Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
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 he has taken to improve the collection of data in agricultural water use.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency regulates water abstraction in England. The information provided therefore relates to England only.
The Environment Agency’s ‘Managing Water Abstraction Service’ enables abstraction licence holders to submit records of how much water they had taken electronically rather than on paper. The Environment Agency estimates quicker, and easier submission of returns data digitally saves abstractors £247k each year. Some 95% of returns now come into the Environment Agency digitally.
Defra is working on rolling out a Water Farm Practices Water Survey involving crop types and volumes of water used. This will be an extension of the annual farming practices survey, which provides a snapshot of the farming landscape across England. It will give an opportunity to update data last collected in 2010 on agricultural water management.
Natural England is this week due to report on its latest phase of Catchment Sensitive Farming water advisory visits in the Southwest of England.
As part of the Prime Minister’s commitment at last year’s Farm to Fork Summit Defra has funded an agriculture project on supply demand balances which have been piloted in Cambridgeshire and will be rolled out to wider parts of England. The water data from this work will be used to update the next round of Regional Water Resource Plans on agriculture water requirements (together with the Environment Agency’s Water Resources National Framework which will be published next spring). A sister project funded by Defra will also include agriculture water use data to assess and screen local resource options (such as reservoirs and rainwater harvesting) to help groups of farmers improve their water resilience.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
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 reform the abstraction licensing regime in England.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As set out in the Plan for Water, Defra and the Environment Agency are undertaking a programme of changes to modernise abstraction licensing in England. We are working to move the water abstraction licensing system into the Environmental Permitting Regime. This will provide a modern, consistent and flexible legal framework upon which the management of abstraction can be developed to meet the needs of today and the future.
Alongside the legislative changes, the Environment Agency is modernising its digital systems to maximise the opportunities the new legislation provides. This will bring new functionality to improve the way abstraction is managed, including a water abstraction eAlerts system which provides notifications directly to farmers. As the environment and our climate changes, the Environment Agency is adapting its policies in response. The Environment Agency has recently produced a regulatory position statement setting out how flood water can be abstracted for the benefit of abstractors but ensuring that the environment is protected.
The Environment Agency is also undertaking a refresh of the National Framework for water resources, which looks at how best to manage water resources across England. Through this, abstractors from all sectors will come together to identify water needs and the best way of meeting them.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of making provision of data on water use rates a requirement for agricultural water licences.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency regulates water abstraction in England. The information provided therefore relates to England only.
The Environment Agency assesses water use for agriculture as part of the abstraction licence application process both when it first grants an abstraction licence and at renewal. The Environment Agency uses the following guidance to assess water need and use rates: Optimum use of water for industry and agricultural dependent on direct abstraction - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The Environment Agency already receives information about how much water is used under abstraction licences in England. All ‘full’ abstraction licences must include requirements to measure or assess the amount of water abstracted. Licence holders must keep a record of how much water they abstract available for inspection. Licences that authorise the abstraction of 100 cubic metres per day or more must also send a return to the Environment Agency of how much water they have abstracted. The Environment Agency uses this information to assess compliance with licences and the environmental effects of abstraction. It also uses information about past usage to determine whether a time limited abstraction licence should be renewed on the same terms or for example have its quantities reduced.
The Environment Agency collates information about abstraction from all sectors and makes it available to Defra in a report called ‘ABSTAT’. The Environment Agency is currently producing an update to the ABSTAT report and will provide it to Defra in due course.
Defra and the Environment Agency are working to move the water resources licensing regime into the Environmental Permitting Regime (EPR). Under EPR, abstraction data will become public register information.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure that the use of AI in benefit fraud investigations does not discriminate against vulnerable people.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department does not use AI in its benefit fraud investigations.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the eligibility threshold for means-tested free school meals for Universal Credit recipients in line with (a) inflation and (b) national living wage increases.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Over 2 million pupils are currently eligible for benefits based free school meals (FSM). Close to 1.3 million additional infants receive free and nutritious meals under the Universal Infant Free School Meal policy.
A threshold must be set somewhere, and the department believes that the current eligibility threshold level, which enables pupils in low-income households to benefit from FSM while remaining affordable and deliverable for schools, is the right one.
The department does not have plans to change the current eligibility conditions for FSM. However, the department continues to keep eligibility under review to ensure that these meals are supporting those who most need them.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason it is his policy that a person born between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006 is only considered to have British citizenship at birth if their British citizen father was married at the time of their birth to their EU citizen mother.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Between 1 January 1983 and 30 June 2006, a child could only obtain British citizenship through their father if the parents were married. The law changed on 1 July 2006 to allow a person to acquire citizenship through their father, irrespective of whether the parents were married, subject to proof of paternity.
The 2006 change only affects children born after 1 July 2006: the earlier law continues to apply in relation to people born before that date. The change was not made retrospective, to avoid altering a person’s status after their birth without allowing them to make an informed choice about acquiring British citizenship.
A person born before 1 July 2006 can register as a British citizen if they would have become a British citizen automatically had their parents been married. Those applying under this route do not have to pay a registration fee.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment she made of the potential implications for the proposals in her Department's consultation entitled Transitional support mechanism for large-scale biomass electricity generators, published on 18 January 2024, of the recommendation on page 142 of the report by the Climate Change Committee entitled Biomass in a low-carbon economy, published on 15 November 2018.
Answered by Andrew Bowie - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government is consulting on a possible transitional support mechanism to support the transition of large-scale biomass generators to power BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage). The Government values Power BECCS as a vehicle for delivering significant volumes of CO2 removals to support our Carbon Budgets and Net Zero targets. We will continue to consider relevant recommendations from the CCC and other parties when determining next steps; no decision has been taken at this stage.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of the use of woody biomass as feedstock for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage on (a) global land use and (b) the availability of land for growing crops.
Answered by Andrew Bowie - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
To ensure that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) delivers genuine negative emissions, Government will require that only sustainable biomass is used. The 2023 Biomass Strategy included an assessment of sustainable biomass availability to the UK (including woody biomass), to support the UK’s net zero target. The availability of sustainable woody biomass was estimated using updated modelling which included considerations of global land use to exclude unsustainable changes, as well as accounting for wider land use pressures such as food security and biodiversity.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many farmers had agreements under the Environmental Land Management Scheme as of 26 February 2024.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As of 26 February, the Rural Payments Agency had offered 14,035 Sustainable Farming Incentive (including SFI Pilot, SFI 2022 and SFI 2023) agreements with 12,903 accepted and 48,665 agreements under the Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship schemes. Farmers can have more than one agreement in schemes.
In addition, from the launch of the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme (July 2021) to the end of 2022/23 (March 2023), there were over 5,000 farmers and land managers engaged in the programme and over 2,500 projects approved.
Further to this, there are also 22 projects in Round One of the Landscape Recovery Scheme, with a combined total of 266 landowners and 51 tenant farmers. There are 34 projects in Round Two of the Landscape Recovery Scheme; however, the number of landowners and tenant farmers cannot be confirmed yet, as they are currently being enrolled onto the scheme.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will increase humanitarian aid to Sudan.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK continues to provide assistance to people in need in Sudan through our humanitarian aid package of £38 million for 2023-2024. In 2024/2025, the UK bilateral Official Development Assistance to Sudan will double to £89 million.