Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on what date the transparency measures on public tree removal in the Environment Act 2021 will be implemented.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
New Forestry Enforcement Measures and the Duty to Consult were introduced by the Environment Act 2021.
The New Forestry Enforcement Measures help better equip the Forestry Commission to combat unauthorised and illegal felling, with unlimited fines and more transparent enforcement processes. These changes commenced on 1 January 2023.
The Duty to Consult introduces a new duty on local authorities to consult the public on street tree felling that will take place in England, increasing the awareness and transparency of decision making on urban trees and creating a space for the public to contribute to these decisions. The guidance for the new Duty to Consult is being finalised and we aim to commence the measure soon.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to ban the sale of bully bulldog breeds.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We currently have no plans to ban the sale of these breeds.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to protect dogs from unregulated breeding clinics.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 (the 2018 Regulations), anyone in the business of breeding and selling dogs and/or who breeds three or more litters in a twelve-month period needs to have a valid licence from their local authority. All dog breeders, including canine fertility clinics who do not meet the threshold for licensing under the 2018 Regulations, are obliged under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to protect their animals from suffering and provide for their welfare needs in line with best practice. A breach of these provisions may lead to imprisonment, a fine, or both.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 merits of constructing additional flood defences in the city of Bristol due to rising sea levels.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) has been working in Partnership with Bristol City Council to address the flood risk from the River Avon. The Bristol Avon Flood Strategy identifies the increasing flood risk to the city centre due to river levels and the expected age-related deterioration of existing flood risk assets. Today a severe flood from the River Avon would result in the flooding of approximately 1,100 homes and businesses. By the end of this century the number of properties at risk is expected to increase to approximately 4,500 existing properties.
Bristol City Council and the EA are developing the Outline Business cases (OBCs), which will deliver the first phases of improved flood defences from the late 2020’s onward. A phased approach to improving the defences will require £216 million of investment, including £147 million of Partnership Funding over the next 100 years. The Council are working to develop a strategy to identify the sources of this funding.
A strategic approach to managing the risk of flooding in the central area of Bristol will:
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 merits of bringing forward legislation to introduce additional regulations on bonfires to help address the environmental risks posed by those fires.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Domestic bonfires are not illegal but local authorities discourage the burning of garden waste that can cause considerable localised air pollution, potentially causing both a nuisance and health impacts to the local community and surrounding biodiversity. Local authorities are responsible for investigating smoke from bonfires brought to their attention under Section 79 of the Environmental Protection Act, 1990. For a bonfire to count as a statutory nuisance it must unreasonably and substantially interfere with the use or enjoyment of a home or other premises, injure health or be likely to injure health.
If they agree that a statutory nuisance is happening, has happened or will happen in the future, councils must serve an abatement notice (usually on the person responsible). This could result in an unlimited fine if the recipient does not follow the rules of the abatement notice. It could also result in prosecution and an additional fine if found guilty in a Magistrates Court.
At this present time, we are not planning any new measures restricting bonfires. Government guidance on the rules about garden bonfires is available at: https://www.gov.uk/garden-bonfires-rules.
Additionally, to improve awareness among householders, Defra have created a practical guide titled ‘Smoke Control Areas: Do you know the rules?’ and we encourage local authorities to distribute these. This advises householders that they should not burn treated wood such as fence panels as this can emit harmful fumes and toxic pollutants. It also advises that they should be considerate towards their neighbours when lighting bonfires and should always take care not to cause a smoke nuisance. Further materials encouraging people to burn better and reduce harmful emissions can be found at https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/burnbetter/.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 potential merits of introducing legislative proposals to make ecocide a crime.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Ecocide is not a crime recognised under the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute.
Through the Environment Act 2021 we have legislated to make the UK a world leader in environmental protection. This includes publishing a new Environmental Improvement Plan and setting new legally binding targets for England to drive action by successive governments to protect and enhance our natural world.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 financial cost to producers in supply chains of the Packaging Waste (Data Reporting) (England) Regulations 2022.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The impacts of these specific Regulations - and the regulations that are being introduced in parallel in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - on producers are limited to the additional data collection and reporting requirements, and familiarisation with the new Regulations.
