Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 potential impact of banning snares on animal welfare.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government will introduce the most ambitious programme for animal welfare in a generation. As outlined in our manifesto, we will bring an end to the use of snare traps in England. We are considering the most effective way to deliver this commitment and will be setting out next steps in due course.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 an assessment of the potential merits of including a farm education option in the Sustainable Farming Incentive.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Educational access features as part of the wider Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes and we are developing it further as a new 3-year capital item; we expect this to be available later in 2025. It will be a stand-alone capital item, though applicants must have an agri-environment or woodland agreement with management actions for this capital item. In countryside stewardship, currently eligible visitor groups are school age children and care farming groups only, but in the new educational access capital item, more diverse groups of people will be able to visit and benefit from an educational experience on farms and woodland across England.
As part of the development of the new educational access capital item, funding levels were considered, and agreement holders will receive £363 per visit, up to a maximum of 25 visits per agreement year.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he would make it his policy to create exemptions for Extender Producer Responsibility depending on (a) a producer’s sustainability and (b) B-Corp status.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There are no exemptions planned for producers with B-Corp status. While private ESG schemes like B-Corp certification can play an important role in driving sustainability, they are complementary to, rather than a replacement for regulatory measures like pEPR.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 help improve data in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment system.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment regulations make producers responsible for the electrical products they place on the market when they become waste. Data is collected on the tonnage of electrical products every producer sells within the UK and the tonnage of waste that they recycle appropriately to ensure they are meeting the requirements of the regulations. Defra is also updating the WEEE Regs to create a separate reporting category for vapes, so vape manufacturers pick up their fair share of recycling costs.
We have convened a Circular Economy Taskforce to help us develop a Circular Economy Strategy for England. The Strategy will be supported by a series of roadmaps detailing the interventions that the government will make on a sector-by-sector basis, supporting government’s Missions to kickstart economic growth and make Britain a clean energy superpower. We are considering the evidence for sector-specific interventions right across the economy, including in electronic waste, as we develop our Strategy.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 help ensure that (a) polluted and (b) unsafe (i) beaches and (ii) bathing areas have signage to alert the public.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At designated bathing water sites in their area, local authorities have a statutory duty to display information on a static sign about water quality and pollution sources, and to display advisory notices during pollution incidents. The information on the signage required by the Bathing Water Regulations 2013, consists of: the current classification symbol, with the “advice against bathing” symbol if the bathing water quality classification is Poor; a general description of the bathing water, based on the Environment Agency profile; and the address of a website where more detailed information can be found.
If the bathing water is subject to short-term pollution, the notice includes this information, and the number of pollution risk forecasts made during the preceding bathing season.
Other signage regarding safety and pollution is a matter for the relevant local authority.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 (a) expedite payments and (b) improve the payment structure of the Rural Payments Agency.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) understands the importance of cashflow for farmers and rural businesses and has in recent years made more payments for the schemes they administer, earlier in the payment window. The agency has also taken steps to improve the flow of payments. This includes making Delinked payments from August in 2024, compared to historically Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments from December, earlier partial payments on Countryside Stewardship, and moving to a quarterly payments structure for the Sustainable Farming Incentive. Schemes will continue to be administered with payment frequency in mind.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 direct funding from fees through the Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme towards recycling (a) infrastructure and (b) awareness campaigns.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
pEPR makes packaging producers responsible for the costs incurred by UK Local Authorities in managing household packaging waste, including the fees they pay to recycling facilities. This will provide around 1.5 billion pounds of new funding in the UK in 2025-26, including 1.1 billion in England. This funding will underpin the Simpler Recycling reforms in England and stimulate investment in associated recycling infrastructure. The scheme administrator, PackUK, is also obliged to provide information to the public and to businesses concerning packaging re-use, recycling, recovery, and disposal, as well as the prevention of packaging litter. The cost of providing this information is covered by producer fees.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 an assessment of the potential merits of amending the classifications of waste to help ensure that critical minerals in (a) used batteries and (b) other e-waste are used as (i) feedstock for connected and automated mobility research and development and (ii) other (A) recycling and (B) circular economy projects.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We will consider the evidence for action right across the economy and evaluate what further interventions may be needed in the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) sector as we develop a Circular Economy Strategy for England.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 report entitled REview24, published by the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology on 14 November 2024, what steps he plans to take to tackle the potential increase in methane emissions from landfill sites.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.
Defra is aware of the issue raised in the REview24 report. We are actively engaging with the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA) and the landfill gas industry to establish the scale of the potential impact of the ending of the Renewable Obligations Scheme from 2027.
The Government is committed to tackling methane emissions from landfill. We will achieve this by developing and delivering policies to support diverting waste from landfill, carrying out ground-breaking research in measuring and managing methane emissions in the waste sector, and exploring how to support and enable additional ways of managing legacy emissions such as passive capture.
Methane emissions from organic waste was a priority at COP29 and the Government was pleased to endorse the Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste, building on our Global Methane Pledge commitments.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a fund which is financed through a charge on the sale or transfer of benefiting properties to support (a) coastal protection and (b) flood prevention.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To speed up the delivery of new defences and ensure that the challenges facing businesses and rural and coastal communities are adequately taken into account, a consultation will be launched in the new year which will include a review of the existing formula for allocating money to proposed flood defences.
We want to ensure that floods funding policy drives close partnership working and brings in wider financial contributions to flood and coastal erosion schemes, to make Government funding go further. We plan to consider this as part of the abovementioned review.