Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes 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 steps she has taken to support the horticulture industry in funding (a) tanks and reservoirs and (b) other water retention infrastructure to help (i) provide an alternative to mains water and (ii) water plants grown in peat-free alternatives requiring increased watering.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The Government supports the Horticulture Industry with its Water Management Grant, under the Farming Investment Fund which offers grants of between £35,000-£500,000 towards capital items to improve farm productivity through more efficient use of water for irrigation, and to secure water supplies for crop irrigation by constructing on-farm reservoirs and adopting best practice irrigation application. It is open to arable and horticultural businesses growing, or intending to grow, irrigated food crops, ornamentals or forestry nurseries. We have launched two rounds of the scheme at a budget of £10 million each; £7 million of applications have been approved to date.
We recognise that many businesses have changed to peat free operations already. For those who are finding the transition difficult we will be exploring what support might be made available as we move to phasing out the use of peat by 2030.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 17 May 2023 to Question 184463 on Glass: Deposit Return Schemes, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact on the (a) plastic and (b) aluminium packaging industry of the (i) inclusion of glass in and (ii) exclusion of glass from the proposed deposit return scheme.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Businesses have been clear that adding glass to a deposit return scheme will add fundamental complexity for our pubs and restaurants, increase burdens on small businesses, whilst creating greater inconvenience for consumers. We recognise that some sectors are concerned about potential for material switching. However, there are many market forces acting in this space - predicting impacts is very hard. Importantly glass will be included in Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging where obligated producers will be responsible for the disposal costs of their packaging so there will be some balancing of incentives.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes 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 she plans to take to increase glass recycling rates.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
In England and Northern Ireland glass drinks bottles will remain in scope of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging scheme as will all other types of glass packaging placed on the market in all nations. EPR will place recycling targets on producers in relation to glass packaging and require relevant obligated producers to cover the costs of collecting and managing glass packaging arising in household waste and discarded in street bins managed by local authorities.
In our 2022 response to the 2021 EPR consultation the Government set out recycling targets for 2025 and 2030, including glass. These included glass drinks containers in England and Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 17 May 2023 to Question 184463 on Glass: Deposit Return Schemes, whether she has considered the potential merits of setting a recycling target for (a) glass and (b) polyethylene terephthalate packaging of 90 per cent.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
We are working on the recycling targets for each packaging material as part of work to finalise our plans for Extended Producer Responsibility. The individual recycling targets for each material will be set to achieve our environmental ambitions taking into account the specific issues and challenges associated with each material.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans her Department has to tackle waste generated by the consumption of fast fashion.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government’s 2018 Resources & Waste Strategy for England identified textiles, which includes waste generated by the consumption of fast fashion, as a priority sector for action. Our ambitions to minimise textile waste will be outlined in the upcoming document Maximising Resources, Minimising Waste, which constitutes a new Waste Prevention Programme for England. We expect to publish this in summer 2023.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
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 the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, what plans she has to bring forward secondary legislation to help ensure the potential benefits to the UK’s plant breeding and seed supply sector.
Answered by Mark Spencer
We have already taken action to make field trials of precision bred plants easier in England. Several precision bred trials have already taken place and we have received notifications for more trials commencing this year.
Following the introduction of the Act, our next step is to develop the secondary legislation that will establish a new proportionate regulatory regime for the marketing of precision bred plants and animals, food and feed. This secondary legislation is expected in the next one to two years. Through this legislation we will support our leading scientists and breeders to capture the potential benefits of this technology for a more sustainable and resilient food system.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the charges to be introduced by the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging will apply only to packaging that enters the consumer waste system.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Under Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR), producers will pay for the waste management costs associated with the packaging that they place on the market that ends up in households or street bins managed by local authorities. Charges for the management of this waste will apply to all primary and shipment packaging except where producers can evidence that their packaging has been emptied and discarded by a business. This will ensure producers are thinking about the necessity of any packaging they use and the impact of that packaging once it ends up with the end consumer.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans she has to create public access available to all through Environmental Land Management.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Protecting our environment is at the heart of the Government manifesto and we will always back British farmers and our rural communities. Environmental land manage-ment is the foundation of our new approach.
We want to support access to our countryside, farmland or woodland so the public can understand and become engaged with farming and the environment. It can also provide recreation opportunities and health benefits. Under Countryside Stewardship we already pay for a number of actions focusing on increasing public access:
• farmers hosting tours of their farms for school pupils and care farming visi-tors (ED1)
• providing access maps and signage, and preparing sites for access by providing toilet facilities, shelters, new footpaths, bridges and gates, with the objective of greater public accessibility of the countryside (AC1)
• accreditation for staff carrying out countryside educational access visits (AC2)
• a supplement to enable permissive access across woodland, where access is currently limited (WS4)
Through our Farming in Protected Landscapes programme we also pay for projects that provide opportunities for people to discover, enjoy and understand the landscape and its cultural heritage, including permissive access.
As we continue to expand and improve our schemes, building on the successful adoption of Countryside Stewardship, we are exploring how we can update and pay for actions covering permissive access; managing existing access pressures on land and water, and; expanding education access beyond groups of school pupils and care farming visitors.
Public access is also supported by our Landscape Recovery scheme. Projects are assessed for the benefits they will deliver for a wide range of objectives including social outcomes, and are required to complete a site access plan as part of the project development phase.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes 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 impact of seasonality in the plant and tree growing industry on (a) testing and (b) assuring the quality of peat-free growing media.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Government recognises that some sectors within the horticulture industry are encountering challenges in transitioning to peat-free growing media. We have consulted and collected evidence to improve our understanding of these challenges, including seasonality, asking for views about potential exemptions to support the transition. That is why we intend to provide time limited exemptions for those parts of the sector for whom the transition is particularly difficult.
Government also recognises that the quality of peat free growing mixes can be variable. We are in discussions with industry representatives to explore opportunities for developing a minimum standard that will support the industry in making informed buying choices. The prospect of regulation will provide the certainty to the industry to continue this work and realise the associated market opportunities.
Asked by: Ben Everitt (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Government has undertaken an assessment of the cost of (a) maintaining and (b) improving the resilience of the Canal and River Trust’s waterway network to safeguard public safety in response to climate change.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Defra provides the Canal and River Trust with an annual grant of £52 million, under a 15-year agreement signed when the Trust was established in 2012. The grant may be used for the Trust’s charitable objects and the permitted activities set out in the formal Grant Agreement document, which is published on the Government website. This includes maintenance of the canal network infrastructure. Around £10 million of the annual grant is conditional on the Trust meeting key performance indicators covering waterway safety, improvement of towpath condition, and flood defence and mitigation. The Trust’s waterways maintenance expenditure is available in their Annual Report and Accounts, which is published on the Trust’s website.
Climate change impact is being considered as part of Defra’s current review of the Government grant required by the Grant Agreement, to inform a decision about any future funding for the Trust from 2027.