I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for York Central on 31st January 2017, 61557. Circus animals licenced to perform in circuses are licensed under the Welfare of Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (England) Regulations 2012.

The UK is committed to continuing to participate fully in the work of the International Whaling Commission following our exit from the EU. We will maximise the opportunities afforded us from exiting the EU while maintaining the close and important relationships we have with EU Member States party to the Convention. We will ensure that the UK remains a strong and influential voice and continues to be at the forefront of championing efforts to improve conservation and welfare outcomes for cetaceans globally.

The UK Chief Veterinary Officer has published his advice that the outcome of the 2016 badger culling operations indicates that industry-led culling can deliver the level of effectiveness required to be confident of achieving disease control benefits.

The UK Chief Veterinary Officer’s advice can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-chief-veterinary-officers-advice-on-the-outcome-of-the-2016-badger-culls

We, and other Departments, are working closely with the Department for Exiting the European Union on all aspects of exiting the European Union. This is to build a detailed understanding of how withdrawal will affect domestic policies and to coordinate policy work across Government.

Defra is very aware that migrant workers from other EU countries will be one of the complex issues that will have to be resolved as part of our exit negotiations and future relationship with the EU. We are now focused on making sure that all our policies are delivering for the UK and to grow our world-leading food and farming industry.

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme was closed in 2013 on the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee. The Government keeps the position under review.

Until we have left, the UK will remain a member of the EU with all of the rights and obligations that membership entails, and employers in the agricultural and food processing sectors are free to continue to recruit EU workers to meet their labour needs.

The Common Agricultural Policy’s Greening requirements, which include the crop diversification rule, were implemented in 2015.

As we prepare to leave the EU, we are looking at removing the rules that are unnecessarily burdensome, focusing instead on what works best for the UK. We want to free our farmers to grow more, sell more and export more British food, whilst upholding our high standards for the environment and animal health and welfare.

The Government will bring forward legislation in the next session that, when enacted, will repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and ensure a functioning statute book on the day we leave the EU. This ‘Great Repeal Bill’ will end the authority of EU law and return power to the UK.

All Government departments are currently reviewing the issues and opportunities arising from exit, including any requirements for legislation in addition to the Great Repeal Bill.

The Government will bring forward a White Paper on the Great Repeal Bill in due course that provides more detail about our approach. We will ensure it is published in time to allow Parliament sufficient time to digest its contents in advance of introduction of the Great Repeal Bill in the next session.

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.