Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens 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 he has taken with relevant authorities to improve storm (a) resilience and (b) recovery efforts in (i) the North West and (ii) St Helens.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
(a) The Environment Agency (EA) is investing £748 million in the current capital programme (2021-27) to reduce the impact of flooding across the North West.
The EA has 850 assets in the Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire area which it operates and maintains, and staff available 24/7 to respond to incidents. The EA’s network of river telemetry informs its operation of the Flood Warning Service which helps at risk communities prepare for flooding. As part of the recovery from storms, the EA inspects its assets for damage and to confirm that they have operated as expected and meets with communities on the ground to determine the extent of flooding.
The EA attends regular operational meetings with St Helens Borough Council (BC) and United Utilities to review flood risk management issues and solutions. The EA is supporting St Helens BC on updating its multi-agency emergency flood plan and in the development of two new flood risk schemes – Black Brook and Rainford Brook. St Helens BC has an allocation of £769k towards flood defence schemes in the current capital programme
The EA conducts a routine maintenance programme in 13 locations in St Helens to reduce flood risk. It has completed removal of a silt island in Windle Brook, at the silt trap immediately upstream from Dilloway Street debris screen, in the previous 12 months to improve channel capacity and flow.
(b) The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities activated the Flood Recovery Framework on 6 January. For the Storm Henk Flood Recovery Framework activation, eligible areas are those upper and lower tier authority areas:
Local Authorities and LLFAs are responsible for distributing funding to affected people. They are able to do as soon as they notify the Government their area becomes eligible so the scheme can be extended. Government funding for eligible properties will be paid to Local Authorities retrospectively, based on the certified cost of providing relief.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of reintroducing funding to clean up contaminated brownfield land.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Local Authorities have a statutory responsibility under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to inspect their areas from ‘time to time’ to identify and require the remediation of any land.
The Government recognises that in particularly severe or complex cases Landfill Tax can act as a prohibitive financial barrier to the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated land. My Department held a Call for Evidence on this issue and published a Government response in March this year. As a result of this evidence, we are currently developing a grant scheme to fund costs of Landfill Tax to public bodies in England, where such costs are acting as a determinative barrier to the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated land.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens 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 the Government is taking to reduce litter in St Helens.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Local councils are responsible for keeping their public land clear of litter and refuse. The role of Government is to enable and support local action.
Our Litter Strategy for England sets out how we are, among other things, supporting local councils. Progress reports are available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/litter-strategy-for-england-progress-reports.
Our new Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan sets out how we are going further by supporting councils to take tougher action against those who litter. This includes significantly raising the upper limit on fixed penalty notices from £150 to £500, and introducing measures to help councils and others carry out more enforcement activity.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 there were in (a) St Helens, (b) Merseyside and (c) the North West in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Statistical estimates of the number of farmers on commercial agricultural holdings are shown in the table below. Farm labour data is sourced from the Defra June Survey of Agriculture but detailed geographical data are only available in the years where the survey is sent to a larger sample of farms.
Farmer are defined here as full time and part time principal farmers, business partners, directors and spouses.
Number of farmers in St Helens, Merseyside and the North West 2010 to 2021
| St Helens (a) | Merseyside (a) | North West |
2010 | 141 | 405 | 21,341 |
2011 | : | : | 21,758 |
2012 | : | : | 21,619 |
2013 | 151 | 429 | 21,753 |
2014 | : | : | 22,022 |
2015 | : | : | 22,116 |
2016 | 157 | 442 | 21,730 |
2017 | : | : | 22,051 |
2018 | : | : | 22,382 |
2019 | : | : | 22,347 |
2020(b) | : | : | : |
2021 | 131 | - | 22,440 |
Notes
: represents data that are not available as the survey was too small to produce geographical breakdowns to this level of granularity.
- represents data that has been suppressed to protect confidentiality, due to the small number of values in this cell
(a) Data is only available at this detailed geography in large scale survey years (2010, 2013, 2016, 2021)
(b) It was not possible to run a full-scale June Survey in 2020 due to the Coronavirus outbreak and as a result, regional breakdowns are not available for that year.
Commercial holdings are those registered with the Rural Payments Agency for payments or livestock purposes and with significant levels of farming activity (as recorded in responses to the Defra June Survey of Agriculture or the Cattle Tracing System). Holdings are only included if they have more than five hectares of agricultural land, one hectare of orchards, 0.5 hectares of vegetables or 0.1 hectares of protected crops, or more than 10 cows, 50 pigs, 20 sheep, 20 goats or 1,000 poultry.
Full data series by region, county and local authority are published here:
Structure of the agricultural industry in England and the UK at June web page.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is taking steps with relevant (a) local authorities and (b) waterways agencies to ensure the future viability of the Sankey Canal.
