Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to address concerns about the way in which internal drainage boards are funded; and if so, whether they have a timetable for implementing changes.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has committed to work with the internal drainage board (IDB) sector and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to review IDBs’ current funding and costs. This will include examination of whether any changes are needed to their funding model.
Once the review is complete, Defra and MHCLG will consider the findings and decide on next steps, if any are required.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the publication of Our waste, our resources: a strategy for England on 18 December 2018, what support they intend to provide local authorities to help them improve recycling rates for hard-to-recycle materials.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
In the 25 Year Environment Plan we set out our commitment to accelerate the move to consistency in the materials collected for recycling. Our consultation, ‘Consistency in Household and Business Recycling Collections in England,’ which closes on 13 May, seeks views on waste collectors collecting a set of core materials for recycling from homes and businesses. Waste generated by households and businesses can however include materials that are ‘difficult to recycle’. Waste composition is expected to change over time and recycling technology is expected to improve. The core set of materials collected by local authorities therefore may need to change to include materials that were in the past ‘difficult to recycle’. Any new burdens on local authorities will be funded by the Government, though it is expected that the secondary market for plastics will be stimulated by the reform of the current packaging regulations as set out in the Resources and Waste strategy and the proposed plastic packaging tax.
Taken together, these measures will help to reduce the amount of hard to recycle materials in waste and to increase recycling overall.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their Resources and Waste Strategy for England, published on 18 December 2018, what plans they have to move from a weight-based target system for recycling towards an impact-based system; and what support they will provide to local authorities to achieve this.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government is seeking views on alternatives to weight based targets as part of its consultation on Consistency in Household and Business Recycling Collections in England. This consultation ends on 13 May.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the producers of plastic packaging pay for the entire lifecycle of the materials used.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government set out its commitment to reform the packaging producer responsibility system in the 25 Year Environment Plan, published in January 2018. Our Resources and Waste Strategy was published in December 2018 and contains details on how we will do this, including measures to incentivise packaging producers to make better, more sustainable decisions at the design stage and point of manufacture. Through reform of the current system we will require producers to fund the full net cost of managing the packaging they place on the market, once it becomes waste. These proposals are subject to a consultation, “Reforming the UK Packaging Producer Responsibility System”, which was published on 18 February 2019.
The Government has also confirmed that it will introduce a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in England, subject to consultation. Producers of drink beverage products that would fall within the scope of a deposit return scheme would be required to fund the system. The consultation, “Introducing a Deposit Return Scheme in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland”, was published on 18 February 2019 and sets out our proposals in detail.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much funding has been secured through contributions for investment in flood and coastal resilience schemes from (1) the private sector, (2) utility companies, and (3) local authorities since the start of the current six-year investment cycle.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government is investing £2.6 billion to protect better the country from flooding and coastal erosion between April 2015 and March 2021. This will improve protection for 300,000 homes in that period.
Since the start of the of the current six-year investment cycle the following contributions have been secured for investment in flood and coastal resilience schemes:
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of their Fly-tipping statistics for England 2016–17 which shows a 7 per cent increase in fly-tipping incidents from the previous year, what steps they are taking to deter and punish fly-tipping.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government is committed to tackling fly-tipping on a number of fronts. In 2016 we gave local authorities the power to issue fixed penalty notices for small scale fly-tipping. We have enhanced the Environment Agency and local authorities’ powers to search and seize vehicles suspected of fly-tipping.
The Sentencing Guidelines for environmental offences were reviewed and strengthened in 2014. The maximum penalty on indictment for fly-tipping is imprisonment of up to five years or a potentially unlimited fine. Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Dr Thérèse Coffey will shortly be writing to Ministry of Justice Ministers on the matter of sentencing and we will work with the judiciary so sentencing levels act as an appropriate deterrent
As part of our Resource and Waste strategy we will develop further proposals to tackle fly-tipping. We will enhance partnership working and intelligence sharing, increase the reporting of fly-tipping on private land to target enforcement better and encourage local authorities and the Environment Agency to investigate incidents on private land.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve tree planting rates as part of their forthcoming 25 year plan for the environment, food and farming.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Our ambition is to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it, and we are committed to publishing a long-term plan that builds on our long history of wildlife and environmental protection, and sets out a new approach to managing the environment.
We want everyone to have a say on building polices that enable our environment to thrive, which is why we are working closely with a range of environmental and conservation groups and businesses to develop initial proposals. We will shortly launch a public consultation on our ambition.
We recognise the wide range of benefits that trees can bring to our environment and we are keen to increase planting rates as we work towards our ambition. In the spring we are holding a number of forestry engagement events with stakeholders to discuss the 25 year environment plan and our manifesto commitment to plant 11 million trees during this Parliament.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they are taking to increase the area of publicly accessible woodland for local communities in the light of the Woodland Trust's 2015 report <i>Residential Developments and Trees</i> which found that access to the natural environment can have benefits to health and well-being.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
We recognise the benefits to health and well-being of people being able to access the natural environment and the role of publicly accessible woodland as part of that. In addition to maintaining the public forest estate, which is the largest open-access forest we have in this country, we are increasing the area of accessible woodland in a number of other ways.
For example, as part of our commitment to plant 11 million trees during this Parliament, the Forestry Commission recently launched the Woodland Carbon Fund, to help create new woodlands. This provides increased incentives where permissive access is granted by the landowner for 30 years, as well as support for recreational infrastructure.
We are also working with stakeholders to assess the quantity and quality of the public rights of way network within and alongside woodland, which may lead to improved access; planting a million trees in and around schools; championing the Urban Forestry and Woodland Advisory Committee’s ‘Vision for a Resilient Urban Forest’; and conducting research into the value and benefits of urban trees, like the iTree Eco UK project.