Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has plans to permit the use of more organic treatments for Botrytis and downy mildew by wine producers in the UK; and if the Government will undertake a review of organic farming treatments to enable the UK wine industry to compete effectively with its European counterparts.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
Any plant protection product used to control fungal diseases such as Botrytis and downy mildew in crops needs to be authorised before it can be sold or used. Authorisation is granted if strict standards for the protection of people and the environment are met.
The organic regulations have a list of approved plant protection products available for organic farmers to manage pests, disease and weed management at crop production stage. Their use comes under restrictive conditions such as compositional requirements and they can only be used in certain situations. Use of the crop products support organic farmers to produce healthy crops including organic grapes for the UK wine industry.
The Government intends to take advantage of our new post EU Exit freedoms and review the organic regulations. The broad aim of the review will be to improve the clarity and functioning of the regulations and through this, support growth in the organic sector. The review will cover the full organics regulatory regime, soil fertilising products, plant protection products, inputs and processing aids to support organic production. Changes to these regulations will require full consultation and consider the impacts on organic equivalence agreements in place with key trading partners.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
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 has taken to coordinate (a) Police and Crime commissioners, (b) the Environment Agency and (c) local police forces to ensure that they are adequately responding to fly-tipping.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Defra is committed to working with partners to stamp out the menace of fly-tipping wherever we can. Our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy set out our strategic approach to tackling waste crime, including fly-tipping. Our focus is on enabling local action by providing a clear legal framework of rights, responsibilities and powers and setting national standards.
Local authorities and the Environment Agency are encouraged to work in partnership with national and local police bodies in carrying out their enforcement functions against fly-tipping. Defra are working with a wide range of interested parties through the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group (NFTPG) to raise awareness of fly-tipping and to develop a fly-tipping toolkit. Members of the NFTPG include local authorities, the National Police Chiefs Council and the Environment Agency. The toolkit will support partnership working, intelligence sharing, dealing with fly-tipping associated with unauthorised encampments and the use of technology to report fly-tipping.
In the Environment Bill, we are bringing forward measures to go further, giving agencies and authorities enhanced powers of entry and access to evidence to strengthen their ability to tackle waste crime, and enhancing our ability to track waste and to crack down on rogue operators.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
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 adequacy of the details available to farmers on the Sustainable Farming Incentive.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
Last November, we published our Agricultural Transition Plan setting out all our future environmental land management schemes, starting with the Sustainable Farming Incentive.
We set out what we intend to achieve by 2028 and how we will help farmers manage the move away from Direct Payments over a seven-year transition period to give everyone time to plan and adjust.
In March of this year, we launched the pilot of the Sustainable Farming Incentive. This was so that we could test, at scale, the future scheme in real-world scenarios, with a wide range of farmers and land managers. Our goal is to collaborate with farmers and land managers to design and deliver a scheme that works best for them.
We are currently undertaking user research and surveys on these pilot applicants with a view to informing and improving the scheme. From this we will learn how farmers and land managers have fared in understanding the information presented to them.
In June, we published a progress update of the Agricultural Transition Plan. Here, we gave further details of the early rollout of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme and what it will pay for. We also set out clear guidance on the scheme’s eligibility criteria and how farmers can be rewarded for their environmentally sustainable actions when it opens in 2022.
We will be publishing more information about the Sustainable Farming Incentive in November, including confirmation of the standard payment rates.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what comparative assessment he has made of the support available to farmers (a) under environmental land management schemes and (b) in the countries with which the Government is pursuing free trade deals.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
We are undertaking an assessment of our proposed reforms to the agricultural industry as they are developed, including the impact of our future schemes that reward environmental land management. It is our intention to publish a comprehensive assessment in due course.
The Government also produces and publishes analysis for each new free trade agreement it pursues and is committed to publishing a full impact assessment following the conclusion of negotiations prior to implementation of an agreement.
The OECD publishes an annual agricultural policy monitoring and evaluation report which contains estimates of support to agriculture. One metric of particular interest from that publication is the ‘producer support estimate’ (PSE) as a percentage of receipts. As an example, it shows that for the UK the PSE is approximately 20% of receipts compared with 1% in New Zealand and 2% in Australia.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
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 whether the delivery timeline of environmental land management schemes will ensure timely access to new payments for farmers moving on from old payments.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
The first Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pilot agreements will start this year. Then, next year we will start to rollout core elements of the SFI, expanding those elements until we have the full offer available in 2024/2025. Importantly, we are running Countryside Stewardship and the SFI in parallel, and both are open to new and existing scheme agreement holders, though we will not fund the same action twice.
The final round of Countryside Stewardship will open in 2023, with agreements starting on 1 January 2024. We plan to start a phased rollout of the Local Nature Recovery scheme from 2023. We will be launching at least ten Landscape Recovery projects between 2022 and 2024. This makes us confident that the full environmental land management offer will be on tap before the end of the transition period.