Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (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 risk of diseases being spread into the UK from illegal imports of (1) bush meat from Africa, and (2) meat from eastern Europe; and what steps they have taken to mitigate those risks.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra monitors animal disease outbreaks worldwide and assesses the risk that they might enter the United Kingdom (UK) through legal or illegal trade in animal products. Its team of veterinary and risk experts provide rapid outbreak assessments to inform import decisions and enforcement action and undertake full qualitative risk assessments in certain cases. These assessments are published on gov.uk at www.gov.uk/government/collections/animal-diseases-international-monitoring.
Meat imported commercially via Border Control Posts is subject to local authority-led official controls to ensure that it complies with UK import conditions. The Home Office’s Border Force has lead responsibility for identifying and seizing meat imported illegally other than via Border Control Posts.
To further mitigate the risks, it is illegal in the UK to feed catering or domestic food waste to livestock, including pigs.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (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 comments by Professor Chris Elliott of Queen's University Belfast in June that a series of threats to food security are converging to create “chaos” because it is "now much easier to get food that is not of the same quality and standards into the UK”; and what steps they are taking to improve border checks and information-sharing to mitigate these threats.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government published the UK Food Security Report 2024 last week and remains committed to protecting our biosecurity and will maintain the appropriate level of controls to achieve this in accordance with the Border Target Operating Model. Please also see the Border Target Operating Model web page on gov.uk for detailed information on the rationale for border controls (at Final_Border_Target_Operating_Model.pdf).
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (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 media reports that puréed tomatoes produced by Uyghur slave labour in Xinjiang are sold in UK supermarkets as having been produced in Italy; and what steps they are taking to require products produced in a state accused of genocide and slave labour to be labelled as such.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government expects all UK businesses to respect human rights in line with the OECD Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
We work to maintain high standards on the information that is provided on food labels so that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy. When the country of manufacture of a processed food, such as tomato puree, is provided on the label, the label must also show if the origin of the primary ingredient (the tomatoes in this case) is different. In any case, all information must be accurate and not mislead.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (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 paper, 'Insights into the primate trade into the European Union and the United Kingdom', by Svensson et al, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research on 25 April 2023; and what steps they will take to quantify the illegal importation of wildlife into Britain and to end it.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have made no formal assessment of the paper by Svensson et al.
All primates are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), ensuring any international trade in these species is sustainable. Each year thousands of illegal products containing endangered species are seized by Border Force. These seizures are quantified in the UK’s annual illegal trade report to CITES and made available in the CITES Illegal Trade Database.
The UK is committed to combatting the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), including through our Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund and through the National Wildlife Crime Unit’s Strategic Assessment for Wildlife Crime which aims to support UK and Global enforcement responses to IWT.
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Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what further consideration they will give to the recommendations of Horticultural Sector Committee in its report Sowing the Seeds: A blooming English horticultural sector, published in November 2023; and how they intend to deliver a cross-government, industry-backed and growth-focused environmental horticulture strategy.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government appreciates and values the vital work of the horticulture industry, and we welcomed the Committee’s report ‘Sowing the seeds: A blooming English horticultural sector. As part of our mission-driven government we are currently considering how we can achieve our ambitious, measurable and long-term goals for all our farming sectors.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much food was imported from overseas last year; and what action they are taking to reduce the level of imported food and increase food security.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The value of imports of food, feed and drink was £61.1 billion in 2023.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to (1) maintain the total prohibition on the use of asbestos, and (2) rule out any instance of permitting products containing up to one per cent of asbestos as per regulations in the United States, after December 2020.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
At the end of the transition period, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (as amended by the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020) will convert the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulation into domestic law. All existing EU REACH restrictions will be carried over to UK REACH at that point, including those relating to asbestos.