Answered by Steve Double
Responsibility for different sections of the Sankey Canal falls to three local authorities (Halton, Warrington and St Helens Borough Councils), the Canal and River Trust, and a limited company. Ministers do not have a role in operational matters on inland waterways. It is for the navigation authorities to decide on funding allocations for their maintenance.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 is taking steps to ensure that water levels in (a) canals and (b) waterways are at sustainable levels.
Answered by Steve Double
Ministers do not have a role in operational matters on inland waterways, including water levels. It is for the navigation authorities to manage the maintenance and operation of the waterways for which they have responsibility, working with local authorities and the Environment Agency where necessary.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason he has not extended his Department’s Food Waste Fund to help charities redistribute surplus food to communities and prevent it going to waste.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The safe and speedy redistribution of surplus food is a priority, be it from retail, manufacture or the hospitality and food service sector, which all may have their own issues and challenges in their supply chains. Defra supports a range of action to overcome these challenges, reduce food waste and help get more surplus food to charities.
Since 2017 Defra has made a series of grants available to help the redistribution sector. In total nearly £12 million has been awarded to more than 250 large and small redistribution organisations across the country for the provision of, for example, warehousing, vehicles, fridges and freezers that will support the sector for months and years to come.
We continue to support the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and the Courtauld 2030 redistribution working group that seeks to overcome barriers to redistribution. The most recent outputs from the group are the publication of new guidance on storing surplus food, best practice on redistributing own brand products and the tool framework for effective redistribution.
We remain committed to the WRAP-led food waste reduction roadmap which supports business to target, measure and specifically act on reducing food waste, for instance by making sure food surplus is redistributed.
The amount of surplus food redistributed in 2020, over 92,000 tonnes, was worth £280 million and was the equivalent of 220 million meals. Since UK-level data was first reported in 2015, overall levels of redistribution have increased three-fold.
Defra delivered a comprehensive package of support for vulnerable individuals to provide additional support for children and families during the winter period 2020/21. This package included £16 million of funding to FareShare to work with local charities across England to provide food for those struggling financially due to the impacts of the pandemic.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens 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 his Department is taking to support national food redistribution charities to (a) tackle food insecurity and (b) prevent surplus food waste.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The safe and speedy redistribution of surplus food is a priority, be it from retail, manufacture or the hospitality and food service sector, which all may have their own issues and challenges in their supply chains. Defra supports a range of action to overcome these challenges, reduce food waste and help get more surplus food to charities.
Since 2017 Defra has made a series of grants available to help the redistribution sector. In total nearly £12 million has been awarded to more than 250 large and small redistribution organisations across the country for the provision of, for example, warehousing, vehicles, fridges and freezers that will support the sector for months and years to come.
We continue to support the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and the Courtauld 2030 redistribution working group that seeks to overcome barriers to redistribution. The most recent outputs from the group are the publication of new guidance on storing surplus food, best practice on redistributing own brand products and the tool framework for effective redistribution.
We remain committed to the WRAP-led food waste reduction roadmap which supports business to target, measure and specifically act on reducing food waste, for instance by making sure food surplus is redistributed.
The amount of surplus food redistributed in 2020, over 92,000 tonnes, was worth £280 million and was the equivalent of 220 million meals. Since UK-level data was first reported in 2015, overall levels of redistribution have increased three-fold.
Defra delivered a comprehensive package of support for vulnerable individuals to provide additional support for children and families during the winter period 2020/21. This package included £16 million of funding to FareShare to work with local charities across England to provide food for those struggling financially due to the impacts of the pandemic.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens 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 he is taking with (a) local police forces, (b) agricultural and rural organisations and (c) rural communities to (i) raise awareness of rural crime and (ii) make reporting incidences of that crime easier.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government remains committed to driving down crime in rural areas. My department engages regularly with the Home Office, police and rural organisations to discuss tackling rural crime and we recognise the concern which crime can cause to rural communities.
To boost policing capabilities, this Government has already recruited 9,814 additional police officers as of 30 June this year, as part of the biggest recruitment drive in decades. We are also supporting external partners in their activity to raise awareness of rural crime. For instance, Crimestoppers, along with leading charitable and enforcement agencies has produced a national campaign to raise the profile of rural crime.
Police and Crime Commissioners and Chief Constables understand the priorities of their local communities and take these into account in deciding how resources should be allocated.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 online veterinary services during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), the regulatory body of the veterinary profession, has temporarily permitted the remote prescribing of medicines as part of allowing practices to operate safely and effectively during the pandemic. This is subject to ongoing review by the RCVS.