Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to assist farmers transitioning towards net zero; and what steps, if any, they are taking to (1) support carbon auditing on farms, (2) standardise carbon calculators, and (3) invest in water management infrastructure.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are taking a range of measures to support farmers’ transition to net zero. We are investing in a range of actions through farming schemes such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery. Our schemes will help farmers deliver environmental outcomes on the land they manage while helping their businesses become more productive and sustainable.
We will also pay farmers for improvements to animal health and welfare, as those improvements in turn can support lower emissions and improve productivity. We will also support market-led approaches such as improved productivity and use of precision techniques.
Robust and accurate carbon audits which are based on business-level data can be valuable in benchmarking performance and help farm businesses plan and action decarbonising measures and enhance management of negative emissions. To help farmers confidently understand the emissions on their land and take advantage of the new financial opportunities this will unlock, we are committed to developing a harmonised approach to measuring carbon on farms. We are also considering how we can best support the implementation of carbon audits through a controlled expansion of the Defra Farming and Countryside Programme sustainable farming advice offer.
We recognise the challenges in improving the robustness and consistency of carbon auditing tools. Defra is currently funding a 'Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture' project to assess the level of divergence between a number of market leading carbon calculators, to understand the causes of this divergence and how it impacts tool users and consider recommendations for harmonisation. Defra aims to publish the full research report in 2024. Building on this research and working with existing tool providers, Defra aims to support carbon tool providers to harmonise their underlying methodologies so that outputs are consistent and comparable, and their ability to serve different customer needs is maintained.
Defra is also working to provide greater access to the calculations and the models developed as part of the UK’s Agricultural Inventory of Ammonia and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions to interested third parties. This will support longer term alignment between the UK’s national GHG accounts and primary data gathered from farms
The Government and the Environment Agency also support the agricultural sector with the Water Management Grant, under the Farming Transformation Fund, for the construction of new on-farm reservoirs and the adoption of best practice irrigation application equipment to help ensure farmers have access to water when they need it most. Through the first round of the grant, launched in November 2021, we are forecast to create an additional 4.7million cubic meters of reservoir storage. The total investment in reservoirs and irrigation equipment is predicted to be £7.4 million. Round 2 of the grant was launched in April 2023 with a total budget of £10 million.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of CCTV in addressing fly tipping hotspots.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Across two rounds of our fly-tipping grant scheme, we have awarded nearly £1.2 million to help more than 30 councils purchase equipment, such as CCTV, to tackle fly-tipping at known hot-spots. Round one has seen good results; for example, Durham County Council has seen a reduction in fly-tipping of over 60% in the areas where CCTV was installed onto existing lighting columns. A selection of case studies from round one, including for Durham Country Council and other projects utilising CCTV, have been published so that others can learn about those interventions which were most successful. These are available at Keep Britain Tidy’s website.
Round two case studies will be made available in due course and we have recently launched a third round that could see a further £1 million handed out in grants next year to help even more councils tackle the issue.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support regenerative agriculture.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Environmental land management (ELM) is the foundation of our new approach to farming. ELM includes the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). This pays farmers for actions that support food production and can help improve farm productivity and resilience, while protecting and improving the environment. It will support sustainable food production and contribute towards the environmental targets set out in the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan. The SFI 2023 opened for applications on 18 September 2023, and farmers who have a live SFI 2023 agreement before the end of the year will receive an accelerated payment in the first month of their agreement.
ELM’s Landscape Recovery (LR) scheme also supports a regenerative approach to agriculture. It focuses on restoring nature across a wider landscape, bringing together landowners and managers who want to take a more large-scale, long-term approach to producing environmental and climate goods on their land. Projects involving elements of regenerative farming can apply. Round two LR pilot applications closed on 21 September 2023, but we have committed to launching a further round in 2024 and expect to continue to launch at least annual rounds in future years as we scale the scheme up.
Our Countryside Stewardship scheme includes actions that can form part of a regenerative or restorative farming approach: to improve soil quality, enhance biodiversity, decrease water pollution, and restore, create, and manage habitats. We are expanding the scheme to make around 30 additional actions available to farmers by the end of 2024, as well as targeting our funding towards actions in places where they can have the biggest impacts, in ways that are joined up across larger areas.
We are also offering farmers and land managers, including those who take a regenerative approach, funding for equipment, technology, and infrastructure that improves farm productivity and benefits the environment through the Farming Investment Fund. This offers funding for equipment, technology, and infrastructure that improves farm productivity and benefits the environment.
