Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with the Royal Horticultural Society on the environmental impact of the Chelsea Flower Show in terms of reaching net zero.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra Ministers and officials undertake a wide range of discussions with stakeholders on the UK achieving its net zero ambitions. Whilst the Chelsea Flower Show is a key annual event in the horticultural calendar, its environmental impact has not been a topic covered in ministerial discussions with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). The RHS has recently published its sustainability strategy, which includes its target to be net climate positive by 2030.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department is providing to local authorities to implement food waste collections.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Environment Bill will require all local authorities in England to arrange for the collection of food waste for recycling. This must always be collected separately from residual waste and dry recyclable materials so that it can be recycled.
On 7 May 2021 we published a second consultation on recycling consistency. This consultation closed on 4 July 2021 and sought views on the implementation of separate food waste collections, among other policies. The consultation included questions on the materials in scope of collection and delivery dates. We are currently analysing responses to the consultation and intend to publish our Government response in due course.
Given the additional costs involved in separate food waste collection, the Government will ensure that local authorities are resourced to meet any net new burdens costs arising from this policy. We will continue to engage with local authorities on the cost estimates that we provided in the impact assessment accompanying the second consultation, as well as the appropriate timing for funding to be provided to authorities, to enable sufficient lead-in time ahead of implementation.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to prevent fly-tipping on private land; and whether the Government plans to review sentencing guidelines for perpetrators of fly-tipping.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We appreciate the difficulty and cost that fly-tipping poses to landowners and we are working with a wide range of interested parties through the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group, including the National Farmers' Union (NFU) and the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), to promote and disseminate good practice.
Our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy set out our strategic approach to prevent, detect and deter waste crime. This included a commitment to develop a fly-tipping toolkit. The toolkit will be a web-based tool to help local authorities and others work in partnership to tackle fly-tipping.
Budget 2020 allocated up to £2 million to support innovative solutions to tackle fly-tipping. In April 2021 we commissioned a research project considering the drivers, deterrents and impacts of fly-tipping. This research project is due to be completed before the end of this year and will support informed policy making. We are exploring additional funding opportunities, including the role of digital solutions.
We are also preparing a number of legislative reforms to tackle waste crime, which should help to tackle fly-tipping. We are taking forward the commitment in the Resources and Waste Strategy to develop proposals for the reform of the waste carrier, broker, and dealer regime. We are working with industry and the regulator and we intend to consult later this year. We also intend to consult on the introduction of mandatory electronic waste tracking. Digital records of waste movements will allow regulators to detect when waste doesn't reach the next stage, which may indicate illegal activity including fly-tipping.
We are bringing forward several measures in the Environment Bill to ensure agencies and authorities can work more effectively to combat waste crime through better access to evidence and improved powers of entry. These new powers will help ensure waste criminals, such as illegitimate waste operators reliant on fly-tipping for income, are held accountable for their actions.
Sentencing guidelines are issued by the independent Sentencing Council for England and Wales, which decides its own work plan for developing/revising sentencing guidelines. The Sentencing Council has issued guidelines for environmental offences, which cover fly-tipping and other waste crimes. The Resources and Waste Strategy includes a commitment to work with the Sentencing Council to support any updates to the Environmental Offences Definitive Guideline should a review be undertaken.
In recent years we have bolstered local authorities' powers to tackle fly-tipping. We have introduced the power to issue fixed penalty notices of up to £400 to both fly-tippers and householders who pass their waste to an unlicensed waste carrier. We have also increased local authorities' powers to stop, search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
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 importance of (a) the Alcea collection and (b) other national plant collections to preserving the biodiversity of plants in the UK.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra values these national collections and the role they play in conservation. The Charity ‘Plant Heritage’ oversees the National Plant Collections and has a particular focus on rare cultivars, promoting the UK's horticultural heritage and engaging the public. The UK's first Alcea (Hollyhock) National Plant Collection in Lincolnshire is one of around 650 collections nationally. The Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) Kew, which is a Defra arm's length body, is also a holder of some of these national collections. RBG Kew's Wakehurst National Collections like Nothofagus (southern beech) and Betula (birch) come from a range of global locations and may offer valuable indications of which species could be fit and functional in the long-term, in the face of biotic and abiotic threats. For instance, incorporation of the southern beech into our tree planting programmes could help to ensure functional future woodlands.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to support local authorities undertaking food waste collections.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We want to make recycling easier and ensure that there is a comprehensive, consistent service across England. This will help to reduce confusion with recycling, ensure that there is more recycled material in the products we buy and that the UK recycling industry grows. It would also constitute a significant step towards meeting our 25 Year Environment Plan commitment to eliminate avoidable waste by 2050 and contribute towards meeting recycling targets, including our commitment of 65% of municipal (household-like) waste to be recycled by 2035.
