Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of marine mammals that have been caught by fishing vessels in UK waters in 2023 and 2024.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Bycatch Monitoring Programme is currently producing the 2024 report on marine mammal bycatch estimates and is expected to be published by the end of the year.
According to the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme there were twenty cases of cetacean bycatch and entanglement in 2023 and fifteen in 2024. This data is taken from necropsy data only and does not include data collected on beaches/at sea by volunteer schemes from non-necropsied animals.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many reports of marine mammal bycatch were made in 2023 and 2024.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In 2023 there were 17 reports of marine mammal bycatch, six incidents of which resulted in injury or death. In 2024 there were 12 incidents reported, and none resulted in injury or death.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what representations they made to the government of the United States as part of their application for a comparability finding under the Marine Mammal Protection Act import provisions.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In 2021 the Government worked with the Devolved Administrations, Marine Management Organisation, Joint Nature and Conversation Committee and academia, to submit a suite of evidence to support the UK’s application for a comparability finding in respect of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The MMPA Import Provisions require that harvesting nations maintain a regulatory programme to address the intentional and incidental mortality and serious injury of marine mammals in their export fisheries that is comparable in effectiveness to the U.S. regulatory programme. In August 2025, having reviewed this this evidence, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States found the United Kingdom’s regulatory programme to be comparable to the US, meaning trade in fisheries products can continue as before.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether any enforcement action has been commenced by (1) DEFRA, (2) the Environment Agency, or (3) other authorities responsible for waste shipping in the UK, in relation to the export of 'end of life' tyres to India to ensure that the waste is treated in an environmentally sound manner.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
(1) The four UK regulators, the Environment Agency in England, Natural Resources Wales, The Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency enforce legislation on shipments of waste.
(2) The Environment Agency is currently undertaking an internal review into its regulation of waste tyres and their export, particularly to India. This review will be finalised by the end of June and the outcomes made publicly available. The Environment Agency is not able to provide details of ongoing enforcement investigations.
(3) The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has stopped the export of eight containers of waste tyres since January 2024. Six of these were destined for India.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of 'end of life' tyres exported to India in the past 12 months have been exported with a T8 waste exemption.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This information is not available as T8 exemption holders are not currently obligated to provide this information under the conditions of the exemption.
Exporters of waste tyres to India are also not currently required to provide information of their exports routinely.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what checks are carried out by DEFRA or the Environment Agency in relation to 'end of life' tyres exported to India to ascertain whether operators involved in the shipment of tyres have taken all necessary steps to ensure waste is managed in an environmentally sound manner.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To assess if ‘end of life tyres’ will be managed in an environmentally sound manner, the Environment Agency operates on a risk-based basis to carry out checks on destination sites, to ensure that they operate to broadly equivalent UK standards.
Checks may include internet based open-source data, requesting the GPS co-ordinates of the site location, verification from the overseas competent authority responsible for issuing the environmental permit, the contractual details of the shipment and a copy of the permit from the exporter.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Hayman of Ullock on 19 December 2024 (HL3060), what remedy the public currently has against a failure by a water company to proactively publish the operational sewage treatment and discharge datasets, the publication of which is not otherwise provided for in law.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs) require public authorities – including water companies - to disclose environmental information proactively. This includes data or summaries of data derived from the monitoring of activities affecting, or likely to affect, the environment.
The Information Commissioner, as the regulatory authority for information rights, promotes good practice by public authorities and may issue a “practice recommendation” to a public authority if it appears to him that the practice of the authority does not conform with that proposed in the Code of Practice. In July 2024, the Information Commissioner wrote to 12 water companies to remind them of their transparency obligations and followed this up in December 2024 by publishing a case study demonstrating both how challenges in publishing data can be overcome and the benefits of publishing frequently requested information.
If a member of the public seeks environmental information that a public authority has not proactively made available, they may request it, using Regulation 5 of the EIRs Where an exception does not apply to the information, the public authority must supply the information within 20 working days of receiving the request. If the requestor is dissatisfied with the way the request was handled, they may request a review from the public authority and if they continue to be dissatisfied, may request a decision from the Information Commissioner.
Alternatively, a member of the public may seek a judicial review of a public authorities’ failure to discharge its duties to disclose information proactively under the EIRs.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, for each of the most recent five years for which data are available, what was the total amount of public expenditure that has been allocated to companies or charities for the purposes of (1) anaerobic digestion and (2) redistributing surplus food for human consumption.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Over the last 7 years, the department has spent approximately £13 million of funding on supported redistribution organisations across the country.
This year, under the new Government, Defra announced £15 million to ensure that farm produce that would often go to waste or be eaten by animals is provided to a network of food banks. This helps the department reach its zero waste targets and ensures that the country's most vulnerable people have a ready supply of healthy food that is grown by British farmers.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of aligning subsidies paid out of public expenditure with the food waste hierarchy statutory guidance.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government has not made any assessment of aligning subsidies with the food waste hierarchy guidance.
Our priority is to prevent food waste occurring in the first instance, this is in line with the food waste hierarchy. Where waste cannot be prevented, edible surplus food should be redistributed. For unavoidable food waste, the government’s Simpler Recycling reforms will require all local authorities, businesses and relevant non-domestic premises in England to arrange for the separate collection of food waste for recycling. The Government's preference is that food waste is treated via anaerobic digestion (AD), the main route for producing biomethane, which is a low-carbon replacement for fossil fuel natural gas.
Asked by: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have estimated what proportion of food being sent to anaerobic digestion plants that is edible and fit for human consumption.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government does not collect data on the proportion of edible food waste sent to anaerobic digestion plants.
This Government will work with business to drive down food waste and make sure food is put on the plates of those in greatest need.
We continue to support the Waste and Resources Action Programme and its work to drive down food surplus and waste in homes and businesses. This includes work to ensure surplus food is redistributed to charities and other organisations who can use it and on programmes to help citizens reduce their food waste.