Asked by: Brian Mathew (Liberal Democrat - Melksham and Devizes)
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 potential merits of a holistic approach to tackling carbon emissions.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
While DESNZ leads across Government on net zero, Defra is responsible for reducing emissions from agriculture, land use (including peat), F-gases and waste (including wastewater), whilst simultaneously increasing England's carbon saving potential through our forestry policies.
Defra already takes a holistic approach to tackling carbon emissions, aligning emissions reduction with nature recovery and economic growth.
Without nature’s recovery we can’t achieve our ambitions to drive down emissions, and that is why we are charting a new course to save nature, achieve net zero and grow our economy.
We are working at pace to help farmers transition to greener practices, establish a taskforce to plant millions of trees to help remove carbon from the air and move towards a circular economy to reduce our demand for raw materials that destroy the environment.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to increase funding for (a) free school meals and (b) universal infant free school meals to help source school meals from British produce.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department spends approximately £1.5 billion annually on free lunches for 2.1 million school age pupils under benefits-based free school meals, over 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education, and around 1.3 million infant pupils under the Universal Infant Free School Meal scheme to ensure they receive a nutritious lunchtime meal.
Funding is not ring-fenced, meaning that schools have autonomy over delivery, including entering into catering contracts with suppliers and allocation of funding within their budgets.
The department regularly speaks to food industry representatives on a range of issues including sector challenges such as funding.
As with all government programmes, the department will keep our approach to free school meals, including funding, under continued review.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will ringfence school meal funding.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department spends approximately £1.5 billion annually on free lunches for 2.1 million school age pupils under benefits-based free school meals, over 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education, and around 1.3 million infant pupils under the Universal Infant Free School Meal scheme to ensure they receive a nutritious lunchtime meal.
Funding is not ring-fenced, meaning that schools have autonomy over delivery, including entering into catering contracts with suppliers and allocation of funding within their budgets.
The department regularly speaks to food industry representatives on a range of issues including sector challenges such as funding.
As with all government programmes, the department will keep our approach to free school meals, including funding, under continued review.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on ensuring that every school in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire has a defibrillator.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
All state-funded schools in South Holland and the Deepings that did not already have a defibrillator received them under the department’s programme, which has now closed.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 help ensure that (a) polluted and (b) unsafe (i) beaches and (ii) bathing areas have signage to alert the public.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At designated bathing water sites in their area, local authorities have a statutory duty to display information on a static sign about water quality and pollution sources, and to display advisory notices during pollution incidents. The information on the signage required by the Bathing Water Regulations 2013, consists of: the current classification symbol, with the “advice against bathing” symbol if the bathing water quality classification is Poor; a general description of the bathing water, based on the Environment Agency profile; and the address of a website where more detailed information can be found.
If the bathing water is subject to short-term pollution, the notice includes this information, and the number of pollution risk forecasts made during the preceding bathing season.
Other signage regarding safety and pollution is a matter for the relevant local authority.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of changing the eligibility criteria for the Adoption and special guardianship support fund to include (a) kinship carers with informal childcare arrangements and (b) people under Special Guardianship Orders from 2025-26.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) supports children previously in care who are under special guardianship orders, residency orders or child arrangements orders. We are not proposing wider eligibility changes at this point.
The ASGSF does not allow unused funds to be carried over from one financial year to the next. However, where applications were agreed and therapy started prior to April 2025, that therapy may continue under previously agreed transitional funding arrangements.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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) expedite payments and (b) improve the payment structure of the Rural Payments Agency.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) understands the importance of cashflow for farmers and rural businesses and has in recent years made more payments for the schemes they administer, earlier in the payment window. The agency has also taken steps to improve the flow of payments. This includes making Delinked payments from August in 2024, compared to historically Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments from December, earlier partial payments on Countryside Stewardship, and moving to a quarterly payments structure for the Sustainable Farming Incentive. Schemes will continue to be administered with payment frequency in mind.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether people who started therapy funded by the Adoption and special guardianship support fund in 2024-25 will be permitted to carry over unused funds to fund therapy during the 2025-26 financial year.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) supports children previously in care who are under special guardianship orders, residency orders or child arrangements orders. We are not proposing wider eligibility changes at this point.
The ASGSF does not allow unused funds to be carried over from one financial year to the next. However, where applications were agreed and therapy started prior to April 2025, that therapy may continue under previously agreed transitional funding arrangements.
Asked by: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)
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 help improve data in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment system.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment regulations make producers responsible for the electrical products they place on the market when they become waste. Data is collected on the tonnage of electrical products every producer sells within the UK and the tonnage of waste that they recycle appropriately to ensure they are meeting the requirements of the regulations. Defra is also updating the WEEE Regs to create a separate reporting category for vapes, so vape manufacturers pick up their fair share of recycling costs.
We have convened a Circular Economy Taskforce to help us develop a Circular Economy Strategy for England. The Strategy will be supported by a series of roadmaps detailing the interventions that the government will make on a sector-by-sector basis, supporting government’s Missions to kickstart economic growth and make Britain a clean energy superpower. We are considering the evidence for sector-specific interventions right across the economy, including in electronic waste, as we develop our Strategy.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
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 potential merits of requiring the person responsible for fly-tipping, rather than the landowner, to bear the costs of clean-up.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Where fly-tippers are prosecuted, upon conviction a cost order can already be made by the court so that a landowner’s costs can be recovered from the perpetrator. Local councils can also issue fixed penalty notices of up to £1000 to those who fly-tip, the income from which they must spend on clean up or enforcement. We are seeking powers in the Crime and Policing Bill to issue statutory enforcement guidance to help councils make full and proper use of their powers.
We have also committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess that they have created as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.