Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of base fees for steel packaging under the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme on plastic use; and whether she plans to review those fees.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In October 2024, the Government published an updated assessment of the impact of introducing the pEPR scheme on packaging producers as a whole, pre base fees calculation. This assessment did not split the assessment by material sector impact. Since, Defra and PackUK have engaged extensively with waste management experts and the packaging industry across all materials to ensure that the modelling of local authority costs underpinning the pEPR scheme base fees fairly reflects the costs on-the-ground in reality of waste management operations. From year 2 of EPR (2026/27) onwards, fees will be modulated to ensure that less recyclable packaging materials incur higher fees, and more recyclable packaging materials incur lower. The fee modulation policy will be reviewed every 3 years.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate her Department has made of the the amount of smoke pollution caused by wildfires in the UK in (a) 2024 and (b) in 2025; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The estimates for emissions from wildfires in 2024 will be published in February 2026, and the estimates for 2025 will be published in February 2027.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 support farmers who are not registered to the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
This Government is proud to have secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history, with £5 billion being spent to support farmers over a two-year period.
Following the announcement that Defra has closed SFI for the submission of new applications, outstanding eligible applications that have been submitted will be processed.
SFI is an important offer, but it is part of a wider package. We remain committed to investing in agri-environment schemes. We plan to launch the new Higher Tier scheme later this year; Capital Grants will re-open in summer 2025; we continue to move forward with Landscape Recovery; and we are increasing payment rates for Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement holders to recognise their ongoing commitment to delivering environmental outcome.
Funding from the farming budget also supports the provision of advice within the sector. The Farming Advice Service can assist farmers to review what advice and guidance is available to meet their business needs.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 increase the number of available sites for biodiversity net gain credits in south west Devon.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Biodiversity net gain is a post-permission matter, meaning a Biodiversity gain plan needs to be submitted and approved once planning permission has been granted and before the commencement of development.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 to reduce the time taken for planning applications to commence for developments for which biodiversity net gain credits are required.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Biodiversity net gain is a post-permission matter, meaning a Biodiversity gain plan needs to be submitted and approved once planning permission has been granted and before the commencement of development.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 developers to comply with biodiversity net gain policy for large housing developments when credits (a) are and (b) are not available.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government has published extensive guidance on biodiversity net gain (BNG), alongside the statutory biodiversity metric tool, which supports developers in calculating the biodiversity value of their developments.
Defra are also funding the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) to support LPAs administer biodiversity net gain in their areas and support the development of local biodiversity markets. The biodiversity gain sites register operated by Natural England at a national level and allows developers to record off-site gains and evidence that they will achieve BNG.
Where developers are not able to achieve BNG on the development site, or through the purchase of off-site habitat enhancements, the statutory biodiversity credits scheme, also operated by Natural England, is available. The intention is for statutory credits to be a last resort, enabling developers to meet their biodiversity net gain if other options are not possible. Revenue generated from statutory credits will be used to support habitat creation in England.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 meet (a) hon. and Rt hon. Members with constituencies in Devon and (b) key stakeholders to discuss steps to (i) conserve Dartmoor moorland and (ii) protect Dartmoor ponies.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
I will meet with hon. and Rt hon. Members representing constituencies in Devon, and key stakeholders, to discuss these issues.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if his Department will carry out full impact assessments of the (a) social and (b) economic impact of Environmental Land Management Schemes on upland farms.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Uplands farmers will have a key role to play in the future for delivering sustainable food production and our environmental targets. We are committed to Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes and will work with the sector to optimise the schemes, ensuring they produce the right outcomes for all farmers including upland farms, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way.
We plan to increase the transparency of schemes by publishing data on the impact they are having, including on upland farms. We will confirm next steps in the rollout of other ELM schemes, including how we will publish this data, in due course.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
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 help ensure that people farming on commons can benefit from (a) the Sustainable Farming Incentive and (b) Countryside Stewardship.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
We want people farming on commons land to benefit from both the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Countryside Stewardship and are working to make applications to the SFI service available to commoners and other shared graziers. We have asked farmers on commons interested in applying to SFI to contact the Rural Payments Agency so that we can help farmers to prepare to apply and be ready when the application service is available. We will set out more details of the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier offer in due course. To help with a group’s costs of administering a common land SFI agreement, an annual additional payment of £7 per hectare of eligible common land is available.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to enable agri-environment agreement applications before the current agreements expire.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Farmers with existing agri-agreements can apply to enter the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) if the activities under each scheme are compatible and they will not be paid twice for a similar activity on the same area of land at the same time. We are fully committed to making the Environmental Land Management schemes work for all farmers. We will confirm plans for further rollout of the schemes as soon as possible.