Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle digital exclusion.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
It is shocking that the last government published no digital inclusion strategy for 10 years. This Government is determined to remedy that and I hope to be able to say more soon.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to improve access to electric vehicle charging for disabled people.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
To address the specific barriers disabled EV drivers face when using public chargepoints, the Government co-sponsored the publication of the Publically Available Specification (PAS) 1899:2022 standard, which provides specifications on designing and installing accessible public EV chargepoints and considers chargepoints in the context of their wider built environment. The Government continues to work with industry and other parties to ensure effective implementation of PAS1899 and to support the 24-month review of the PAS, which is being led by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and concludes early in 2025. The Government will continue to monitor progress to assess whether further intervention is needed on accessibility over time.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much of the Rural England Prosperity Fund has been spent.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Delivery of the Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) has been devolved to eligible local authorities. This includes assessing and approving project applications, processing payments and day-to-day monitoring. REPF funding is available from April 2023 to March 2025 and all eligible local authorities have confirmed allocations of funding for the two-year period as published.
The latest data we have available for spend is for end of year 1 (March 2024) which showed that £17 million had been paid to projects and in total £71 million had been committed to completed, live or planned projects.
Allocations were weighted 25% year 1 and 75% year 2 for most eligible local authorities to allow development of project pipelines and give time for eligible local authorities to use the full allocations available.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 and land managers successfully applied for capital grants for environmental land management in (a) Glastonbury and Somerton constituency and (b) England in 2024.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Between 1 January 2024 and 28 November 2024, there have been 6573 successful applications for Capital Grants under the Environmental Land Management Schemes in England in 2024.
The Rural Payment Agency cannot provide constituency data at this time due to the boundary changes earlier this year.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 using (a) refillable and (b) returnable packaging to help support the transition to become a circular economy.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Refillable and returnable packaging is a key part of supporting the transition to a circular economy. Defra is working with WRAP to identify and analyse measures that could be used to encourage greater use of refillable and returnable packaging.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 assessment of the potential merits of banning single-use food service materials for dine-in settings that have more than 20 covers.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is committed to moving to a circular economy for plastics - a future where we keep our resources in use for longer; waste is reduced; we accelerate the path to net zero; we see investment in critical infrastructure and green jobs; our economy prospers; and nature thrives. As a part of this transition, managing and reducing plastic waste will be crucial.
The Government has not fully assessed the option to ban single-use food service materials for dine-in settings that have more than 20 covers. We continue to review the latest evidence on problematic products and/or materials to take a systematic approach, in line with circular economy principles, to reducing the use of unnecessary single-use plastic products and encouraging reuse solutions.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 extend the Rural England Prosperity Fund.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Autumn Statement on 30 October confirmed Defra’s budgets for 2024-25 and 2025-26. Funding allocations for individual programmes for the next financial year will be determined in upcoming months through the department’s business planning exercise.
The department is working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and will update on the Rural England Prosperity Fund in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 16 October 2024 to Question 9584 on Plastics: Treaties, what level of (a) production and (b) consumption of primary plastic polymers is sustainable.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK supports measures under the proposed Global Plastics Treaty to reduce the production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels, and the Government recognises that further work will be needed to establish what those sustainable levels are.
The UK will continue to advocate for the importance of following the science, as well as supporting measures to ensure greater transparency across the plastics lifecycle, to allow the future Conferences of the Parties to make evidence-based decisions.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what position the UK will take on (a) chemical recycling and (b) a mass balance approach in negotiations on the Global Plastics Treaty.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a new UN Plastics Treaty, the UK will align with our domestic policy on any provisions related to chemical recycling, including mass balance.
Therefore, where relevant we will recognise that chemical recycling technologies can offer a complementary route to support the transition towards a circular economy, where mechanical recycling is unfeasible or uneconomic and where this waste may otherwise be incinerated.
There are no proposals in the Treaty on the mass balance approach. Through their recent consultation response following Autumn Budget, His Majesty’s Treasury confirmed acceptance of using a mass balance approach to calculate chemically recycled content in plastic packaging for the purposes of the Plastic Packaging Tax in the UK.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 levels of international funding needed to support new financial mechanisms that would be required under the Global Plastics Treaty.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is committed to playing a leading role at the forthcoming fifth intergovernmental negotiating committee to ensure an effective plastic pollution treaty is agreed which addresses the full lifecycle of plastics.
Funding will be needed from all sources, public and private, to support an effective treaty and should leverage synergies with funding to support other global environmental challenges. The level of funding will depend on the outcomes of negotiations on control measures and the associated assessments of the support required for their implementation.