Written questions by Mayer.

Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of mandating country-of-origin labelling for fish products originating from the Faroe Islands.

A public consultation on fairer food labelling was undertaken between March and May 2024. This sought views on proposals to improve and extend current mandatory methods of production labelling and looked at country of origin for a range of products including fish. The new Government is now carefully considering all responses before deciding on next steps and will publish a response to this consultation in due course.

Food and Rural Affairs, what his planned timetable is for the next reviews of the (a) National Adaptation Programme and (b) strategy for climate change adaptation reporting.

The Climate Change Act 2008 requires the Secretary of State to produce a National Adaptation Programme in response to the Government’s most recent Climate Change Risk Assessment, on a five-yearly cycle. The third National Adaptation Programme was published in July 2023. The fourth National Adaptation Programme will be published in 2028. The strategy for the fourth round of climate adaptation reporting under the Adaptation Reporting Power was published in July 2023. The fourth round of reporting is currently underway and due to close on 31st December 2024. The review of the use of power will take place in 2025, ahead of a fifth round of reporting.

Food and Rural Affairs, if he will hold discussions with Ofwat on the potential merits of (a) employees and (b) bill payers being made members of the Boards of water companies.

On 11 July 2024, the Secretary of State announced consumers will gain new powers to hold water company bosses to account through new customer panels. For the first time in history, customers will have the power to summon board members and hold water executives to account. The Water (Special Measures) Bill will therefore give Ofwat the power to set rules requiring water companies to have arrangements in place for involving consumers in decision-making. The rules may include a requirement for persons representing the views of consumers to be members of a board, committee or panel of a relevant undertaker.

Food and Rural Affairs, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a single reporting mechanism for fly-tipping incidents.

Local authorities are often best placed to tackle local issues such as fly-tipping, and incidents can be reported to them by visiting the local authority's website. Individuals can get help on identifying the relevant local authority webpage at https://www.gov.uk/report-flytipping.

Food and Rural Affairs, what information his Department holds on the number of instances of fly tipping in Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard constituency in each year since 2010.

Local authorities are required to report fly-tipping incidents and enforcement actions to Defra, which the department have published annually since 2012, at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/env24-fly-tipping-incidents-and-actions-taken-in-england. This data isn't available at a constituency level and excludes the majority of private-land incidents.