Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 potential merits of banning all cages for breeding game birds.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
No recent assessment has been made.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of updating the Hunting Act 2004 to ban hunting with dogs completely.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Hunting Act 2004 already makes it an offence to hunt a wild mammal with dogs, except where it is carried out in accordance with the exemptions in the Act. Those found guilty of non-compliance are subject to the full force of the law. HM Government has made a manifesto commitment not to change the Hunting Act.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 (a) using and (b) delivering surplus food to tackle the effect of rising food bills on households during the cost of living crisis.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The amount of surplus food redistributed in 2021 was over 106,000 tonnes, worth over £330 million and the equivalent of over 253 million meals. Since UK-level data was first reported in 2015, overall levels of redistribution have increased over three-fold. Cumulatively between 2015 and 2021, 426,000 tonnes of surplus food have been redistributed, worth in excess of £1.3 billion pounds and equivalent to more than a billion meals.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimate that there could be a further 500,000 tonnes of surplus pre and post farmgate suitable for redistribution but noting considerable uncertainty around the practical and commercial feasibility of realising over half of this.
The latest survey of the sector can be found here:
WRAP-Surplus-food-redistribution-in-the-UK-2015-to-2021_0.pdf
Between 2018 and March 2021 nearly £13 million was awarded to over 250 redistribution organisations across the country in order to bolster the capability and capacity of the redistribution sector to take advantage of surplus made available by businesses. This funding has provided important infrastructure such as additional warehousing, vehicles, fridges and freezers.
The safe and speedy redistribution of surplus food is a priority, be it from retail, manufacture or the hospitality and food service sector, which all may have their own issues and challenges in their supply chains. We continue to support WRAP and the Institute of Grocery distribution (IGD) in the development of guidance and the sharing of best practice to advise on practical ways of increasing redistribution at short notice, and to help facilitate new partnerships.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to take steps to maintain environmental protections in proposed investment zones.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
We have been clear about the importance of environmental protection across the United Kingdom, not least through our world leading Environment Act, which includes a legally binding target to halt the decline of nature by 2030. We are committed to meeting this target and will not undermine our obligations to the environment in pursuit of growth.
Defra and DLUHC are working closely together on Investment Zone policy to support our growth objectives and maintain HM Government’s strong position on the environment.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 potential merits of prohibiting all non-essential use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Answered by Trudy Harrison
PFAS represent a group of thousands of chemicals, with hundreds used commercially across many sectors of industry and society. There is increasing evidence of the occurrence of PFAS in the environment and, once in the environment, PFAS are persistent. There is also growing concern regarding the risks to human health. Action has already been taken to ban or highly restrict specific PFAS both domestically and internationally. However, PFAS represent a very diverse group of chemicals with a wide range of uses for which safer and more sustainable alternatives are not yet available – making this a very challenging issue to tackle.
Work is underway across government to help us assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks to inform future policy and regulatory approaches. In the UK REACH Work Programme for 2021-22, Defra asked the EA and HSE to examine the risks posed by PFAS and develop a ‘Regulatory Management Options Analysis’ (RMOA). The RMOA will be published in due course and will make recommendations for risk management measures. Defra and the Devolved Administrations will carefully consider its recommendations to inform future PFAS policy, building on the commitment in the 25 Year Environment Plan to tackle chemicals of concern.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 committing to a global deal for nature at the Convention on Biological Diversity COP 15.
Answered by Scott Mann - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The decline of biodiversity is a global issue. Worldwide, we are losing biodiversity faster than ever before. This impacts global growth and security. The United Kingdom will support the adoption of an ambitious global biodiversity framework at COP15 containing goals and targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Building on our G7 and COP26 Presidencies and our co-chairship of key nature alliances, we will continue to support the Chinese Presidency and international community to make sure we make this year the ‘Paris moment’ for nature.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 merits of introducing mandatory digital waste tracking across the UK by 31 December 2022.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Earlier this year my Department consulted on proposals for the introduction of mandatory digital waste tracking and a consultation stage impact assessment was published alongside this consultation.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken towards meeting targets to start nature’s recovery by 2030.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Our world-leading Environment Act introduces ambitious measures to address the biggest environmental priorities of our age, including restoring nature. The Act requires a new, legally binding target to be set to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. This is in addition to setting at least one long-term legally binding target for biodiversity, air quality, water and waste reduction. Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities will work together to drive action towards our targets for nature recovery.
We also published the Nature Recovery Green Paper. This sets out our ambition and proposed approach to enable nature's recovery in England, to support the delivery of our commitment to halt the decline in our biodiversity and protect 30% of our land and sea by 2030. Further, we published a Pollinator Action Plan in May supporting the National Pollinator Strategy. This plan sets out how we will continue to work with partners to help pollinators thrive.
The Nature for Climate Fund provides £750 million for the creation, restoration and management of woodland and peatland habitats. Prior to that, we published our England Peat and Trees Action Plans. These set out our vision for the management, protection, and restoration of peatlands and how we will deliver our aim to at least treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament.
The Green Recovery Challenge Fund is estimated to deliver 0.6mha of habitat creation and restoration within & outside Sites of Special Scientific Interest. We set a target to raise at least £500 million in private finance to support nature's recovery every year by 2027 in England, rising to more than £1 billion by 2030. We announced at the Spending Review 2021 the investment of more than £250 million over three years to protect and restore nature. This included designating at least 15 new National Nature Reserves and expanding the Species Recovery Programme supported by new grants.
We also launched the 21,000 hectares G7 Nature Recovery Legacy Project in Cornwall. We have since launched five more partnership-led landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects that will help nature recover across an estimated 99,000 hectares. We plan to launch a further six projects in 2022/23.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 maintaining the current Environmental Land Management Scheme.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Environmentally sustainable farming is fundamental to our new approach to England's agricultural system and the Environmental Land Management Schemes are an important step towards achieving our 25 Year Environment Plan ambitions and our carbon net zero goals.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 merits of a ban on the import of (a) kittens under six months of age, (b) pregnant cats that are more than 42 days pregnant and (c) cats that have been declawed.
Answered by Scott Mann - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill was reintroduced to the House of Commons following the Queen’s Speech in May 2022 and will progress as parliamentary time allows. The Bill includes powers to introduce new restrictions on pet travel and on the commercial import of pets on welfare grounds, via secondary legislation.
In August 2021, HM Government launched a consultation on our proposed restrictions to the commercial and non-commercial movement of pets into Great Britain. The consultation sought views on whether maintaining the existing requirements in relation to cats was the right approach. We are currently analysing the responses to the consultation and will publish a summary in due course. We will continue to work closely with stakeholders prior to the introduction of the legislation, to ensure that our final measures are well considered and led by the latest evidence.