Asked by: Andrew Pakes (Labour (Co-op) - Peterborough)
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 potential implications for his policies of trends in the number of educational access visits to farms over the last five years; and what plans he has to support educational visits to farms in future.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Educational access features as part of the wider Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes and we are developing it further as a new 3-year capital item; we expect this to be available later in 2025. It will be a stand-alone capital item, though applicants must have an agri-environment or woodland agreement with management actions for this capital item. In countryside stewardship, currently eligible visitor groups are school age children and care farming groups only, but in the new educational access capital item, more diverse groups of people will be able to visit and benefit from an educational experience on farms and woodland across England.
The Farming in Protected Landscapes programme (FiPL) provides grant funding for farmers and land managers to work in partnership with National Parks and National Landscape bodies in England to deliver projects achieving positive outcomes for climate, nature, people, and place. Between July 2021 and March 2024, the programme delivered over 3,400 educational access visits and engaged over 600 schools to create more opportunities for diverse audiences to explore, enjoy and understand farming in these unique landscapes.
Asked by: Andrew Pakes (Labour (Co-op) - Peterborough)
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 potential implications for his policies of the spread of mitten crabs to Cambridgeshire.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government understands concerns regarding the impact of Chinese mitten crab in Cambridgeshire. However, whilst we continue to take steps to prevent the further spread of Chinese mitten crab, Defra is not currently aware of any cost-effective or proven methods of controlling this species in areas it is currently present, such as Cambridgeshire. Due to the known impact of this species we continue to monitor for any new viable methods of controlling and managing populations and to preventing further spread.
Although control in currently impacted areas is not currently possible, Defra has taken clear steps towards reducing the spread of this species. Chinese mitten crab is listed as a ‘Species of Special Concern’, this means it cannot be brought into GB, kept, bred, transported, sold, used or exchanged, allowed to reproduce, grown or cultivated, or released into the environment.
Defra also funds the Fish Health Inspectorate to carry out work to prevent the illegal sale and spread of this species and continues to support the ‘Check Clean Dry’ campaign which offers aquatic biosecurity advice to minimise the risk of spreading invasive plants and animals to new areas.