Once we have left the EU, maintaining the UK’s high standards of food safety will remain a priority.

Information about the socio-economic background of staff in my department is not held centrally and is therefore not available.

As at 31 December 2016, the proportion of Senior Civil Servants in the Department who are a) men, b) female, c) disabled & e) BAME, are as follows:

a) Men – 59%

b) Female – 41%

c) Disabled – ***

e) BAME – ***

This response covers only those officers who have declared their diversity and to protect the confidentiality of individual employees, percentages based on 5 or fewer individuals are not reported and shown as ***.

Ok, I hope you are sitting when you see this, but following on from the Shipyard application, there is another application for another large building that will fundamentally change the harbour area. The pre-app plan is for a merchant hall, shops, artist lofts, restaurant, 10 flats, a tower and what looks like a ‘gate house’.

This is not a full application, but a pre-application which aims to establish the principle of development and what could be accepted in an area. The development of this area is nothing new, as there was plans for this site back in 2000.

For those who do not know what a pre-app is, basically, an applicant puts in their plans (have to pay for it) and they are given advice on whether it would be acceptable in planning terms. From this advice, the applicant can then submit a plan with any changes (or not) that have been suggested. It is important to note, there are no public comments, but I wanted to let residents know.

Pre-apps are generally public documents to view, and details on this pre-app can be found HERE

Harbour Rd view

The floor plan

The view along Shute Lane

Diversity data is collected from Defra employees through voluntary self-declaration. However, for reasons of anonymity it is not possible to provide a breakdown in the answer as the numbers are too small to report.

Defra does not collect data on educational background or socio-economic status.

In December and January, I made comment about the potential good news for Cornwall to get an overall increase of funding for schools. I did clarify the devil is always in the detail, and there would be no-doubt be winners and losers. There is no getting away from it, but historically, Cornwall has been one of the worse funded areas for education. Not just this current Government, but previous Governments too.

Whilst I welcome the additional £10m to Cornwall under the current proposals, this change does not address the historic differences between richest and poorest authorities. This is in part because one of the proposals in the new funding formula is to ensure no school nationally will face a per pupil funding drop of more than 3% – the same goes for Cornwall schools if there is any reduction in an individual school budget.

The best-funded authorities get around £9.5k per pupil even with a full 3% reduction they will still receive much more than the poorest authorities whose starting point is about £4.5k per pupil. Yes the gap, is slightly narrower, it is light-years away from being closed.

The Council, with the Schools’ Forum (who manage the Dedicated Schools Grant; the forum is populated by head-teachers from all sectors of education) have robustly commented on the Stage 1 Consultation by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and highlighted a number of issues with the proposals. The first issue is the EFA have not sufficiently clearly demonstrated the true impact on their proposed funding formula. Too many figures are being used without clearly identifying the elements included for comparison, potentially resulting in misleading comparisons being made.

Furthermore, against the Council’s and Schools Forum’s advice in response to part one of the consultations, the EFA are basing calculations to fund the children with greatest needs on Free School Meals take-up rather than on more sophisticated and more reliable deprivation measures. The EFA are also proposing to reduce the amounts allocated by IDACI bands (income deprivation affecting children index) so additional funding will be skewed in favour of the free school meal take-up. It is very important to note this is take-up of and not eligibility for.

The proposed funding model focuses very heavily on pupil led funding. The problem with this is that Secondary Schools currently still have to deal with reductions in school population. The protection mechanisms in the formula only protects the funding allocated to each child rather than the total amount of funding received by a school, so reducing pupil numbers results in reduced budgets.  This fall in pupil population is set to be reversed in the next few years. So in effect, schools will receive more, but does not make it right due to the vast differences of AWPU between local authorities.

In a slightly ironic twist, small schools were very worried about their funding, but with the proposed lump sum allocations our very smallest schools will suddenly be considerably better off. Good news for small schools, not so good for larger.

The EFA consultation runs to the 22nd March. There is a stage two for this consultation and all concerns have been put into Cornwall Council official response to the second part of the consultation. This is currently in draft format and will be agreed with representatives of Cornwall Schools’ Forum before we submit it.

I have always been clear and fair that whilst I welcome the additional funding that will be allocated to Cornwall’s pupils, the review does not go far enough in redistributing resources to traditionally underfunded areas like Cornwall.  I will add that I see no justification for the vast differences in AWPU between local authorities. Our schools in Cornwall can only dream of having almost double the amount of funding like other local council have.  I just hope the EFA listens to the views of Schools’ Forum, the Council and head-teachers in making sure our schools are funded properly.

(this article is also featured in the West Briton etc).

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (of strain H5N8) has been circulating in Europe since the autumn of 2016. There have been 10 confirmed cases in poultry in the UK and several findings in wild birds.

As part of our Department’s continued measures to control and eradicate H5N8, a new Avian Influenza Prevention Zone was put in place on 28 February. This zone continues to require that all keepers of poultry and captive birds observe heightened biosecurity requirements regardless of their location. Subject to these measures being put in place, the majority of keepers will no longer be required to house their birds.

