Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the cost to the public purse has been of contracts cancelled by his Department since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 estimate of the cost to the public purse of administrative errors made by his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Defra reports losses from error to the Public Sector Fraud Authority. We are unable to provide a breakdown of losses from administrative errors only – errors we report consist of aggregated losses arising from unintentional events, processing errors and official government errors. Data on fraud (including error) has only been published since 2017 and may be found in the Cross Government fraud landscape reports here: Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2017, Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2018 , Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2019, Executive-Summary-Fraud-Landscape-Bulletin 2019-20, Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Report 2021-2022.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 estimate of the cost to the public purse of accidental damage to equipment made by his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 estimate of the cost to the public purse of mobile phone contracts for (a) Ministers and (b) staff in his Department since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The attached table contains mobile phone contract costs for the last three financial years for staff in core Defra. Information prior to 2021-2022 is not held.
Ministers’ costs are also included in the core Defra all users totals.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 estimate of the cost to the public purse of his Department's use of (a) marketing businesses and (b) communications agencies in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not available as it is not possible to split the costs of the department’s use of marketing businesses and communications agencies from the total cost of spend on campaigns.
Such information as is available is in the attached table. These figures are the total cost of each campaign for the financial years 2015/16 to 2023/24. This includes any spend with marketing businesses and communications agencies, as well as media and advertising costs, materials and marketing collateral, and events. Information prior to 2015/16 is not available.
These figures do not include departmental resource or spend as part of the GREAT Food & Drink campaign which is jointly funded with Cabinet Office.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 estimate of the cost to the public purse of cash losses incurred by his Department arising from (a) theft, (b) fraud, (c) arson, (d) sabotage and (e) gross carelessness in the last 12 months.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Estimates and actual losses for 2023-24 are currently in the process of being finalised and will be published in our Annual Report and Accounts. Losses from theft and fraud are expected to be in the region of losses incurred in previous years. The figures for 2021-22 and 2022-23 may be found in the following reports: Annual Report and Accounts 2021-22 and Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23. The level of detected fraud across Defra in 2021-22 may also be found in the cross-Government Fraud Landscape Report. We are unable to provide any estimates regarding arson, sabotage and gross carelessness as our losses data is aggregated and it is not possible to easily report this level of detail.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 reduce the amount of plastic packaging produced in the UK.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Reducing the use of single use plastic packaging produced in the UK is a key ambition of this Government. In December 2018, the UK Government published its Resources and Waste Strategy. This sets out how we will achieve a circular economy for plastic and achieve our ambition to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042. Our goal is to maximise resource efficiency and minimise waste (including plastic) - by following the principles of the waste hierarchy: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. To help us achieve this goal, in October 2023, Defra banned the supply of single-use plastic plates, bowls, and trays to the end-user and banned the supply of single-use plastic cutlery and expanded and foamed extruded polystyrene food and drinks containers, including cups.
The UK Government and the Devolved Administrations have also committed to introduce Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging. This will make producers of packaging, responsible for the costs of collecting and managing packaging when it becomes waste. This will encourage businesses to think carefully about how much packaging they use, to design and use packaging that is easily recyclable, and to use reusable packaging. In using more easily recyclable and reuseable packaging, producers will pay less.
To tackle the use of virgin plastics, the Government brought in the Plastic Packaging Tax in April 2022, a tax of over £200 per tonne on plastic packaging manufactured in, or imported into the UK, that does not contain at least 30% recycled plastic. We have since increased the tax to £217.85 per tonne and will continue to monitor the situation and adjust accordingly.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 adequacy of funding available to highway authorities to carry out statutory duties on public rights of way.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The final Local Government Finance Settlement for 2024-25 makes available up to £64.7 billion, an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £4.5 billion or 7.5% in cash terms on 2023-24. This is an above inflation increase.
Local highway authorities themselves are best placed to understand local priorities and allocate funding accordingly to fulfil their statutory rights of way duties.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
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 sought external legal advice on the proposal by MVV Environment to build a new incinerator in his constituency.
Answered by Steve Barclay
Defra has not sought legal advice with regard to the proposal for a waste incineration facility operated by MVV Environment in North East Cambridgeshire
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he sought legal advice on the MVV Environment incinerator proposal in his constituency.
Answered by Steve Barclay
In my capacity as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I have not sought legal advice on the MVV Environment facility proposed in North East Cambridgeshire