These additional data reporting costs are estimated to cost producers across the UK £106 million over the appraisal period of the impact assessment (2023-2033). This includes both increased data reporting costs for the approximately 7000 producers who are already obligated under the current producer responsibility system, and new costs for the approximately 3000 producers who will be newly obligated under these Regulations. These newly obligated producers will also face one-off costs associated with familiarisation at a total estimated cost of £2.5 million in 2023 only.
A full impact assessment on reforms to the UK packaging producer responsibility system has been prepared and published alongside the Packaging Waste (Data Reporting) (England) Regulations.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
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 altering the existing Export Health Certificate requirements so that monthly compliance attestations from EU suppliers can be accepted as part of the sign-off requirements for those certificates for imported meat goods from the EU into Great Britain.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Health certification is a biosecurity measure related to the consignment subject to export. The certification conditions relate to physical parameters for a specific consignment such as vaccination, health tests status, time of slaughter, production details and disease status at time of production.
The certifying Official Veterinarian signs the certificate to confirm the status of the consignment. The act of signing their name on documents should be approached with care and accuracy. An Official Veterinarian would not be able to put their name to a consignment, for example, at the start of the month covering products that might be produced and shipped later that month as they would not have the necessary data to support their signature and professional responsibility.
We are keeping our GB import certification requirements under review to minimise the burden on trade while maintaining our high biosecurity standards.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many of the 10,500 temporary visas the Government has offered to hauliers and food poultry workers.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Under an emergency temporary visa scheme agreed with the Home Office this autumn 5500 visas for poultry workers and 4700 visas for HGV drivers delivering food were made available ahead of Christmas 2021. The scheme for poultry workers closed on 15 November 2021 and the scheme for food sector HGV drivers closed on 1 December 2021.
Details of the numbers of temporary work visas granted for poultry workers and HGV drivers in food distribution will be published in the usual way via the Home Office’s quarterly immigration statistics.
On 1 October, the Home Office also stood up at pace an emergency visa scheme for HGV drivers in the fuels supply sector. This arrangement permitted fully licenced and qualified drivers, identified by the fuel transport sector and endorsed by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to take up employment in the UK on a temporary basis. The arrangement closed on 15 October 2021.
The rapid deployment of this arrangement necessitated those applications for leave to enter be considered at the border, and as a result this group is not discretely captured within Home Office data.
These were emergency, temporary visa scheme measures. We are looking at ways to help both the poultry sector and road haulage sectors recruit more domestic labour to support the overall aim of reducing the sector’s dependency on seasonal migrant labour.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North 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 Department's press release, Gove calls for 30 per cent of world’s oceans to be protected by 2030, published 24 September 2018, how protected oceans will be (a) maintained and (b) enforced as no fishing zones; and how that enforcement is planned to be funded.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK is a world leader on ocean protection. The UK is championing a target to protect at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030 and working to secure its adoption at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties later this year where the post-2020 global biodiversity framework will be adopted. In support of this target, the UK leads the Global Ocean Alliance and is the Ocean Co-Chair (alongside France and Costa Rica) of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.
We are also playing an active role in negotiations to conclude a new agreement, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (“the BBNJ Agreement”). We are pressing for an ambitious BBNJ Agreement to be concluded this year that includes provisions for the designation of globally recognised Marine Protected Areas in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
The UK believes the whole ocean should be sustainably managed to allow the marine environment and sustainable marine economies to thrive. Effective MPAs can cover a range of protection measures including highly protected no-catch sites and those that deliver conservation outcomes alongside sustainable economic activities.
Accountability with effective planning, reporting and review mechanisms will be essential to delivering the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. That is why the UK, in partnership with Norway, is leading a programme of workshops to provide space for discussions between Parties to enhance planning, reporting and review mechanisms to strengthen the implementation mechanisms of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and the CBD.
To deliver on an ambitious the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, it is essential that the framework is supported by a global uplift in financing for nature and capacity-building. Mobilising resources from all sources (public and private), and at all levels (domestic and international) will be vital to supporting implementation of the goals and targets.
The UK is a major contributor to the Global Environment Facility and wants to see it become the Financial Mechanism for the BBNJ Agreement as it is for the CBD. The UK’s new Blue Planet Fund will also provide additional support for marine and ocean protection for developing countries, complementing the successes of the Commonwealth Marine Economies Programme and Blue Belt Programme for UK Overseas Territories.