Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what guidance is issued to police forces on the investigation of suspicious animal deaths; and what recent assessment has been made of the adequacy of investigative standards in such cases.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Police forces investigate suspicious animal deaths under the statutory powers provided in the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which enables officers to act where there is evidence that an animal has suffered, or is likely to suffer, harm. These powers apply to circumstances involving the unexplained or potentially unlawful death of an animal.
Decisions on how such investigations are carried out are matters for individual Chief Constables, who hold operational independence and are responsible for determining the investigative approach taken by their forces. Police forces may also draw on wider investigative frameworks developed by the College of Policing, which support officers in handling cases that may involve criminal harm to animals.
Defra has not undertaken any recent formal assessment of investigative standards in relation to suspicious animal deaths.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many Basic Payment Scheme 2023 claimants have accessed support through the Farming Resilience Fund since October 2021.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We do not hold the information in a form that allows us to identify Basic Payment Scheme 2023 claimants specifically. However, the scale-up phase of the Farming Resilience Fund ran from late 2022 to early 2025. During this phase, over 17,000 beneficiaries received one-to-one support through the Fund. Providers also offered group support, such as webinars and workshops, which reached around a further 12,000 beneficiaries.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to publish the final pricing and billing rates for the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Producers were required to submit their final 2024 data by 1 April 2025. Following this deadline, regulators are conducting regulatory checks. Once checks are conducted to an appropriate level, we will use 2024 data and insight from regulator checks to publish packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) base fees in June 2025.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 tackle potential abuse of the Extended Producer Responsibility exemption threshold; and whether he has made an assessment of the impact of the £2 million turnover exemption on fair competition.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As the environmental regulator for England, the Environment Agency (EA) conducts compliance checks to ensure businesses accurately assess themselves against regulatory thresholds. These checks include, but are not limited to, open-source reviews of company accounts via the Companies House website and requests for evidence to verify reported turnover.
The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 provide for the assessment of turnover thresholds within corporate groups. Where such a group exists, the turnover of all companies performing a producer function must be aggregated to determine whether the £2 million threshold is met. This measure prevents businesses from establishing additional entities to remain below the threshold.
All EA producer compliance monitoring audits include a review of company structures to ensure that all relevant organisations within a corporate group comply with the regulations.
In October 2024, the Government published an updated impact assessment for the introduction of Extended Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR), this includes an analysis of the impact of pEPR on competition.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 financial impact of being required to apply Extended Producer Responsibility charges retrospectively in the absence of published official rates for relevant material streams on businesses.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Regulations do not impose a retrospective charge and were subject to the required legal and parliamentary scrutiny before coming into force
To prepare businesses for the implementation of the packaging pEPR scheme we have now published illustrative base fees, based on local authority waste management costs forming the basis for indicative local authority payments for 2025, and on packaging tonnages reported by large producers for the first 6-months of 2024. These illustrative base fees for the first time show point estimates as opposed to ranges, providing further certainty to businesses. Producers were required to submit their final 2024 data by 1 April 2025. Following this deadline, regulators are conducting regulatory checks. Once checks are conducted to an appropriate level we will use 2024 data and insight from regulator checks to publish packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) base fees in June 2025.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to publish the findings of his Department's consultation entitled Consultation on fairer food labelling, which closed on 7 May 2024; and what his planned timetable is for introducing mandatory labelling to support (a) informed consumer choice and (b) higher animal welfare standards.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, Gareth Snell on 23 December 2024, PQ UIN 20692.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 is taking to help tackle the import of hunting trophies of (a) endangered, (b) vulnerable and (c) other species; and whether he plans to include a ban on such imports.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The import of hunting trophies is regulated through the UK Wildlife Trade Regulations, which implements the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The government committed to banning the import of hunting trophies in its manifesto and we will deliver on this. Defra is engaging with relevant stakeholders to ensure that we can deliver a ban on the import of hunting trophies from species of conservation concern in the most effective way.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 expanding consumer choice in the water market for homeowners by offering alternative providers.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Given their inherent nature, many parts of the water and wastewater value chain are subject to natural monopolies where there is limited scope for competition in the market – meaning there is a risk companies will not deliver the services their customers want or charge higher prices to increase their profits.
As monopoly service providers, it is important that water companies are held to account on poor performance and drive improvements that benefit customers and the environment. Ofwat, as the independent regulator, has the statutory duty to hold water companies to account for the delivery of affordable, secure, and resilient water services; protecting the interests of consumers whilst ensuring the companies properly carry out and finance their statutory functions.
Furthermore, the Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, was launched in October 2024 by the UK and Welsh Governments to recommend reforms to reset the water sector regulatory system. On 27 February, the Commission launched a wide-ranging Call for Evidence which is open for views from all interested parties until 23 April. The Call for Evidence covers many areas, including consumer protection, the environment and public health. The Commission will make its final recommendations to both UK and Welsh Governments this summer.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 (a) phasing out and (b) banning cages for laying hens; and what steps he plans to take to ensure farmers are provided with support to transition to higher animal welfare systems.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
We are firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards.
The use of cages for laying hens is an issue we are currently considering very carefully. The Laying Hen Housing for Health and Welfare Grant was recently offered to commercial laying hen and pullet keepers in England. It supports these farmers to improve the health, welfare, and productivity of their flocks through access to grants toward the cost of upgrading their housing. Applications closed on the 18 September 2024 and we will be writing to all applicants shortly to notify them of next steps.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
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 support communities affected by recent flooding in Leicester; and whether he plans to make a flood recovery grant available to local authorities.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Protecting communities around the country from flooding is one of the Secretary of State’s five core priorities. This Government will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience by maintaining, repairing and building flood defences.
During recent flooding, the Environment Agency has been operating flood assets and working with local partners across England to prevent and reduce the severity of the flooding.
In Leicester, the Environment Agency will continue to deploy officers to affected communities to assess the impacts of flooding to properties and businesses. It will also continue to work with the local resilience forum to identify further opportunities to reduce flood risk in Leicestershire and support the resilience of communities to flooding.
There are no plans to activate Defra's Property Flood Resilience grant scheme as the current scale of flooding has not met the threshold for its activation. Local Authorities should have contingencies in place for flooding and be able to provide support through their normal mechanisms.