Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
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 developed a timeline for ensuring that there are no population level impacts as a result of bycatch for (a) fulmar, (b) harbour porpoise,(c) bottlenose dolphins and (d) other sensitive species.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
Within the UK Marine Strategy, there are a wide range of targets, including on cetaceans, seals and seabirds, that contribute to our statutory obligation of achieving Good Environmental Status in our seas. These include targets relating to bycatch mortality, specifically on ensuring that the long-term viability of these populations is not threatened by bycatch. These targets remain valid and we remain committed to achieving them.
The UK Marine Strategy is updated on a 6-yearly cycle including assessing and updating targets, our monitoring programmes and a programme of measures to achieve our targets. We will continue to report on and publish public documents showing our progress.
In addition, part of the Fisheries Act’s ecosystem objective is to minimise and, where possible, eliminate incidental catches of sensitive marine species. We will set out policies that will help to achieve this objective in the Joint Fisheries Statement which will be published in November 2022. In support of this, we are also developing a UK Bycatch Mitigation Initiative which we are aiming to publish later this year.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much (a) has already been allocated from the UK Biodiverse Landscapes Fund 2021-26 and (b) he plans to allocate from that fund in each year; and what his timetable is for opening applications for that funding.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Defra’s £100m Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, announced by the Prime Minister at the UN General Assembly in September 2019, is an ambitious programme that will deliver poverty reduction, conservation and climate outcomes across six biologically diverse, transboundary landscapes worldwide. This financial year the level of spend is small as this is a preparatory stage with work continuing on the design and mobilisation of the Fund, including through a programme scoping exercise and the procurement of key contractors to support the management of the Fund. Allocation in the following financial years will be largely determined by the programme scoping exercise and the selection process for funding applications. Bids will be invited from prospective delivery partners through an open, competitive process, which will commence early in 2022.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he has in phasing out badger culling through the use of (a) field trials of cattle vaccinations, (b) increasing the number of badgers vaccinated against bovine TB and (c) improved testing to intercept bovine TB earlier; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We have awarded funding for a five-year badger vaccination programme in East Sussex. The scheme, which will see vaccination deployed by the farming community, will help refine future delivery models for deploying large scale farmer-led vaccination schemes.
This year we also intend to undertake government-funded badger vaccination in an area where four-year intensive badger culling has ended, with ongoing surveillance of the disease in badgers in the area. We will continue to bolster our capability to deploy even more badger vaccination in post-cull areas from 2022.
By 2025 it is our aim to have significantly expanded badger vaccination across land where four-year intensive badger culling has ended. Through this we will gain a better understanding of the practicalities of deployment in a reduced badger population, as well as the effect of badger vaccination on reducing disease spread to cattle.
The Government has developed a 'Train the Trainer' course to enable experienced cage-trappers and lay vaccinators to qualify as trainers. This scheme is designed to increase the number of certified trainers who can then train new lay-vaccinators and trappers in localised training hubs. This alleviates pressure on the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), who to date have been the sole training provider, enabling more lay people to qualify as badger vaccinators than ever before.
Our world-leading cattle vaccination trials are set to begin this summer in England and Wales, marking the latest milestone in our aim to achieve officially TB free (OTF) status for England by 2038. This has been made possible by a significant scientific breakthrough by APHA in developing a new skin test that can detect infected among vaccinated cattle (a DIVA test) and is a major step forwards in our battle against bovine TB. As wider preventive measures like cattle vaccines are introduced, we will also accelerate other elements of our strategy and start to phase out badger culling in England, as no one wants to continue the cull of a protected species indefinitely.
From 12 July the policy for mandatory interferon gamma (IFN-γ) blood testing of cattle in the High Risk Area and parts of the Edge Area of England will be changing, to focus our efforts on those herds that suffer a new TB breakdown within 18 months of the end of a previous incident. By the end of this year, APHA will also be opening a new IFN-γ testing laboratory in Thirsk to better cope with the projected increasing demand for this supplementary cattle TB test.
Also from July, most cattle herds in the counties of the High Risk Area of the West of England will undergo routine surveillance for TB using the tuberculin skin test every six months instead of annually.
Further information about these two forthcoming cattle TB testing policy changes can be found on the TB Hub:
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
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 scale up cattle and badger vaccinations to help eradicate bovine TB.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We have awarded funding for a five-year badger vaccination programme in East Sussex. The scheme, which will see vaccination deployed by the farming community, will help refine future delivery models for deploying large scale farmer-led vaccination schemes.
This year we also intend to undertake government-funded badger vaccination in an area where four-year intensive badger culling has ended, with ongoing surveillance of the disease in badgers in the area. We will continue to bolster our capability to deploy even more badger vaccination in post-cull areas from 2022.
By 2025 it is our aim to have significantly expanded badger vaccination across land where four-year intensive badger culling has ended. Through this we will gain a better understanding of the practicalities of deployment in a reduced badger population, as well as the effect of badger vaccination on reducing disease spread to cattle.
The Government has developed a 'Train the Trainer' course to enable experienced cage-trappers and lay vaccinators to qualify as trainers. This scheme is designed to increase the number of certified trainers who can then train new lay-vaccinators and trappers in localised training hubs. This alleviates pressure on the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), who to date have been the sole training provider, enabling more lay people to qualify as badger vaccinators than ever before.
Our world-leading cattle vaccination trials are set to begin this summer in England and Wales, marking the latest milestone in our aim to achieve officially TB free (OTF) status for England by 2038. This has been made possible by a significant scientific breakthrough by APHA in developing a new skin test that can detect infected among vaccinated cattle (a DIVA test) and is a major step forwards in our battle against bovine TB. As wider preventive measures like cattle vaccines are introduced, we will also accelerate other elements of our strategy and start to phase out badger culling in England, as no one wants to continue the cull of a protected species indefinitely.
