Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington 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 discussions she has had with major supermarkets on potential reductions to the retail price of food following falls in wholesale prices.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra meets regularly with food retailers to discuss a range of issues, including the impact of food inflation. Through that engagement we continue to explore the range of measures supermarkets and producers can take to ensure the availability of affordable food. The Prime Minister held the UK Farm to Form Summit at 10 Downing Street on 16 May, which focussed on how Government and industry can work together across a number of issues affecting the sector.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a (a) ban and (b) tax on artificial grass for commercial and domestic use.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
While the use of artificial grass is not a criminal activity and we have no plans to ban, limit or tax its use, the Government does recognise that, in itself, artificial grass has no value for wildlife. Its installation can have negative impacts on soil health, biodiversity and drainage for flood prevention or alleviation if installed in place of natural earth or more positive measures, such as planting flowers or trees or providing natural water features. The Government has not assessed the potential costs and opportunities of restricting the use of artificial grass products.
Improving biodiversity is a key objective for the Government. We prefer to help people and companies make the right choice, rather than banning or taxing items outright. For example, the Environment Act 2021 introduced a number of policies that will support the restoration of habitat. Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities will work together to drive action, including to create or restore habitats that enable wildlife to recover and thrive, while conservation covenants will help secure habitat for the long term.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to (a) ban the sale of or (b) tax artificial grass which is installed in commercial and domestic properties.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
While the use of artificial grass is not a criminal activity and we have no plans to ban, limit or tax its use, the Government does recognise that, in itself, artificial grass has no value for wildlife. Its installation can have negative impacts on soil health, biodiversity and drainage for flood prevention or alleviation if installed in place of natural earth or more positive measures, such as planting flowers or trees or providing natural water features. The Government has not assessed the potential costs and opportunities of restricting the use of artificial grass products.
Improving biodiversity is a key objective for the Government. We prefer to help people and companies make the right choice, rather than banning or taxing items outright. For example, the Environment Act 2021 introduced a number of policies that will support the restoration of habitat. Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities will work together to drive action, including to create or restore habitats that enable wildlife to recover and thrive, while conservation covenants will help secure habitat for the long term.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the impact of the availability of labour on crop production.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra continues to speak regularly with the sector and other government departments to understand labour supply and demand, including both permanent and seasonal workforce requirements, and to make sure that these requirements are understood across government.
The Government recognises the importance of a reliable source of seasonal labour for crop production, and that it is a key part of bringing in the harvest for the horticultural sector. A key source of seasonal labour is the Seasonal Worker visa route, which allows a pre-defined number of overseas workers to come to the United Kingdom for up to six months to support horticulture growers during peak production periods, whilst maintaining robust immigration control.
To reduce the risk of seasonal labour shortages, on 16 December 2022, the Government announced that an allocation of 45,000 visas will be made available in 2023. This is an uplift of 15,000 visas compared to the allocation at the start of 2022. A further 10,000 visas are potentially available for horticulture should there be demand and contingent on sponsors and growers continuing to improve worker welfare standards.
The Seasonal Worker visa route will continue to operate until at least the end of 2024 and food and farming businesses can continue to draw on EU nationals living in the United Kingdom with settled or pre-settled status to meet their seasonal worker needs.
To inform future decisions on labour across the sector, Defra has launched an independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain. It will consider how automation, domestic labour and migrant labour can contribute to tackling labour shortages. The final report will be published by summer 2023 and the Government response will follow thereafter.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington 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 plans to introduce mandatory monitoring of all sewage outlets.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Using powers in the Environment Act, we will require companies to make discharge data available in near real time to the public and monitor water quality upstream and downstream of their assets. This monitoring will be year-round. In the Storm Overflows Reduction Plan, we committed to bringing these provisions into force this year.
Water and sewerage companies have published Event and Duration Monitoring (EDM) data of sewage discharges annually since 2020 that can be found here. The 2022 data will be published at the end of March 2023.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to introduce a legally binding target to reduce sewage discharges by 90 per cent by 2030.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Our Storm Overflows Plan balances ambition and pace to clean up our water and protect the environment with impact on consumer bills. Our Plan will see £56 billion capital investment, and an estimated £12 average increase in customer water bills between 2025 and 2030. We ruled out options adding £122 to household bills per year for the same period.
The Government will review the targets in 2027. If it is possible to go further and faster while balancing the cost to consumers, we will not hesitate to do so and have made this clear to the water industry.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an estimate of the number of farms that have stopped growing food crops in the last 12 months.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra does not hold any data on the number of farms that have stopped growing food crops in the past 12 months. We produce statistical estimates of national crop areas each year but we do not track changes in land use on individual farms. Changes in national/regional areas can be seen in our annual publications but these could be due to weather, prices and numerous other factors. In addition, information is not collected on the intended end use of the crop so we cannot quantify for certain which crops are grown for food use. Our land area statistics are available at (Agricultural land use in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)).
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington 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 her Department has taken to help support crop-growing farmers with higher costs due to inflation.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We recognise that input costs have increased over the last year or so mainly due to the war in Ukraine. The Government has acted to support the agricultural sector, including crop-growing farmer, in a number of ways.
During 2022 we took several actions to support farmers respond to the increase in input costs. These included:
Additionally in January 2023, Farming Minister Mark Spencer announced more money for farmers and landowners through both the Countryside Stewardship and the Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes, which will provide more support to the industry and drive uptake at a time of rising costs for farmers as a result of global challenges. He also confirmed an expanded range of actions under the schemes, which farmers could be paid for, would be published soon.
We are working closely with the industry to identify where further mitigations are available to tackle the challenges they face. We continue to keep the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments. We have also increased our engagement with industry to supplement our analysis with real time intelligence.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington 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 her Department is taking to maintain levels of biodiversity in the UK.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Responsibility for biodiversity policy in the UK is devolved. In England we are taking unprecedented steps to maintain and increase biodiversity, not least by way of our world leading Environment Act, through which we have set new, legally binding targets to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030 and then reverse declines by 2042. This is complemented by further targets to reduce the risk of species extinction and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat. The Act also introduced a powerful package of new policies and tools including Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities which will work together to protect our native species. We have introduced significant new funding for nature to support these aims, including for woodland and peatland restoration, green recovery and landscape scale nature recovery, and we are developing new Environmental Land Management schemes that reward environmental benefits. Our updated Environmental Improvement Plan for England, required by the Environment Act, will be published by 31 January and will be delivery focused, setting out the actions that will drive us towards reaching our long-term targets and goals. It will also include interim targets to be achieved in the next 5 years
We have also committed to protecting 30% of our land and sea by 2030 to better support and recover biodiversity. We have announced a landmark designation programme to help realise this, including the consideration of two new AONBs and creating a new Somerset Wetlands super National Nature Reserve that will protect 6,140 hectares of precious habitats.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to bring forward the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme to 2023.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Further details on when a Deposit Return Scheme will be introduced will be set out in the Government response to last year's consultation. We are working towards publication shortly.