Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress has been made on the Environment Improvement Plan’s objective to secure £500 million of private finance for nature restoration by 2027.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government has set a target to mobilise over £500m per year of private finance into nature’s recovery in England by 2027, rising to over £1 billion by 2030. We are making progress towards the target by supporting the development and integrity of nature markets through the British Standards Institution Nature Investment Standards Programme; delivering Biodiversity Net Gain; committing £30 million of investment into a blended finance Big Nature Impact Fund; helping farmers with advice and support on accessing nature markets; and increasing the supply of nature investment projects through the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund.
We recently published an update on progress on our Nature Markets Framework, and we will consult on further policy interventions needed to support the growth of high integrity voluntary carbon and nature markets in the coming months.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 (a) fly-tipping and (b) the impacts of fly-tipping on (i) natural environments and (ii) natural environments in rural areas.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We are encouraging councils to take tougher action against fly-tippers. Under the Prime Minister’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan we have significantly increased the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to £1,000 and the income from these penalties must now be reinvested in enforcement or cleaning up sites affected by fly-tipping, such as natural environments.
We appreciate the difficulty that fly-tipping poses to landowners. We are working with stakeholders, such as the National Farmers Union and local authorities, to share good practice including how to prevent fly-tipping on private land. We are also currently funding a post within the new National Rural Crime Unit to explore how the police’s role in tacking fly-tipping can be optimised, with a focus on rural areas.
Across three rounds of our fly-tipping grant scheme, we have now awarded nearly £2.2m to help more than 50 councils tackle fly-tipping at known hot-spots, including in rural areas, such as by installing CCTV. In addition to supporting more infrastructure, the latest round of projects will also help to raise awareness of the household waste duty of care to reduce the chance of waste getting into the hands of fly-tippers in the first place. A selection of case studies from earlier projects have been published so that others can learn about those interventions which were most successful. These are available here.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to respond to Question 24274, tabled by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
An answer to Question 24274 was published on 20 May 2024. I apologise for the delay in responding to the hon. Member.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the oral evidence given by Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Water and Rural Growth) to the Environmental Audit Committee on 15 May 2024, which designated bathing water location was tested three times more than was statutorily necessary.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There are currently 451 designated bathing waters in England and the Environment Agency takes over 7,000 bathing water samples each year. The Bathing Water Regulations 2013 require designated bathing waters to be sampled at least 5 times per bathing season. This year, all bathing waters in England will be sampled more than this statutory minimum. The table below summarises the number of sites at each planned sampling frequency for the 2024 bathing season.
Number of planned samples per season | Number of sites |
20 | 236 |
15 | 109 |
10 | 106 |
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information his Department holds on how many trees have been planted in Rother Valley constituency in the last (a) year, (b) five years and (c) decade.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave the hon. Member for Wellingborough on 22 May 2024 to question 26823.
Asked by: Gen Kitchen (Labour - Wellingborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to help tackle waste crime in Wellingborough constituency.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is committed to tackling waste crime, which is a blight on our local communities and the environment and damages legitimate businesses. We have strengthened regulators' powers, are tightening the law and have increased the Environment Agency's budget by £10 million per year to make it harder for rogue operators to find work in the sector and easier for regulators to take action against criminals. We are also providing grants to councils across the country to help them purchase equipment to tackle fly-tipping. North Northamptonshire council has been awarded £25,176 in the recently announced third round of the Fly-tipping Intervention Grant scheme.
Waste crime in the constituency is addressed at several partnerships, the Northants Waste Enforcement Group, North Northamptonshire Community Safety Partnership and the Acquisitive and Rural Crime Group. All partnerships are linked on serious waste crime and fly-tipping by attendance of the same Environment Agency officer. This ensures information and intelligence is shared effectively.
Engagement and information sharing directs where collaboration is most needed at any time in the county. Wellingborough is also covered by the Northants Project Plutus Partnership, the first in England to identify waste crime as a priority for cash-based money laundering. Project Plutus information sharing led directly to an Environment Agency-led intervention with Police and North Northants Council stopping a large-scale illegal waste operation that had potential to impact neighbouring Wellingborough. This is a significant investigation due to go to trial.
The highly effective Operation Clean Sweep multi-agency days of action have been taking place in the Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire Environment Agency area. The intention is for the Environment Agency to extend this into North Northamptonshire and, when required, into Wellingborough.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the press release entitled Record number of new bathing sites get the go ahead, published on 13 May 2024, whether the new wild swimming spots will be safe to swim in 365 days a year.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The current Bathing Water Regulations 2013 aim to drive improvement to water quality at sites where people swim, by putting in place duties on the Environment Agency, local authorities, sewerage undertakers and others to investigate pollution incidents at bathing water sites so that remedial measures can be put in place, and by encouraging collaboration around these issues.
This year, Defra will consult on reforms to the Bathing Water Regulations 2013. The proposed changes will drive work to improve bathing water quality, enhance monitoring, and enable more flexibility around the dates of the bathing water monitoring season – the current bathing water monitoring offer will be maintained as a minimum. These changes will allow us to increase monitoring outside of the bathing water season in the future, to better embed water quality improvements within processes and to prevent automatic de-designation of existing bathing water sites.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
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 increasing support for citizen science to help improve understanding of the UK's water quality.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Citizen Science initiatives can provide invaluable data about our water environment, which complements monitoring and assessment work conducted by the Environment Agency (EA). In recognition of this the EA is delivering the first phase of a three-year citizen science project: Supporting Citizen Science. This project is working with partners across England to explore how the EA can best utilise citizen science evidence alongside its own monitoring data to further increase understanding of water quality. Recommendations from this project are expected in 2025.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding has been allocated to each of the devolved institutions to help tackle flooding in the last 12 months.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Flood defence spending is a devolved matter so questions about flood management spending and policy should be addressed directly to the devolved administrations. Defra does not have information on devolved administration spending.
The Barnett formula is applied in the normal way to any new funding provided to UK Government departments when the funding is allocated to those departments’ budgets. ‘Barnett’ funding to Devolved Administrations is not ring fenced.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is taking steps to improve (a) data collection, (b) mapping and (c) tracking of (i) critical minerals and (ii) other material streams in (A) electrical and (B) electronic equipment.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has recently announced the world’s first United Nations-backed International Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Resource Management in the Circular Economy. In partnership with national and international partners the centre will deliver environmentally sustainable primary extraction of Critical Minerals and map the flow of these critical and priority minerals across there complete life cycle, from extraction to reuse, recovery to disposal. In addition, Defra also published a consultation and call for evidence on reforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations 2013. This sought evidence in support of future policy measures intended to improve treatment standards and critical mineral recovery from WEEE. Defra is currently analysing and will publish a summary in due course.