From 12 July the policy for mandatory interferon gamma (IFN-γ) blood testing of cattle in the High Risk Area and parts of the Edge Area of England will be changing, to focus our efforts on those herds that suffer a new TB breakdown within 18 months of the end of a previous incident. By the end of this year, APHA will also be opening a new IFN-γ testing laboratory in Thirsk to better cope with the projected increasing demand for this supplementary cattle TB test.
Also from July, most cattle herds in the counties of the High Risk Area of the West of England will undergo routine surveillance for TB using the tuberculin skin test every six months instead of annually.
Further information about these two forthcoming cattle TB testing policy changes can be found on the TB Hub:
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
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 the scientific data for continuing the badger cull.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Our bTB eradication strategy is founded in science. The cornerstone of our strategy is a policy of regular testing and removal of infected cattle from herds. We have incrementally introduced tougher restrictions on cattle movements from herds at risk of infection and more sensitive tests. We have introduced measures to encourage greater risk management and more information for cattle keepers, deployed wildlife controls in areas where the disease is rife and new biosecurity measures to try to break the cycle of infection between cattle and badgers.
Intensive badger culls were only ever envisaged as a phase of the strategy. Following Professor Sir Charles Godfray’s review, we have set out our intended next steps. The next phase of the strategy focuses on developing a deployable cattle vaccine, wider rollout of badger vaccination and improvements to TB testing. The Government will retain the ability to introduce new cull zones where local epidemiological evidence points to an ongoing role of badgers in the disease.
The main scientific evidence basis for the badger cull is the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) carried out from 1997 to 2005. Using data from the start of the RBCT, it has been estimated through mathematical modelling that infected badgers contributed to some 50% of cattle herd TB breakdowns in high incidence areas, either directly or indirectly.
More recent analysis published by the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) estimates that between 5,000 and 14,000 farms are exposed to infected wildlife and 36% of new TB breakdowns are directly due to wildlife. This study can be found here https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12917-018-1595-9.pdf
In October 2019 a study by the APHA demonstrated that the cull has resulted in significant reductions in the spread of the disease to cattle, showing reductions of 66% and 37% in the two areas who had culled for four years, compared to matched comparison areas where culling did not take place. The study can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49957-6.
The APHA published raw data in October 2020 which shows encouraging trends of reduced incidence and prevalence across the first 32 cull areas compared with the years before culling began. Compared with the average of the four years before culling started, OTFW incidence has dropped by an average of 27% after 2 years, 51% after 4 years and 53% after 6 years in the first twenty-one, three and two areas respectively. The data can be found on gov.uk here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-incidence-of-tb-in-cattle-in-licenced-badger-control-areas-in-2013-to-2019
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many licences for heather burning have been granted by Natural England in each of the last five years, by region.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Heather and Grass etc Burning (England) Regulations 2007 set out the rules for heather burning. The Regulations allow most burning to be carried out without a licence but in certain specified situations a licence is required from Natural England. In the period 2016 -2020 Natural England issued 27 licences under the Regulations, none of which covered the burning of heathland or heather.
People wishing to burn heather on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) need a consent from Natural England under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. We do not have a systematic process for collecting information on the habitats that we have consented operations on. We cannot therefore provide figures for the numbers of consents that we have issued for the burning of heathland or heather. We are currently investing to improve our records of consents.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
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 introduction in Scotland from 1 March 2021 of a licensing regime making it illegal to intentionally kill, injure or take mountain hares at any time without a licence, whether his Department is planning to introduce protections for the last surviving population in England of mountain hares in the Peak District National Park.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
This Government remains committed to taking action to recover our threatened native species. We continue to consider how we might best do this for mountain hare and the role of protection of the species in law, where there is evidence that this will provide genuine benefits.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many permissions Natural England have granted for heather burning in environmentally protected areas in each of the last five years, by region.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Figures for the number of permissions granted are not available because of the different ways that consents may be granted. Natural England may permit burning of vegetation in response to Notices of proposal to carry out the activity on Sites of Special Scientific Interest made by land managers under s28e of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Natural England may also have issued consent for burning vegetation as part of the prescriptions of an agreement made under the Environmental Stewardship or Countryside Stewardship schemes administered by the Rural Payments Agency. Consents may not provide detail of the vegetation to be burned and permissions attached to agreements may not detail the individual elements of management. To collect this information Natural England would need to investigate each relevant case where burning has been or may have been permitted to determine whether it allows burning of heather.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
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 his Department's press release dated 29 January 2021 announcing plans to bring forward legislation to prevent the burning of heather and other vegetation on protected blanket bog habitats, what plans the Government has to help restore peat under 40cm in depth.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We are committed to restoring and sustainably managing England’s peatlands. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in March that as part of the Nature for Climate Fund, 35,000ha of peatland restoration would be achieved over the next five years. This represents a significant step forward in our restoration efforts and will require us to work closely with a wide range of stakeholders.
The Government will be setting out further measures to restore, protect and manage England’s peatlands this year as part of a package of measures to protect England’s landscapes and nature-based solutions.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield Hallam)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the England Peatland Strategy will provide a strategic approach to restoring and protecting peat resources.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We are committed to restoring and sustainably managing England’s peatlands. The Chancellor announced in March that as part of the Nature for Climate Fund, 35,000ha of peatland restoration would be achieved over the next five years. This represents a significant step forward in our restoration efforts and will require us to work closely with a wide range of stakeholders.
The Government will be setting out further measures to restore, protect and manage England’s peatlands this year as part of a package of measures to protect England’s landscapes and nature-based solutions.