Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 education people on the potential impact of (a) littering and (b) fly-tipping on local communities.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Littering and fly-tipping are crimes which blight our communities and harm the environment. Defra chairs the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group which aims to develop and disseminate various practical tools on tackling fly-tipping. These include a guide on how local authorities can raise awareness of the household waste duty of care, which helps to prevent householders from giving their waste to a fly-tipper. The guide provides suggested messaging, including the impact of fly-tipping locally.
Defra is also proud to support and endorse national clean-up initiatives such as the Great British Spring Clean, and we will continue to use our influence to encourage as many people and businesses as possible to participate in these types of events.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 publish a new national strategy for tackling littering.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At this time, the Government is not planning to implement a new national litter strategy. This Government is committed to reducing waste by transitioning to a circular economy. To support the government in achieving this goal we have convened a Circular Economy Taskforce, comprising experts from across government, industry, academia and civil society, to help us develop a Circular Economy Strategy for England.
As part of this we remain focused on delivering the Collection and Packaging Reforms including the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). The DRS will go live in October 2027. It will introduce a redeemable deposit on single-use in-scope drinks containers which can be claimed back by customers when the empty container is returned. This will reduce litter, increase recycling rates, create high quality recyclate for producers, and promote a circular economy. We remain committed to supporting local authorities to tackle littering and are currently examining what further steps we can take to aid them.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of 24 January 2025 in the Climate and Nature Bill debate, what steps the Government plans to take to strengthen the narrative on imported emissions.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is absolutely committed to tackling the climate and nature crises and has agreed steps to take forward the spirit and substance of the Climate and Nature Bill with the Bill’s Sponsors. An update on these steps will be set out in a Ministerial Statement by the autumn.
Information about the Carbon footprint for the UK – including UK consumption emission figures from imported goods and services - is published by Defra and is available up to 2021 : Carbon footprint for the UK and England to 2021 - GOV.UK . Figures are due to be updated in the Spring.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of 24 January 2025 on the Climate and Nature Bill, how his Department plans to improve collaboration between the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Committee on Climate Change and the special representatives on climate and nature policy.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As part of the Government’s consideration of the Climate and Nature Bill, on 24 January 2025, I committed to strengthen relationships between the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and the Special representative for Nature. There is already a strong working relationship between JNCC and CCC. We intend to build on this at a more strategic level and work has commenced to integrate the Special Representative for Nature into this engagement.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of extending the neutering deadline for XL bully dogs which are not currently medically fit to undergo a neutering procedure.
Answered by Mark Spencer
There are already extended deadlines by which owners must ensure that their XL Bully type dogs have been neutered. Dogs that were older than one year old on 31 January 2024, must be neutered and evidence received by 30 June 2024. Dogs that were younger than one year old on 31 January 2024 must be neutered and evidence received by 31 December 2024. We are considering whether a further extension to this is necessary. We will carefully assess the exemption scheme data on dogs that remain to be neutered to inform our decision.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 improve (a) access to and (b) safety in parks for women and girls.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
(a) As part of our commitment outlined in the Environmental Improvement Plan, we are actively working across government to ensure that everyone can live within a 15-minute walk of a green or blue space. This includes delivering policies such as completing the King Charles III England Coast Path, which will be the longest coastal walking route in the world and creating new open access land within the coastal margin; designating Wainwright’s coast to coast path across the North of England as a new National Trail; and Delivering the £9m Levelling Up Parks Fund to improve green space in over 100 disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
(b) The Government has invested £125 million through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night Funds to make streets safer for women and girls, including in public spaces. The current round of the Safer Streets Fund, Round 4, focuses on tackling violence against women and girls in public places. It has allocated £50 million for 111 projects, supporting interventions such as enhanced street lighting, CCTV installation, bystander training programs, taxi marshals, and educational and awareness raising initiatives. These measures aim to create safer environments and enhance public safety, contributing to increased trust in the police and making communities feel safer. The Government is also supporting the Sex-Based Harassment in Public Bill which would make public sexual harassment a specific offence. The Department for Transport is revising the Manual for Streets guidance which will bring out more explicitly the role that measures such as better lighting and natural surveillance can play in helping women, particularly, feel safer.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 impact of swift bricks on the swift population in areas where such bricks have been included in new build developments.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Through the Environment Act 2021 we have introduced a mandatory duty for developers to deliver a ‘biodiversity net gain’, which will mean that habitats for wildlife must be left in a measurably better state than they were before any development. Specific biodiversity features, such as swift bricks, would normally be required of developments through either the relevant local plan or through the local authority’s development control team. There is currently little research into how swift bricks are used by swifts and what designs work best. As their use becomes more widespread, Defra and its agencies will continue to monitor swift populations and look for indications of positive effects.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of glyphosate on biodiversity.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The Government’s first priority with regard to pesticides is to ensure that they will not harm people or pose unacceptable risks to the environment.
All active substances, including glyphosate, are subject to a scientific risk assessment, drawing on expert advice from the Health and Safety Executive and the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides. This includes an assessment of the toxicity to species that are not the target of the pesticide, such as invertebrates, mammals, birds, and aquatic animals. Pesticides that pose unacceptable risks are not authorised.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 help (a) tackle (i) urban and (ii) rural littering and (b) assess the effectiveness of litter reduction campaigns.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Our Litter Strategy for England sets out our aim to deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation. The strategy contains a number of commitments focused on three key themes, including education and awareness. Progress reports on delivering these commitments are available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/litter-strategy-for-england-progress-reports.
We have also published a data dashboard to understand the extent of litter and littering in England. Further updates to the dashboard will be available in due course. The dashboard can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/litter-and-littering-in-england-data-dashboard.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 impact of trends in the level of local authorities' budgets on litter-related enforcement action.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Department has not made any specific assessment of trends in local authority budgets on litter related enforcement action. Our new Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan sets out how we will support councils to take tougher action against those who litter, fly-tip and graffiti. This includes significantly raising the upper limit on fixed penalty notices, to £1,000 for fly-tipping and £500 for littering and leaving graffiti, and measures to help councils issue more penalties. Receipts from fixed penalties will be reinvested in clean up and enforcement.
We are also currently undertaking a research project on the effectiveness of the different enforcement options available to local authorities and the barriers they face in using these. The project is due to complete by the summer and the results will inform future policy development in this area.