Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to ensure that the British Society of Plant Breeders correctly applies the small producer exemption from royalty fees applied to grain crops with diverse genetic makeup.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) is the representative body for the UK plant breeding industry. In the collection of royalty fees and farm saved seed payments, the BSPB are acting as independent agents of various breeders and are not contracted by Government to undertake this work. Therefore, any queries on the payment of royalty fees should be made to the BSPB.
The Plant Varieties Act 1997 provides an exemption from making farm saved seed payments if the farmer meets the definition of a small farmer as defined in the Act.
Regulation 3(2)(a) of The Plant Breeders’ Rights (Farm Saved Seed) (Specified Information) Regulations 1998 provides an obligation on a small farmer to inform the rights holder that they are exempt from farm saved seed payments. Therefore, a small farmer must inform the BSPB that they meet the exemption for it to be applied. The arrangements for small farmers are publicised through various sources including gov.uk and via the BSPB.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to introduce a national monitoring system to track agricultural land being developed for ground mounted solar.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
As the Prime Minister said at PMQs last week, we must protect our nation’s food security and therefore our most valuable agricultural land.
As per planning policy, local planning authorities should consider all the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land, when making plans or taking decisions on new development proposals. Where significant development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, planning authorities should seek to use poorer quality land in preference to that of a higher quality. Planning Practice Guidance also sets out a preference for the use of lower quality agricultural land.
I agree that monitoring of the impacts of solar on agricultural land is important and am in discussions with my counterparts in DLUHC and DESNZ.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when the new land use framework will be published.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
As stated in Government’s response to the House of Lords Land Use Committee’s report ‘Making the most out of England’s land’, we are currently preparing a Land Use Framework for England. We announced in the Food Strategy that we would publish the Framework in 2023.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to support farmers in the context of increases in the cost of fuel, fertiliser and feed.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
We are very aware of the significant turbulence in international commodity markets following Russian’s invasion of Ukraine and are closely monitoring the market situation.
Agricultural commodity prices have always been strongly correlated to the price of energy. Farmers face the challenge of rising inputs costs, particularly fertiliser costs, due to the sharp increase in the price of gas. The solution will require us to pioneer new technologies to manufacture more organic based fertiliser products, and to rediscover more older, more established techniques such as using nitrogen fixing legumes and clovers as an alternative to fertiliser.
We are also seeing high costs for inputs including red diesel and animal feed. We are working with the industry to identify where mitigations are available and continue to keep the situation under review.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason landowners and farmers are no longer compensated for allowing permissive access to their land under the sustainable farming initiative; and whether he has plans to offer payments under a different initiative.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
As set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, the Government is a great supporter of the health and wellbeing benefits that access to the countryside can bring.
Support for increasing access into the countryside will be made through existing schemes and support mechanisms already in place, such as Countryside Stewardship which saw a 40% increase in uptake last year. We are still considering our approach to support for increasing and maintaining access to the countryside in our future schemes, including our environmental land management schemes.
To boost investment in the meantime, we have launched a new Farming in Protected Landscapes programme in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - this includes funding for farmers and land managers to provide more opportunities for people to explore, enjoy and understand the countryside.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many of his Department's offices and offices of related agencies are located outside of London; and how many and what proportion of those are located in settlements that are classified as (a) D1, (b) D2, (c) E1, (d) E2, (f) F1 and (g) F2 according to the Rural Urban Classification system.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
The number of offices located outside London is 126.
The proportion of those located in settlements D1, D2, E1, E2, F1 and F2 are as follows:
Classification | % |
D1 | 5.6% |
D2 | 2.4% |
E1 | 7.1% |
E2 | 0.0% |
F1 | 6.3% |
F2 | 0.0% |
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what internal criteria his Department is using to assess locations for relocations of his Department under the Places for Growth programme.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
The Government has committed to ensuring that the administration of Government is less London-centric through the relocation of 22,000 civil service roles to locations across the United Kingdom.
Defra is taking into account a range of factors including our operating model, workforce and location analysis to assess possible locations for our roles. The department will select places that we judge to have the skills, transport links and capacity to meet our needs and flourish in our chosen locations as well as ensuring locations are suitable for the long term success and sustainability of the civil service.
Relocations under Places for Growth represent better value for money due to the lower costs of estates and salaries outside of London. The majority of moves will involve roles becoming available through natural turnover or churn rather than moving people.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will introduce mandatory business food waste reporting by 2022 in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We will consult this year on introducing regulations to make the public reporting of food waste volumes mandatory for certain businesses of an appropriate size. By ensuring businesses are measuring and publicly reporting their food waste, we expect to drive action to reduce it.
Due to the ongoing impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on food and drink businesses, we postponed the launch of this consultation. Some businesses will require time to embed measurement techniques and build confidence in their data. This needs to be balanced alongside the need to continue reducing our food waste, increasing redistribution of surplus and measuring more accurately to understand the scale of the problem. We therefore propose that reporting starts at least one year after regulations are passed. This will offer businesses time to seek guidance and implement measurement techniques within their operations.
Subject to the consultation responses we therefore would be requiring businesses to report food waste in 2024, for food waste measured in the 2023/2024 financial year. This will ensure data is readily available which in turn will allow for comparison and assessment against our national and international targets.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will commit to setting a target for a 68 per cent recycling rate by 2030 covering all wastes in England in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government has committed to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035, with less than 10% municipal waste going to landfill. We set out measures to achieve this target in our 2019 Resources and Waste Strategy and the Environment Bill.
From the combined impacts of consistent recycling collection, Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging and a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, we estimate that we will meet this commitment. These three reforms are estimated to deliver over 30 million tonnes of CO2 emissions savings between 2023-2035.
We have also published plans for monitoring and evaluating progress on the Resources and Waste Strategy and will publish annual statistics of recycling as now.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Stamford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will bring forward to 2025 the ban on biodegradable waste being sent to landfill in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
As set out in our Resources and Waste Strategy, we will continue to explore policies to work towards eliminating all biodegradable waste to landfill by 2030. Climate Change Committee advice is taken into account in policy development. We are also continuing to analyse expected future levels of municipal residual waste and infrastructure needs.
Our measures to introduce consistency in household and business recycling collections includes a requirement to collect separately food and garden waste from households that will, once implemented, help to achieve a reduction in the amount of biodegradable waste that is sent for disposal in landfill.