The Farming Innovation Programme encourages groups of farmers, growers, businesses, and researchers to get involved in collaborative research and development. Farmers testing out regenerative approaches to agriculture will be able to apply for these grants, and we believe that by working together, they will be able to solve challenges and exploit opportunities for increasing productivity and environmental sustainability in the agricultural and horticultural sectors in England.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much grant-funding was paid to village halls seeking to improve and modernise their facilities in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, (3) 2021, and (4) 2022.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Village halls received grant funding to improve and modernise their facilities under the Village Hall Improvement Grant Fund in the amounts of (1) £392,228 in financial year 2019-2020, (2) £1,180,917 in financial year 2020-2021, (3) £868,357 in financial year 2021-2022, and (4) £203,742 in financial year 2022-2023.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 24 July (HL9373), how much has been paid out as part of the Farming Investment Fund.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Farming Investment Fund (FIF) provides grants to farmers, foresters and growers (including contractors) to invest in the equipment, technology and infrastructure that will help their businesses grow, whilst increasing farm productivity and environmental sustainability. We have paid out over £46 million to date. This includes smaller value grants towards a specified list of items proven to be effective in raising farm productivity alongside environmental sustainability and animal health and welfare outcomes. It also includes larger grants run on a more flexible model where applicants are making higher-value investments for more significant infrastructure and equipment that is transformative to their farm businesses such as on-farm reservoirs, slurry storage and automation and robotics.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the results of Star Count 2023 project published by CPRE, the countryside charity.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government has not made a formal assessment of the results of CPRE’s Star Count 2023. We recognise that light pollution may have an impact on people and the environment and have put in place a range of measures to ensure that artificial light is managed effectively. These include controls in the planning system, the statutory nuisance regime, and improvements in street lighting.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to take forward in the current parliamentary session the provisions of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill on livestock worrying.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government takes the issue of livestock worrying very seriously, recognising the distress this can cause farmers and animals, as well as the financial implications. We will be taking forward measures from the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill individually through other means during the remainder of this Parliament.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support exists for farmers who are not claimants of the Basic Payment Scheme and who want to plant hedges and trees for the purpose of carbon sequestration.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
There are several options available for farmers who are not claimants of the Basic Payment Scheme. Under the Countryside Stewardship (CS) Scheme, we pay for the management of hedgerows by rotational cutting and leaving some hedgerows uncut (BE3) and capital grants to plant and restore hedgerows. This includes hedgerow laying, hedgerow cropping and hedgerow gapping up.
We pay for actions to create woodland under CS and the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO). This includes capital grants which are required to create woodland, such as planting trees and allowing natural colonisation of trees. Producing woodland creation plans ensure all proposals for new woodland consider any impacts on existing biodiversity, landscape character, water, soil and the historic environment, and that local stakeholders have been consulted. Maintenance payments are also essential to support the establishment of young trees.
Woodland creation maintenance payments currently exist across multiple schemes including CS, EWCO and the Tree Health Pilot. We plan to bring these together into a single offer when EWCO transitions into the Environmental Land Management schemes. For Woodland management, under CS, we pay for producing a woodland management plan, woodland improvement and restoring plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites.
Farmers and land managers can also apply to get money for projects that support carbon sequestration via our Landscape Recovery Scheme.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what incentive schemes exist to promote the uptake of renewables among British farmers.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Food production is the primary purpose of farming and we are backing British farmersdelivering long-term energy security with more renewables.
At the No 10 Farm to Fork Summit, the Government committed to expand this year’s grant offer for farmers to fund investments in barn-top solar. This will first be available for cattle farmers wishing to install solar alongside wider upgrades to their calf housing as part of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.
Government have also announced the Farming Investment Fund, which supports farmers investing in technologies with improved energy-use efficiency and use of renewable energy, and have provided funding for the Farming Innovation Programme which offers support to industry-driven research into innovative technologies. Government is also exploring renewable energy sources such as capturing methane on farms for use as biogas and green fuels for farm machinery, supporting further research into innovative new technologies.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 13 June (HL8317), how many (1) arrests, and (2) prosecutions, were made in connection to livestock worrying in the last four years.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Defra does not hold this information. Data on arrests and prosecutions may be held by individual police forces or by the courts.