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  • Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liam Fox on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether food security is part of the Government’s agricultural planning; and what assessment her Department has made of the amount of farmland required to guarantee food supplies in a time of crisis.

    George Eustice

    The Government sees the contribution of UK agriculture as vital to our food security. A detailed analysis of the global and domestic factors affecting UK food security, the UK Food Security Assessment, was published in 2010 and refreshed in 2012. Its main conclusion was that UK food security depends on a combination of a strong domestic food production base and access to a wide variety of world markets. The assessment also analysed the impact of extreme scenarios and concluded that if necessary the UK could feed itself from domestic resources.

    The Government is working on a 25 Year Plan for Food and Farming which will set out ways our domestic food production base can be further strengthened, building on the Great British brand.

  • Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liam Fox on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when the payment window for the single farm payment and basic payment will open.

    George Eustice

    The payment window for the Basic Payment Scheme 2015 runs between 1st December 2015 and 30th June 2016.

    We received around 88,000 Basic Payment Scheme applications for 2015. On the 1st December, the opening of the Basic Payment Scheme 2015 payment window, we paid around 33,000 claims. This means that, as a proportion, around 62% of claims are still being processed.

  • Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Liam Fox – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liam Fox on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of single farm payment and basic payment claims to the Rural Payments Agency are outstanding.

    George Eustice

    The payment window for the Basic Payment Scheme 2015 runs between 1st December 2015 and 30th June 2016.

    We received around 88,000 Basic Payment Scheme applications for 2015. On the 1st December, the opening of the Basic Payment Scheme 2015 payment window, we paid around 33,000 claims. This means that, as a proportion, around 62% of claims are still being processed.

  • Nicholas Soames – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Nicholas Soames – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the (a) location and (b) budget is for each agri-tech centre in each year from 2016-17 to 2020-21.

    Anna Soubry

    The planned budgets (2016/17 to 2020/21) and locations of the four Centres for Agricultural Innovation are:

    Centre for Crop Health and Protection (CHAP) – headquarters in York at the National AgriFood Innovation Campus in Sand Hutton

    16/17

    17/18

    18/19

    19/20

    20/21

    £m

    6.5

    4.3

    4.4

    0.0

    0.0

    Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL) – headquarters in York at the National AgriFood Innovation Campus in Sand Hutton

    16/17

    17/18

    18/19

    19/20

    20/21

    £m

    8.6

    6.0

    4.5

    0.0

    0.0

    Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI) – hubs in Edinburgh, Harper Adams University (Shropshire) and Cranfield University (Bedfordshire)

    16/17

    17/18

    18/19

    19/20

    20/21

    £m

    5.3

    3.6

    3.0

    0.0

    0.0

    Centre for Agricultural Informatics (Agrimetrics) – headquarters in Harpenden (Hertfordshire) at Rothamsted Research

    16/17

    17/18

    18/19

    19/20

    20/21

    £m

    3.2

    2.9

    1.8

    0.0

    0.0
  • Oliver Heald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Oliver Heald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Oliver Heald on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 22 June 2015 to Question 2734, what changes to phosphate pollution levels in Hertfordshire’s chalk rivers have been recorded over the past 12 months; and if she will make a statement.

    Rory Stewart

    Overall, the phosphate levels in Hertfordshire’s rivers have remained stable over the past 12 months. Phosphate can remain present in river sediments for a number of years, and it can take five to 10 years to show any signs of ecological recovery following phosphate reductions.

  • Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Callum McCaig on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what recent estimate the Government has made of the potential annual value of the carbon capture and storage industry to the UK economy by 2020.

    Andrea Leadsom

    A report1 published by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills estimated that the Carbon Capture and Storage sector and supply chain contributed £200m of Gross Value Added to the UK economy in 2013. The Government has not made a recent estimate of the potential annual value of the CCS industry to the UK economy by 2020.

    1 The size and performance of the UK low carbon economy, BIS, March 2015.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/416240/bis-15-206-size-and-performance-of-uk-low-carbon-economy.pdf

    “

  • Paul Flynn – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Paul Flynn – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whether she plans to review the assessment principles on imperative reasons of overriding public interest in big energy planning projects.

    Andrea Leadsom

    These are requirements under European Law. There are no plans to review the assessment principles on imperative reasons of overriding public interest in big energy planning projects.

  • Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Callum McCaig on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking in response to the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change on carbon capture storage and the power sector in its report, Power scenarios for the fifth carbon budget, published in October 2015.

    Andrea Leadsom

    The Department is currently considering the Committee on Climate Change’s advice and Government will set the fifth carbon budget in law next year.

  • Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Callum McCaig on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assumptions her Department relied on to produce the information on expenditure on Contracts for Difference in respect of each eligible technology that it provided to inform the Office for Budget Responsibility assessment of the Levy Control Framework.

    Andrea Leadsom

    The Department takes into account a number of factors to project Levy Control Framework (LCF) spending in relation to Contracts for Difference (CfD) contracts, including capacity for each individual project, strike prices, wholesale electricity prices, load factors and commissioning dates. Some of the CfD predictions that fed into the Office for Budget Responsibility November LCF forecasts are already in the public domain, such as strike prices for signed CfD contracts which are available on the LCCC website. Some predictions are based on commercial intelligence and sensitive information from the developers which we cannot disclose.

  • Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Callum McCaig – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Callum McCaig on 2015-12-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, to what purposes the ring-fenced capital budget for the carbon capture and storage competition has been reallocated.

    Andrea Leadsom

    The Government set out its capital budget and priorities for this Spending Review period on 25 November 2015.