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Written Question
Animal Welfare: Registration
Monday 20th November 2023

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, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to establish an offenders' registry for the perpetrators of animal cruelty.

Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Police National Computer holds all relevant information for prosecutions made for animal cruelty offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and the police may be approached by anyone who has concerns about whether someone should be keeping animals. The Department currently has no plans to establish a public offenders' registry for animal cruelty offences.


Written Question
Drinking Water: Per- and Polyfluorinated Alkyl Substances
Wednesday 15th November 2023

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 she is taking to prevent the presence of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances in drinking water.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Water companies (for public drinking water supplies) and local authorities (for private drinking water supplies) have statutory duties to carry out assessments, identifying risks to the quality of the water. They must sample the drinking water supply for any element, organism or substance which could pose a danger to human health. This includes the detection of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The Drinking Water Inspectorate has provided guidance on PFAS since 2007, which was updated in 2021. Work continues across government to assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks, to inform future policy and regulatory approaches to safeguard current high drinking water quality.


Written Question
Animal Welfare
Tuesday 14th November 2023

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 her Department's planned timescale is for bringing forward legislative measures from the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We are introducing the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill in this parliamentary session to deliver our manifesto commitment to end this trade. The Bill will ban the export of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses for slaughter and fattening from Great Britain, stopping unnecessary stress, exhaustion and injury caused by exporting live animals. We remain dedicated to delivering our other manifesto commitments that were in the Bill. These are: to crack down on the smuggling of puppies, and to ban the keeping of primates as pets. We have already consulted on primate keeping standards and will bring forward legislation before the end of the year. We also look forward to progressing the non-manifesto measures which will deliver a new offence of pet abduction, update legislation to tackle livestock worrying, and raise standards in zoos. We would be supportive of single issue legislation when Parliamentary time allows. We believe this to be the quickest and most effective way of achieving these aims.


Written Question
Horse Racing: Animal Welfare
Monday 23rd October 2023

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 is taking steps to increase the (a) safety and (b) welfare of professional racing horses.

Answered by Trudy Harrison

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) is British racing's governing and regulatory body and is responsible for the safety of racehorses at British racecourses. The BHA works alongside the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare to make horseracing as safe as possible. Officials from Defra engage with these organisations on such matters.


Written Question
Rivers: Pollution Control
Friday 20th October 2023

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 her Department is taking to (a) manage and (b) reduce waste pollution in rivers.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Plan for Water’s comprehensive approach to transforming our water environment includes detailed policies to manage and reduce waste pollution in waterbodies, including rivers. The Plan tackles widespread sources of pollution, including storm overflows, treated wastewater, agricultural pollution, road run-off, and a ban on plastic-containing wet wipes (subject to consultation).

As part of the Plan for Water, over £2.2 billion of new, accelerated investment will be directed into vital infrastructure to improve water quality, with £1.7bn of this being used to tackle storm overflows. To improve transparency, we have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 7% in 2010 to 91% now monitored, and we will reach 100% coverage by end of this year.

Beyond this, the Government is ensuring water companies invest significantly in improving wastewater treatment. For example, the nutrient pollution provisions in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will place a new statutory duty on water and sewerage companies in England to upgrade wastewater treatment works to the highest technically achievable limits in designated areas by 2030. This will drive considerable improvement at wastewater treatment works discharging to areas of the country particularly impacted by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.


Written Question
Food: Waste
Friday 20th October 2023

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 plans to introduce legislative proposals to help reduce food waste.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Environment Act 2021 amendments to the Environmental Protection Act 1990 will require all local authorities in England to arrange for the separate collection of food waste for recycling. If citizens can see how much food waste they are producing then they are more likely to take preventive action. Further details will be published in the response to our second consultation on Simpler Recycling in due course.


Written Question
Food: Labelling
Thursday 19th October 2023

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, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to introduce mandatory animal welfare labelling on food products.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Stimulating market demand for higher welfare products is a key strand of the Government’s Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.

We therefore ran a call for evidence in 2021 to gather data on the impacts of different types of animal welfare labelling reforms, which received over 1,600 responses. The evidence provided suggested that there is public appetite for improved welfare labelling.

