Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the EU has agreed to list the UK as a third country from which it will accept exports of food and other products of animal origin.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The UK has successfully applied for authorisation (known as ‘listing status’) to export animal products and live animals to the EU from 1 January 2021.The legal instruments giving effect to our listing were published in the EU’s Official Journal on 28 December and will apply from 1 January 2021.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 restricting the use of glue traps as a means of pest control to improve animal welfare.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We are aware of the concerns around the use of glue traps and are engaging with key stakeholders about the issue.
This Government remains committed to high standards of animal welfare. We are in the process of developing a range of important animal welfare and animal-related measures to strengthen our position as a world leader in this field. This includes delivering our manifesto commitments to introduce new laws on animal sentience, to ban live exports, restrict the imports of trophies from endangered species and ban keeping primates as pets.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 12 November 2020 to Question 113020 on Plastics: Pollution, what his policy is for tackling plastic which escapes into the open environment and cannot be collected and therefore recycled.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As stated previously in the Answer of 12 November 2020 to Question 113020 on Plastics: Pollution, our priority is to prevent plastic entering the environment at all, including through littering, with a focus on upstream measures to turn off the tap on plastic pollution. The Government’s Resources and Waste Strategy sets out our plans to move away from a take, make, use, throw society to one where materials are kept in circulation for longer. It also commits to eliminating avoidable plastic waste over the lifetime of the 25 Year Environment Plan. Our Litter Strategy sets out our aim to deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering behaviour within a generation. Littering of any materials, including biodegradable plastics, is a criminal offence, and councils have legal powers to take enforcement action against offenders.
The Government published a call for evidence last year to help consider the development of product standards or certification criteria for bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics as well as to better understand their effects on the environment and our current waste system. The call for evidence closed on 14 October 2019 and we are currently analysing the responses received. We will publish a Government response shortly.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 12 November 2020 to Question 113021 on Seas and Oceans: Plastics, whether it his policy to encourage the use of plastic which biodegrades more quickly than conventional plastics in the event that it is improperly disposed of.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As stated previously in the Answer of 12 November 2020 to Question 113020 on Plastics: Pollution, our priority is to prevent plastic entering the environment at all, including through littering, with a focus on upstream measures to turn off the tap on plastic pollution. The Government’s Resources and Waste Strategy sets out our plans to move away from a take, make, use, throw society to one where materials are kept in circulation for longer. It also commits to eliminating avoidable plastic waste over the lifetime of the 25 Year Environment Plan. Our Litter Strategy sets out our aim to deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering behaviour within a generation. Littering of any materials, including biodegradable plastics, is a criminal offence, and councils have legal powers to take enforcement action against offenders.
The Government published a call for evidence last year to help consider the development of product standards or certification criteria for bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics as well as to better understand their effects on the environment and our current waste system. The call for evidence closed on 14 October 2019 and we are currently analysing the responses received. We will publish a Government response shortly.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 implications for his policies of the findings of the Laboratoire d’Océanographie Microbienne of 4 September 2020 that oxo-biodegradable plastics biodegrade in seawater, and do so with higher efficiency than conventional plastics.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is current practice in science for research to be published in international peer reviewed journals. The peer review process is central to quality assurance and ensures reliable and reproducible research findings enter the public domain and inform debate.
We would be happy to review the data once it has undergone peer review and has been published.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the Answer of 12 November 2020 to Question 113023 on Symphony Environmental: Plastics, did not refer to industry standards (a) BS 8472 and (b) ASTM D6954 in relation to the degradability, biodegradability, and non-toxicity, of oxo-biodegradable plastic products.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
My answer was given in response to my Rt Hon Friend’s question about European Standard EN 13432, PQ UIN 113024.
As stated in the Answer of 12 November 2020 to Question 113023, the Government published a call for evidence in July 2019 to help consider the development of standards or certification criteria for bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics as well as to better understand their effects on the environment and our current waste system. The call for evidence further considered existing standards, which includes BS EN13432, BS 8472, and ASTM D6954. We are currently analysing the responses received to inform future policy and will publish a response to the call for evidence shortly.
As I outlined previously, I appreciate the engagement of industry in our call for evidence and welcome further engagement in future consultations and policy development as our work develops.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 implications for his policies of the opinion issued by the European Chemicals Agency on 30 October 2018 that they were not convinced that microplastics are formed by oxo-biodegradable plastic.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In January 2017, the European Commission asked the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to prepare an Annex XV restriction dossier concerning the placing on the market and use of oxo-degradable plastics. However, ECHA withdrew its intention to prepare the dossier in May 2019, on request from the European Commission, following the inclusion of oxo-degradable plastics in the Single-Use Plastics Directive.
This information can be found at: https://echa.europa.eu/registry-of-restriction-intentions/-/dislist/details/0b0236e18244d9bb.
This decision was a matter for the European Commission and it would not be appropriate to comment on an investigation which was not completed.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
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 12 November 2020 to Question 113024 on plastics: recycling, whether it is his policy that packaging that has passed the tests prescribed by BS EN13432 should not be considered genuinely biodegradable because it is tested to biodegrade in special conditions found in an industrial composting facility and not in the open environment.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As stated in the Answer of 12 November 2020 to Question 113024 on plastics recycling, the Government published a call for evidence in July 2019 to help consider the development of standards or certification criteria for bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics as well as to better understand their effects on the environment and our current waste system. The call for evidence further considered existing standards including BS EN13432. We are currently analysing the responses received to inform future policy and will publish a response to the call for evidence shortly.