Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure more home-grown sustainable food is (a) bought, (b) made and (c) sold through public procurement contracts.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK produces world leading quality food and drink, demonstrating excellence in animal welfare and sustainable production standards. Defra’s consultation on food and catering policy sought views on a number of proposals to update the Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services. This included ways of gaining greater clarity on how widely sustainable UK-grown food and ingredients are used in public sector canteens and kitchens. Changes to the standards must be proportionate and strike a balance between providing information on the impact of government policy and managing burdens on business. We will publish the consultation findings, alongside updated standards and guidance later this year.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to widen accessibility to the Slurry Infrastructure Grant scheme beyond priority areas.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As we set out in the Agricultural Transition Plan, we are planning to run two further rounds of the Slurry Infrastructure grant in autumn 2023 and 2024. These will be larger rounds, offered to a wider set of areas than those prioritised in round 1. We are working with an industry group to consider how best to prioritise funding fairly while maximising environmental outcomes and will publish further details shortly.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when her Department plans to publish the Sustainable Farming Incentive offer for 2024.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In January 2023, Defra published an “Environmental Land Management update: how government will pay for land-based environment and climate goods and services”.
This publication sets out all the activities we will pay farmers and land managers to carry out from 2024, to improve the environment alongside food production. We will publish further details on the 2024 offer later this year.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing Sustainable Farming Incentive funding for all projects aimed to (a) protect water courses, (b) improve public access and (c) reduce carbon emissions.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In January 2023, Defra published an “Environmental Land Management update: how government will pay for land-based environment and climate goods and services”. This publication sets out all the activities we will pay farmers and land managers to carry out from 2024, to improve the environment alongside food production. This includes activities to protect water courses and reduce carbon emissions.
We want to offer further support for access to our countryside, farmland or woodland, and so under our Environmental Land Management Schemes we are also exploring how we can pay for more access actions including new permissive access and expanding educational access beyond groups of school pupils and care farming visitors.
Additionally, through our Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, we provide funding to support and improve Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks. Under this programme we pay for projects that provide opportunities for people to discover, enjoy and understand the landscape and its cultural heritage, including permissive access.
We will publish further details on the 2024 offer later this year.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to introduce a (a) food security index, (b) food security target and (c) statutory duty to monitor and report on domestic food production levels annually.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Food security is a complex and multifaceted issue. There is no single indicator or index that captures the breadth of food security issues effectively. In the Government food strategy, we committed to broadly maintain the current level of food we produce domestically. We already monitor and report on domestic food production levels annually in our Agriculture in the United Kingdom publication. This is produced to meet a reporting commitment in the Agriculture Act 1993. In addition, the Agriculture Act 2020 commits the Government to produce analysis of statistical data relating to food security at least once every three years.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of Environmental Land Management payment rates.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
When we set payment rates, we aim to make them fair and attractive to farmers while delivering value for public money. We will regularly review actions and payment rates over time to make sure that they work for farmers and land managers and are delivering the intended outcomes to contribute to the government’s environment, climate and food production goals. Many of the actions we will pay for through the ELM schemes will help farmers and land managers reduce their costs, improve their efficiency and improve the natural environment. We recently reviewed the payment rates for both Countryside Stewardship revenue options and capital items and they have been updated.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when her Department plans to reply to correspondence from the hon. Member for Stockton North to the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, dated 12 May 2023, on plans for ongoing monitoring and testing of the sea and sea life off the Teesside coast.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
A reply was sent to the Rt. Hon member on Friday 23 June.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the UK’s role in protecting hitherto undiscovered marine species.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The UK Government plays a key role domestically and internationally to restore nature and halt global extinctions, both on land and in our ocean, through which we are delivering a range of activities which will contribute to the protection of known and currently undiscovered marine species.
The UK was at the forefront of efforts to agree the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (“GBF”) at the UN Biodiversity Summit in December 2022. As leader of the Global Ocean Alliance, and Ocean co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, the UK helped deliver this landmark global deal for nature, with ambitious commitments relating to the protection, restoration, sustainable use and management of biodiversity, including the targets to halt human-induced extinctions of known threatened species and to protect at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030 (30by30). Our Blue Belt programme now protects over 4.3 million square km of ocean around our overseas territories, and is an integral part of the UK’s contribution to the 30by30 target. We also continue to help developing countries around the world to protect their marine environments to the benefit of people and livelihoods through our £500m Blue Planet Fund, that aims to address climate change and biodiversity loss, support sustainable fisheries and tackle marine pollution.
At home, the UK published an Environmental Improvement Plan in 2023, which sets out how we will deliver on the 25 Year Environment Plan. In English waters, we have established a comprehensive network of 178 marine protected areas covering 40% of English waters to help deliver the 30by30 commitment for the ocean, and we are now focusing on making sure they are protected properly. We have also committed to improve the Red List Index for England for species extinction by 2042 compared to 2022 levels.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Defra works closely with leads across Government to advise on the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining and the provision of effective protection for the marine environment. This includes collaboration with DBT, who are responsible for state sponsorship of UK Seabed Resources’ two exploration contracts, and the FCDO, who lead the UK delegation to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the international organisation through which States Parties organise and control deep-sea mining activities.
We recognise the growing pressure to extract deep-sea resources and are deeply concerned about the potential impacts of mining activities on the fragile marine environment. This is why the UK will maintain its precautionary and conditional position of not sponsoring or supporting the issuing of any exploitation licences for deep sea mining projects unless and until there is sufficient scientific evidence about the potential impact on deep sea ecosystems, and a strong, enforceable environmental regulatory framework has been developed at the ISA and is in place.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will take steps with the (a) Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and (b) Environment Agency to provide an inventory of the remaining samples from the original events that took place in (i) October 2021 and (ii) June 2022 in the North Sea.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Crustacean samples from the mortality incident are preserved and securely stored by Cefas. There are eight stored composite samples collected between October 2021 and October 2022, including samples collected early in the investigation by the Environment Agency and those obtained by the Fish Health Inspectorate. These comprise individual and pooled samples derived from more than 80 animals. Samples have been stored according to standard ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratory procedures as frozen homogenised tissues, fixed histological preparations, or as partially processed tissues and organs (e.g., extracted DNA or RNA).
Cefas is currently arranging for the remaining samples from the original crustacean mortality investigation to be provided to stakeholders in the Northeast in response to their request for any remaining sample material. Provision of these samples will be in line with reporting requirements for disease under Fish Health Inspectorate obligations.