Within England, there are some areas that are at a higher risk of H5N8 due to their proximity to substantial inland or coastal bodies of water where wild waterfowl collect. The identification of these areas was based on expert advice in regards to the latest veterinary and ornithological data and has been reviewed by leading experts. In these Higher Risk Areas, which will cover around 25 per cent of poultry premises, mandatory housing or the full range netting of outside areas will be required. This may temporarily result in the loss of Free Range status for keepers in these areas unless they apply netting of range, rather than housing.

During this unprecedented period of high risk, the Secretary of State has taken a decision which is based on the best scientific and veterinary advice in order to control disease and protect our poultry industry. Effective disease control will always be Defra’s priority: disease outbreaks cause birds to suffer, damage businesses and cost the UK taxpayer millions. No significant disruption to the supply of Free Range eggs after 28 February is anticipated.

In terms of work arising from the UK’s vote to leave the EU, some 80% of Defra’s work is framed by EU legislation and a quarter of EU laws apply to Defra’s sectors.

The Department has set up an EU Exit Programme led by a Director General to identify and coordinate work stemming from EU Exit across the Defra group. EU exit work is currently undertaken in all policy directorates in the Department, and in some corporate services areas. It is not possible to give an accurate figure of FTE civil servants working on the programme, given its extensive impact, nor to give a discrete figure regarding budget allocations to EU Exit.

This government has a manifesto commitment to push for high animal welfare standards to be incorporated into international trade agreements.

The UK Government has made no specific assessment of the economic cost to the UK of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing either globally or in the West Indian Ocean. IUU poses a threat to the economic livelihood for many countries with consequences for the marine environment. The UK fulfils its IUU obligations to prevent trade in illegally caught fish by prohibiting the import of fish from countries, identified by the European Union, as not supporting sustainable fisheries.

In 2009, prior to the implementation of the regulation, the European Commission commissioned an evaluation report on the expected impacts of the EU IUU Regulation on third countries. This report aimed to help third countries and the EU access the training requirements to implement this measure successfully, and is available at

https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/sites/fisheries/files/docs/body/iuu_consequences_2009_en.pdf.

When it leaves the EU, the UK will control access to fisheries in the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone and will manage those waters in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Anyone may bring forward a prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Government does not intend to change that position.

In the light of public criticisms of its role, the RSPCA set up the Wooler Review, which made 33 recommendations which the RSPCA have already assessed and considered for action. We believe that the RSPCA should be given the opportunity to implement the recommendations of the Wooler Review and demonstrate its commitment to responding to the concerns that have been raised.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Associated British Foods is one of the great British-owned food companies. It is a world leader in sugar and it has driven competitiveness and investment in the industry. I believe that the sugar industry in this country has a great future.

My hon. Friend will be aware that the UK has taken a leading role in the work on antibiotic resistance, which we have pushed on to the agenda of the OECD, the G7 and the G20. We can adopt processes to reduce our reliance on antibiotics—for example, through the acidification of water in the pig sector. We can always do better, but some of these critical antibiotics have a role in agriculture, too.

As my hon. Friend will know, we already have in place an agri-tech strategy worth £160 million, which has supported more than 100 different projects to support science and technology transfer in food and farming. In addition, we have food information networks to try to create clusters of innovation in the food sector.

My hon. Friend makes an important point about an issue I championed while I was responsible for this part of the portfolio. The Government have recently published proposals for improving the laws on the breeding and selling of dogs, among which are proposals that anyone breeding and selling three litters in a 12-month period will need a licence and that no puppies will be sold under the age of eight weeks.

I do not accept what the hon. Lady says. The truth is that we have guaranteed payments up until 2020. We have ensured that the budget is still there, and we have made it clear that, well in advance of that date, we will be able to give farmers throughout the UK a very clear picture of what future support arrangements will look like.

I specifically discussed proposals along those lines with NFU Scotland at the beginning of this year. A consensus is emerging that there needs to be some kind of UK framework, within which we obviously want to ensure that the devolved Administrations can pursue the policies that are right for them. We will work closely with all the devolved Administrations to ensure that, after we leave the European Union, policy works for Scotland and other parts of the UK.

I reassure Scottish National party Members that I regularly promote Scottish salmon, most recently in the Gulf this week. Scottish salmon is one of our major exports, alongside Scottish whisky, and we champion it at every opportunity.

They have in common the fact that they are policies that originate in the EU. Leaving the EU obviously gives us an opportunity to review some of those things, but we already have a derogation so that farmers who grow winter crops are able to trim their hedges a little earlier. Certain species are very vulnerable—particularly the yellowhammer, which breeds late—and we want to protect them.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, I have consistently made it clear that leaving the EU means that we will take back control of our exclusive economic zone—the area out to 200 nautical miles or the median line—and that will allow us to look afresh at mutual access agreements and shares of the total allowable catch in shared waters.