Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate (a) his Department has and (b) the Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have made of the energy costs of moving the herbarium to the Thames Valley Science Park.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No final funding decision has been made in relation to the new herbarium.
The energy costs of the new herbarium building will continue to be considered with high environmental standards built into the project brief.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 the Equality Impact Assessment relating to the move of the herbarium at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to the Thames Valley Science Park.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No final funding decision has been made in relation to the new herbarium.
An equality impact assessment will be undertaken.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 likelihood of other countries asking for elements of the herbarium at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to be repatriated in the event of a move to the Thames Valley Science Park.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No final funding decision has been made in relation to the new herbarium.
Kew Trustees do not have the power to give away or otherwise dispose of any object vested in them and comprised in the collection except under very limited circumstances as prescribed in their governing instrument, the National Heritage Act 1983. Kew is working at pace to digitise the estimated 7 million herbarium specimens by 2026/7 in order that they will be immediately and freely available online to researchers worldwide. Physical specimens will remain accessible at the Kew Herbarium regardless of location.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress his Department has made towards developing a new regulatory regime to be implemented once cross-compliance ends in 2024.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has been working to ensure we deliver fair, effective regulation of farming and maintain our important environmental and animal health standards. All Defra group regulators have been involved in creating a better shared regulatory approach. Recent improvements include:
As part of the Shared Regulatory Approach, we have worked with:
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 include continuation of the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier in the upcoming Agricultural Transition Plan update.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We will shortly publish the Agricultural Transition Plan update and it will include reference to the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 re-introduce environmental protections following the end of cross-compliance in January 2024.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There is an existing and ongoing strong domestic legal framework for protecting the environment, which will continue when cross compliance ends. We have recently consulted about introducing new hedgerow protections and we will publish the outcome shortly. Otherwise, it has been assessed that the gaps between cross compliance rules and regulatory requirements in regard to water, soil and stone walls are either mitigated by regulation such as through generalised provisions in Farming Rules for Water and the Water Resources Act, guidance like the Code of Practice for the use of Plant Protection Products, and standards in the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme. As a result of these, we do not believe farmers will lower standards and there will not be significant negative environmental impacts in these areas.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 (a) help optimise the (i) combination, (ii) scale and (iii) location of the take up of Environmental Land Management (ELM) options for nature recovery targets and (b) ensure that any potential simplification of the ELM scheme design does not affect the UK's ability to meet nature recovery targets.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We set out how we will deliver outcomes for food, farming and the environment through our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes in an update in January. This can be found at Environmental Land Management (ELM) update: how government will pay for land-based environment and climate goods and services. This includes our plans to expand and refine the schemes to contribute more to our environmental targets, including on nature recovery, and to target funding towards actions in places where they can have the biggest impacts, in ways that are joined up across larger areas, and that are designed to deliver the required results.
Since then we have launched the 2023 Sustainable Farming Incentive and further rounds of Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery. We will publish more details on the 2024 offer in due course.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 his Department's publication entitled Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, published 31 January 2023, (a) how the target for 65% to 80% of farmers to adopt nature friendly farming on at least 10% of their land will be measured and (b) which farming practices will count towards this.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government’s Environmental Improvement Plan says we are aiming for between 65 to 80% of landowners and farmers to adopt nature friendly farming on at least 10-15% of their land by 2030.
This will be delivered through a range of measures. These include habitat restoration and creation; activities to reduce the impact of invasive non-native species on sites or to address pressures on sensitive areas; improvements in water storage and management; and changes to limit emissions while maintaining agricultural profitability and increasing productivity.
Farmers will be supported to deliver these measures through our Environmental Land Management schemes (Countryside Stewardship, the Sustainable Farming Incentive, and Landscape Recovery), the Farming Investment Funds and Farming Innovation Programme, woodland creation and tree health grants, and grants to assist with the cost of improved slurry infrastructure and equipment.
We will continue to work with farmers and land managers to ensure we achieve these targets in the most effective way, and in a way that works best for farmers and farm businesses and supports our commitment to maintain domestic food production.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 have applied to the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier in the most recent application window; and what proportion of those were (a) eligible for and (b) offered an agreement.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The application deadline for the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier scheme closed on 28 April 2023 with 1,450 applications received by the Rural Payments Agency. As of 22 November 2023, there were 1,223 eligible applications (84.3%) of which, 585 offers of agreement had been made (47.8% of eligible applications). Applications continue to be processed and agreement offers sent on a daily basis.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 it his policy to publish (a) payment calculations and (b) option uptake data for the Environment Land Management scheme.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We published principles for how we set payment rates in our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes in June 2021. These can be found at Environmental land management schemes: payment principles. The payment rates for all actions in the ELM schemes are published in the information about each scheme on GOV.UK.
We publish data on uptake of individual options in the Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship schemes. The latest data can be found at 2023 - Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship Data.