Asked by: Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
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 effectiveness of litter-related activities by major tobacco companies to tackle tobacco litter.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government has made no specific recent assessment of the UK tobacco industry’s contribution to tackling smoking-related litter. We would like to see the tobacco industry delivering on the commitment given by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association to tackle the litter created by its products and their users. The Government supports ongoing efforts by environmental organisation Keep Britain Tidy to work in partnership with the tobacco industry to devise a voluntary scheme through which the industry can contribute to the clean-up of cigarette related litter, and is watching this space with interest. However, this must be achieved without breaching the UK’s international obligations, such as protecting our tobacco control and public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Tobacco packaging is covered by the current producer responsibility regulations, which require companies to recycle a proportion of the packaging waste they place on the market. They will also be subject to the forthcoming extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging which will cover the full net costs of managing packaging at its end of life. In our consultation we proposed that producer fees should cover the full cost to local authorities of dealing with littered and fly-tipped packaging waste.
In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we committed to looking into and consulting on EPR for five new waste-streams by 2025, and consulting on two of these by 2022. Waste tobacco filters were not included in this list of priorities but progress on the industry's voluntary approach to litter reduction will be monitored.
The EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive includes measures to implement an EPR scheme for tobacco products with filters, and filters marketed for use in combination with tobacco products, which should cover the costs of awareness raising, data gathering and litter clean-up of these products.
Now that the UK has left the EU, the Government will use this opportunity to refresh and renew our environmental policy. In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we committed to meeting or exceeding the ambition of the EU Directive, and we will do this in a way that works best for the UK’s aspirations in this policy area.
Asked by: Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
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 which waste streams should be included in the proposed extended producer responsibility scheme in the Waste and Resource Strategy.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
In the Resources and Waste Strategy, we committed to looking into and consulting on extended producer responsibility (EPR) for five new waste-streams by 2025, and consulting on two of these by 2022. We have currently identified our five priority waste-streams as: textiles; fishing gear; certain products in construction and demolition; bulky waste; and vehicle tyres. This list is not fixed and does not exclude the potential to review and consult on EPR for other waste streams if these are identified as being of equal or higher priority.
We are currently undertaking further scoping and research work to inform our prioritisation of these waste-streams for consultation on the basis of environmental impact.
We have also already consulted last year on EPR for packaging through our reforms to the packaging producer responsibility system. We will consult again this year.
Asked by: Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has a single individual who is responsible for leading on the application of the Family Test.
Answered by George Eustice
Each department has a function that leads on ensuring Family Test (FT) requirements are embedded, and is part of the Civil Service Family Test Network.
This Network is the central forum through which we have sought input and comments on the support departments need to help with FT implementation. Members feed improvements into existing guidance for officials in all departments on FT implementation.
Within Defra the Secondary Legislation Business Partner Team has responsibility for ensuring there is consistent application of the FT. All new policy development must include a FT assessment, which policy leads access via the Cabinet Office cleared guidance.
Asked by: Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate his Department has made of the number of seasonal workers employed in Cornwall in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The number of seasonal, casual or gang labourers on commercial agricultural holdings(a) in the South West Region on 1 June in each of the last five years is shown in the table below. County breakdowns are only available for 2013 and 2016, therefore figures for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are included for these years only.
Seasonal, casual or gang labour(b)
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
South West Region | 4429 | 5440 | 5744 | 5415 | 6757 |
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly | 837 | n/a | n/a | 1221 | n/a |
n/a: not available
Source: Defra June Survey of Agriculture
(a) Commercial holdings are those with significant levels of farming activity. These significant levels are classified as any holding with more than 5 hectares of agricultural land, 1 hectare of orchards, 0.5 hectares of vegetables or 0.1 hectares of protected crops, or more than 10 cows, 50 pigs, 20 sheep, 20 goats or 1,000 poultry.
(b) Seasonal, casual or gang labour is defined as seasonal, casual and gang workers, including family and non-family workers who are usually employed for less than 20 weeks of the year.