We will continue working with key stakeholders to explore how we can harness the market to improve food information for consumers and raise animal welfare standards. As part of this, we will continue to gather evidence on the impacts of a wide range of market interventions, as well as how they would align with wider labelling proposals such as eco-labelling.


Written Question
Barley: Dogs
Monday 11th September 2023

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 she has made of the potential impact of highly dense areas of barley grass seeds on the health of dogs; and whether her Department plans to take preventative action to reduce the risk of injury to dogs.

Answered by Trudy Harrison

To support dog owners and handlers, the Government has published a Code of Practice for the Welfare of Dogs which is available here: Code of practice for the welfare of dogs - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The code summarises important information for owners and helps them make decisions about how best to care for their dogs. The code includes information on how to keep dogs healthy and protect them from pain, suffering, injury, and disease, and recommends that owners monitor their dogs carefully and seek the advice of a veterinarian where necessary.

In addition, many of the UK’s animal welfare organisations provide owners and handlers with advice on how to care for their dogs, including the risks posed by grass seeds. For example, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals has published advice for owners here: Grass seeds in dogs - PDSA.


Written Question
Sewage: Water Treatment
Wednesday 21st June 2023

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 is taking steps to help ensure that improvements to sewage treatment are paid for from profits made by the water companies over the last decade.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Water companies must maintain and replace water and sewerage assets and infrastructure with significant ongoing investment. Companies seek funding from financial investors, to smooth the cost of investing and to spread the bill impact over a longer period of time to prevent short term ‘bill-shock’ to consumers.

If a company did not pay dividends, it would struggle to get access to finance to fund investment and this would limit the level of investment and impact on service for future customers. The water sector has invested more than it has paid in dividends every year over the last decade and bills have also remained stable throughout this period.

Water companies are monopoly providers of an essential service. It is therefore important to customers that decisions on dividends reflect service delivery for customers and the environment. Government has been clear that it is unacceptable for companies to profit from environmental damage.

Through the Environment Act 2021, the government has given Ofwat improved powers to modify water company licenses. Ofwat has introduced a new measure that will enable it to take enforcement action against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance for both customers and the environment. This licence condition came into effect on 17 May 2023.

When water companies pay fines for their poor environmental performance the cost is borne by their shareholders, not by charging customers. In addition, Ofwat’s outcome delivery incentives ensure that where companies do not meet their performance targets, they must reimburse their customers through lower water bills in the next financial year.


Written Question
Land: Conservation
Monday 15th May 2023

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 is taking steps with Cabinet colleagues to protect and preserve landscapes with a distinct literary heritage and value.

Answered by Trudy Harrison

Many of our most precious literary landscapes are protected in law as National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). In England, there are 10 National Parks and 34 AONBs. Together, they cover nearly 25% of land in England. These places are designated in statute for their natural beauty which provided the inspiration and the settings for some of our greatest works of literature. There are also some good examples of literary considerations in landscape character assessments, including Natural England’s National Character Areas, which reference these associations across England’s landscapes.

These designated landscapes are all managed to conserve and enhance their important cultural associations, including relevant literature and the sites which inspired it, as key components of the natural beauty of the area. For instance, the Lake District National Park celebrates its close links to and the inspiration it provided for the great British Romantic Movement, including authors such as Wordsworth and the other Lakes Poets, as well as the much loved children’s authors Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons). Exmoor National Park actively promotes its links with Robert Blackmore’s ‘Lorna Doone’. The Dorset, Blackdown Hills and Cranbourne Chase AONBs all rightly celebrate their associations with Thomas Hardy and help conserve and enhance the settings for his novels.

Literary associations are also celebrated and conserved in some of the England’s World Heritage sites. The Lake District World Heritage Site was designated in part due to the fact that it is “A landscape which has inspired artistic and literary movements and generated ideas about landscapes that have had a global influence and left its physical mark” and the Management Plan for this site emphasises the importance of its literary associations.

In addition, nearly 400,000 heritage assets – many of them located within the boundaries of National Parks and AONBs – benefit from statutory protection in their own right as Listed Buildings or Scheduled Monuments. Often such assets have strong literary associations – for instance, Stonehenge (protected as a Scheduled Monument) famously provided the setting for the tragic climax of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, while Max Gate (protected as a Listed Building) survives as the house Hardy designed and had built in Dorchester, and in which he wrote this and several of his other classics. These are but two of several such examples.