Asked by: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the severity of sewage overflow incidents reported in 2022.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The only reason that the Government has been able to take action to reduce storm overflows is because of the increase in monitoring under this Government, from 5% in 2016 to almost 90% of the sewage network. The latest assessment shows sewage discharges cause 7% of waterbodies to fail to achieve Good Ecological Status. This is unacceptable.
Our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan will prevent waterbodies from failing to meet Good Ecological Status due to storm discharges and will frontload action to protect bathing waters. We take robust action against illegal discharges. The EA and Ofwat have launched major investigations into suspected non-compliance at sewage treatment works.
Asked by: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)
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 he has had with supermarket retailers on the steps retailers are taking to ensure that clinically extremely vulnerable people have continued access to priority online shopping deliveries over the Christmas period.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Defra is continuing to work closely with supermarkets to provide clinically extremely vulnerable individuals in England with priority access to supermarket delivery slots. Between 2 December and 5 January, any clinically extremely vulnerable person living in a Tier Three or Tier Four local area who did not already have priority access to delivery slots was still able to register for this support through the Government website: www.gov.uk/coronavirus-shielding-support.
During the third lockdown, all clinically extremely vulnerable people are able to register for priority access to delivery slots with seven supermarkets: Asda, Iceland, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose. All clinically extremely vulnerable individuals who have registered through the Government website will retain their priority access to delivery slots until at least March 2021.
Asked by: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with supermarket retailers on ensuring that clinically extremely vulnerable people are not being subject to excessive charges when booking priority online shopping deliveries.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
DEFRA is continuing to hold regular conversations with each of the seven supermarkets participating in the priority access to online deliveries offer: Asda, Iceland, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose. The department uses these meetings as an opportunity to convey any concerns raised by charities or Local Authorities around topics such as delivery charges. Although DEFRA cannot legally dictate the delivery costs charged by supermarkets, our regular conversations ensure that supermarkets understand the impact that delivery charges can have.
Alongside encouraging supermarkets to seriously consider the impact delivery charges can have on clinically extremely vulnerable people, the department also monitors delivery charges and circulates this information to Local Authorities to allow them to advise their residents accordingly.
Asked by: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)
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 effect on the level of global wildlife trade of UK imports of real fur for commercial sale.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
The global fur trade is estimated to be worth in excess of around £24 billion per year with the value of fur imports into the UK estimated at £63 million in 2017, of which £17 million was raw or untanned fur. It should be noted that these figures do not distinguish between fur derived from wildlife and that of farmed animals, and the global figure is subject to a degree of uncertainty.