The Government has no plans to revise these restrictions or alter the way asbestos is regulated in the UK.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether polyethylene terephthalate (PET) has a lower carbon footprint than other forms of alternative packaging; why there is only one site in the UK able to recycle PET for use in food grade products; and what assessment they have made of the absence of such facilities on the amount of waste exported for recycling.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has assessed the carbon footprint of different types of packaging as part of its carbon ready reckoner, which assesses the carbon impacts of design changes to a packaged product. WRAP analysis suggests that in assessing polyethylene terephthalate (PET), compared with other forms of packaging, it is not the material that is the determining factor of its carbon footprint, but rather other considerations such as packaging weight, recycled content, performance, and management of the packaging at end of life. The carbon footprint of all packaging materials can be reduced through optimising recycled content and weight.
The number of recycling facilities in the UK is driven by demand from industry in meeting their packaging recycling and recovery obligations, as part of a market-based form of producer responsibility. The decision by manufacturers whether to use recycled content in their products is a complex one. New Government policies, that will shortly be consulted on, such as reform of the packaging waste producer responsibility system and introducing a deposit return scheme for single-use drinks containers, will help to increase the quality and quantity of materials available to recyclers and stimulate demand for secondary materials. The Government has also announced the introduction of a new tax from April 2022 on any produced or imported plastic packaging that does not include at least 30% recycled content, which will further drive up demand.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many plastic bottles they estimate are used in the UK each year; what proportion of these plastic bottles is recyclable; and whether cans and glass bottles do more harm to the environment than plastic bottles.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Evidence received as part of a Government Call for Evidence suggests that UK consumers go through an estimated 14 billion plastic drinks bottles a year, all of which are recyclable. Whether they are actually recycled depends on the local collection service and demand in end markets.
The aim of good waste management is to maximise recovery of useful materials and minimise impacts on the environment. There is evidence of the gradation of harm to the environment from the presence of different materials, however the Government has not carried out any assessment of the relative impacts of different types of litter on the environment.
WRAP’s (Waste and Resources Action Programme) carbon ready reckoner assesses the carbon impacts of different types of packaging. WRAP analysis suggests that it is not the material that is the determining factor of its carbon footprint, but rather other considerations such as packaging weight, recycled content, performance, and management of the packaging at end of life. The carbon footprint of all packaging materials can be reduced through optimising recycled content and weight.
Different materials have different environmental costs and benefits and, as set out in the Resources and Waste Strategy, our goal is to maximise the value of the resources we use whilst minimising waste and its impact on the environment.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the findings in the Living Planet Report 2018, published by the World Wildlife Fund and Zoological Society of London, that (1) there has been a decline of 60 per cent in species population sizes between 1970 and 2014, and (2) species population declines are especially pronounced in the tropics; and what strategy, if any, they have to address these findings.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government recognises that there have been declines in species populations across the world since 1970 and that declines have been pronounced in many tropical ecosystems. This downward trend and the impact it has on peoples’ economic and social wellbeing highlights the need to strengthen international efforts to tackle biodiversity loss.
The Government is committed to being the first generation to leave our environment in a better state than we found it. We are already working worldwide, including in the tropics, to tackle biodiversity loss, by:
Investing more than £36 million between 2014 and 2021 to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, and hosting the fourth international Illegal Wildlife Trade conference last month in London. The conference represented a significant step forward in the global fight to eliminate this trade;
Committing £210 million of Defra’s International Climate Finance to support projects that aim to protect and restore more than 500,000 hectares of the world’s most biodiverse forests. For example, we are supporting communities in Madagascar to protect mangrove forests, which are important habitats for the protection of many species, some of which are found nowhere else on earth;
Ambitious plans under the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan to reverse the decline of many species and help wildlife survive and thrive. We are committed to protecting the oceans, and have called for at least 30 per cent of the oceans to be in Marine Protected Areas by 2030. The UK is also leading the fight against plastic pollution; and
Introducing one of the world’s toughest bans on ivory sales to protect the elephant.
We are also committed to developing an ambitious post-2020 strategic framework for biodiversity and are working with countries around the world to achieve this under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.