pollution, and sustainable seafood. The Fund is currently being designed by Defra and FCDO, based on available evidence and drawing on information from across HMG's international network, and will be launched later this year.
Both programmes are ODA funded, and so are subject to the Government’s guidelines and rules for designing and implementing ODA programmes. As such, once operational, progress will regularly be assessed against pre-agreed criteria and through a robust monitoring, evaluation and learning cycle to ensure projects achieve economic development and conservation objectives. Defra publishes information on ODA funded programmes to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) registry and adheres to the transparency standards set out in the UK Aid Strategy.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to deliver on commitments made as part of the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature at the United Nations General Assembly.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK Government is committed to working with partners around the world to implement the ten commitments under the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, which the UK co-created. To demonstrate our dedication to delivering on the Pledge commitments, in January 2021, the Prime Minister committed to spending at least £3 billion of the UK’s International Climate Finance over the next five years, on climate change solutions that protect and restore nature and biodiversity.
As you will be aware, Lord Goldsmith wrote to the devolved administrations prior to the Pledge’s launch to seek their support. I am grateful for the support of the Scottish Government, as signalled in their recently published ‘Statement of Intent’ on post-2020 biodiversity, and I am also grateful to the Welsh Government for their support.
In line with Pledge commitments, the UK Government is taking strong action on nature domestically as well as internationally. The environment is a devolved policy area and, in England, we are maintaining and extending key protections; introducing new legislation and new funding streams; we are supporting partnerships and we are working across Government to secure broad action. We have, for example, brought forward the first Environment Bill for more than 20 years which, alongside our strengthened Agriculture and Fisheries Acts, sets a new legal foundation for government action to improve the environment.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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 effect of the 2019 Food Waste Strategy on levels of food waste from major retailers.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK Government has not published a 2019 Food Waste Strategy. The hon. Member’s question may refer to the Scottish Government’s Food Waste Reduction Action Plan from 2019. The following answer describes other strategic documents which are relevant to the question.
In 2019, Defra commissioned Henry Dimbleby, its lead Non-Executive Director, to lead an independent review of the food system to develop recommendations to shape a National Food Strategy. Part One was published in July 2020, with Part Two due in Spring 2021.
To help tackle food waste, Defra and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) launched the UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap (FWRR) in September 2018. The roadmap sets out a clear direction for what all large businesses in the UK need to achieve in order for us to achieve our international targets for food waste reduction and provides a basis to track progress. It also allows a wider population of food businesses to show their commitment to implementing the Target, Measure, Act (TMA) approach.
The Resources and Waste Strategy (published in December 2018) sets out the Government's approach to tackling food waste, building on the direction set out in the FWRR. The 2020 annual progress report for the FWRR, published by WRAP and industry experts IGD, shows growing adoption of the TMA approach to food waste prevention with more than 70 new organisations committing to the Roadmap in the last twelve months.
Following support from respondents to our public consultation on increasing consistency in recycling, we are legislating through the Environment Bill to ensure that businesses and other organisations in England will be required to arrange for the collection of a core set of materials for recycling, including a separate food waste collection where this material is produced. We will be consulting further on this in 2021. We also committed in the Resources and Waste Strategy to consult to introduce mandatory reporting of food waste by businesses. We are currently engaging with industry and related stakeholders to inform the development of this consultation.