Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his speech to the 2024 Country Land and Business Association conference of 21 November 2024, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the proposed 25-year farming roadmap to include (a) food and (b) food consumption.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At the Country Land and Business Association conference, Defra communicated that we would work together with farmers on a 25-year roadmap. This means we will not be telling farmers what to do. The 25-year farming roadmap will be co-produced to transition to new models that are more environmentally, and more financially, sustainable for the long-term.
Defra will focus on making farming and food production more profitable and sustainable for decades to come.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 ensure super trawlers report marine mammal by-catch to the Marine Management Organisation.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government are committed to protecting our wildlife and putting nature on the road to recovery. Defra are working to improve monitoring and understanding of bycatch incidences as part of the Bycatch Mitigation Initiative. This includes continued annual estimates of marine mammal bycatch mortality through the Bycatch Monitoring Programme and work to look at barriers to bycatch reporting under the Clean Catch project.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to take steps to introduce a national phase-out of the use of pesticides in public areas under local authority control.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is for each local authority to decide the best way of delivering effective and cost-effective weed control in its operations without harming people or the environment. We are working with stakeholders in the sector to increase awareness and uptake of Integrated Pest Management to reduce reliance on chemical pesticides.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 has made an assessment of the implications for his policies of the potential environmental impact of mobile phones going to landfill.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No assessment has been made of the environmental impacts of mobile phones going to landfill.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 had discussions with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on meeting WHO clean air standards.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Ministers and officials from Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care have regular discussions on a range of issues.
The Government is committed to meeting legal targets for air quality, including the targets recently set under the Environment Act 2021. Defra will be working closely with our colleagues across government, including at the Department for Health and Social Care, as we deliver a comprehensive and ambitious Clean Air Strategy including a series of interventions to reduce everyone’s exposure to air pollution and improve public health.