Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield 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 his Department has taken to help ensure untreated sewage is not discharged into rivers in Enfield North constituency.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have made it crystal clear to water companies that they must reduce significantly sewage discharges from storm overflows as a priority. The draft Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat sets out our expectation that companies work to significantly reduce storm overflows for the first time and we expect funding to be approved for water companies to be able to do so. We have announced that we’ll put that instruction on a statutory footing with a new duty on water companies to reduce progressively impacts of sewage discharges.
We are also already taking action through the Environment Bill and have introduced a range of new legally binding commitments on both water companies and Government to tackle this issue.
The Environment Bill includes the following new duties directly on water companies to:
We are also taking action to challenge underperforming companies and are working hard to drive up monitoring and transparency to tackle non-compliance and pollution incidents, including through the work of the Storm Overflows Taskforce.
The Storm Overflows Taskforce, launched last year, is continuing to push forward work with industry, and we won’t hesitate to hold companies to account where necessary. Earlier this year Southern Water was handed a record-breaking £90 million fine, and Thames Water was fined £4 million and £2.3 million for separate incidents.
Furthermore, the Government has committed to publish a plan next September to set out the detail of how we expect water companies to achieve significant reductions in sewage discharges and the harm they cause.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the (a) quantity of food produced in the UK that was wasted in each of the last five years and (b) environmental and economic cost of that waste.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Defra funds the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to produce periodic estimates of UK food waste levels post-farm-gate. Whilst the next report is not due until 2022, previous reports show significant reductions:
WRAP estimate that this waste has an economic value of £19 billion.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield 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 has taken recent steps to help ensure that fresh, nutritious, unsold food is diverted to charities supporting vulnerable families.
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 £12m has been awarded to over 250 large and small redistribution organisations across the country for the provision of for example warehousing, vehicles, fridges and freezers.
We continue to support WRAP and the Courtauld 2030 redistribution working group that seeks to overcome barriers to redistribution. The most recent outputs from the group is 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.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will hold discussions with Ministers of the Department for International Trade on the finding that plastic packaging and bags from seven of the top 10 UK supermarkets have been found at multiple sites across south-west Turkey as set out in Greenpeace’s report, Trashed: how the UK is still dumping plastic waste on the rest of the world, published in May 2021; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is illegal to export waste from the UK to be dumped or burned overseas. Under the UK legislation on waste shipments, businesses involved in the export of wastes are required to take all necessary steps to ensure that the waste they ship is managed in an environmentally sound manner throughout its shipment and during its recycling. The Environment Agency (EA), as the competent authority for waste shipments for England, has been proactively engaging with the authorities in Turkey on the issue of illegal plastic waste exports over the past year. The Environment Agency has liaised with Greenpeace, following their recent report, in order to seek information which could assist them with their compliance monitoring and enforcement of waste exports to Turkey.
All waste exports need to be made in accordance with the relevant legislation and the UK regulators have a system of inspections in place to verify compliance under the waste exports and packaging regimes respectively. Over the last 12 months, monitoring by the Environment Agency (EA) has had a particular focus on preventing illegal plastic waste exports. In 2020, the EA prevented the illegal export of 46 shipping containers of plastic waste to Turkey, this year they have already prevented the illegal export of 122 containers of plastic waste to Turkey. The EA also currently has four active investigations into illegal waste exports to Turkey. The Environment Agency (EA) has developed a good relationship with the Turkish Ministry of Environment, who have expressed their thanks for the UK’s collaborative approach in preventing illegal exports of waste to Turkey. Turkey has now banned the import of most plastic wastes.
The UK government has pledged to introduce tougher controls on illegal waste exports, and the Environment Bill includes a power to introduce mandatory electronic tracking of waste which will make it harder for criminals to obtain and export waste illegally. We plan to launch a consultation on this in the Autumn.
Within this context, Defra is working with the Department for International Trade on supporting the development of more plastic processing infrastructure within the UK to reduce the need to export these materials to other countries, such as Turkey. The Government is also committed to a bringing forward a ban on plastic exports to non-OECD countries.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield 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 to increase funding for tree-planting and urban greening schemes in Enfield North constituency.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We are committed to increasing tree planting, and will set out policies to achieve this in the England Tree Strategy, including planting and protecting trees in and around urban areas, which are vital to creating healthy places to live.
We have announced a third round of bidding for the Urban Tree Challenge Fund (UTCF) on the 26 April 2021. Currently there are no UTCF funded projects in Enfield North however, applications are open to anyone who wants to plant trees in urban or peri-urban areas.
We have also announced the Local Authority Treescapes Fund (LATF) to increase tree planting and natural regeneration in local communities. £2.7 million will be available this year (2021/22) and is aimed at establishing more trees in non-woodland settings such as along riverbanks or footpaths. Applications will be accepted from unitary and top tier local authorities in England, including London Boroughs.
These funds are part of the Government’s Nature for Climate Fund and support trees in locations with the greatest levels of benefit to ecosystems and society, such as climate adaptation, health, and wellbeing, as well as connecting fragmented habitats.
The London Borough of Enfield was awarded a grant of £678,700 in the first round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund which was for large scale ecological improvements to Enfield’s rivers, including planting 60ha of new accessible woodland which was separately funded by the Forestry Commissions’ Woodland Carbon Fund and installing 20 rural sustainable drainage systems to reduce flood risk to over 1,000 properties.