Following support at public consultation, the Environment Bill stipulates that all local authorities in England must make arrangements for a core set of materials to be collected for recycling from households. This includes a weekly separate food waste collection. On 7 May we published a second consultation seeking further views on recycling consistency, including setting out implementation timelines for food waste collection and asking questions on the provision of caddy liners to householders. Local authorities will be able to decide the end destination for food waste and garden waste, provided that the material is recycled or composted. One option is anaerobic digestion which presents the best environmental outcome for the treatment of unavoidable food waste, due to the generation of biofuel and digestate.
Any new financial burdens introduced through new statutory duties on local authorities will be assessed and the net additional cost covered by the Government. We are working to assess net additional costs to local authorities and will continue to engage with local authorities on the cost estimates that we have provided in the impact assessment accompanying the second consultation on recycling consistency, as well as the appropriate timing for funding to be provided to local authorities, ahead of introduction of recycling consistency reforms.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has for (a) penalty reforms and (b) community punishments in response to increases in littering.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Littering is a criminal offence, with a maximum penalty on conviction of a fine of up to £2,500, although most enforcement is carried out by local authorities using fixed penalties.
Following consultation, with effect from April 2018, we increased the maximum fixed penalty for littering from £80 to £150, and from April 2019, the minimum fixed penalty was also raised from £50 to £65. We have also given councils in England (outside London) new civil penalty powers to tackle littering from vehicles. We have no plans to make further changes to the level of fixed penalties or fines for littering at this stage.
Community Payback is the work carried out by offenders who have an unpaid work requirement as part of a community sentence. This can already include activities involving clearing litter.
It is often recommended that those found guilty of littering should be required to participate in litter‑picking. However, community sentences are only available for imprisonable offences and are therefore not available for littering offences.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
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 he has had with the takeaway food industry on littering.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Litter Strategy sets out how we intend to work with the relevant industries to tackle certain types of problematic litter, including fast-food packaging.
To this effect, I held a roundtable in September 2020 with large fast-food retailers to understand what action they are taking now to tackle the litter created by their products. It was encouraging to hear about the initiatives they are working on and, more importantly, that they are committed to delivering lasting change by working together to tackle what is an industry wide issue. We are watching closely to see how this commitment translates into action in due course.
We believe that businesses should try to reduce the amount of litter their products generate. Through our reforms to packaging producer responsibility, we aim to reduce the amount of fast-food packaging that is littered and increase the amount of ‘on-the-go’ packaging that is recycled or reused. We will continue to engage with the takeaway food industry on these reforms.
Following responses from our 2019 consultation on Extended Producer Responsibility, we will seek views on policy proposals relating to littered packaging, such as takeaway food packaging, in our forthcoming consultation this spring.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
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 make an assessment of the potential merits of the creation of a UK Garden City scheme to (a) promote horticulture and (b) promote and reinvigorate green spaces that are vital to physical and mental wellbeing during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The merits of such a scheme were considered when responding to a select committee report on Garden Tourism in 2019. Such a scheme risks confusion with the successful City of Culture competition and other extant schemes such as Britain in Bloom. The Government did not accept the committee's recommendation.
We do of course recognise the immense benefits of being able to access green spaces, such as parks and gardens, to mental and physical well-being. Defra is collaborating with the Ornamental Horticulture Roundtable Group on a Growth Strategy for the sector to help ensure the ornamental horticulture sector continues to thrive. This is industry led and underlined by research identifying key areas of opportunity for growth in the sector, including the growing importance of outdoor green spaces to health.
The Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan includes commitments to introduce stronger new standards for green infrastructure and to support local authorities to assess provision. Green infrastructure includes greenspace such as parks and woodlands and other environmental features such as street trees, hedgerows and green walls and roofs. Natural England and Public Health England have published a Rapid Scoping Review of Health and Wellbeing Evidence to inform the standards.
Natural England is testing the standards in trials with local authorities and developers, and they are due to be launched in 2022. The aim is to embed the standards in national planning guidance and policy to ensure that good green infrastructure is secured for all communities through the planning system.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when she plans to publish the Government's 25-year plan for the natural environment.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
We aim to publish a consultation on our ambitions for the 25 year environment plan and the plan itself in due course.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding and resources the Government has made available to cities that have been mandated to establish a clean air zone; and how much such funding she plans to contribute towards health awareness campaigns on those zones.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
In addition to committing £2bn to support greener transport initiatives since 2011, Defra has allocated funding to help five cities in England outside London implement Clean Air Zones and meet new burdens associated with implementing the zones.
On 6 October this year the Government launched its Air Quality Grant for 2016-17, which will be at least £3m - significantly larger than the last three years. This is in recognition of the urgent need to support action on air quality and deliver the Government’s commitment to comply with the legal air pollution standards in the shortest time possible.
Defra also works closely with the Department for Health, Public Health England, and their advisors the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants. Health awareness campaigns in the five cities outside London will be for the local authorities to decide on, based on their understanding of local needs.