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29 Apr 2009 : Column 1300W—continued
Departmental Buildings
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what properties his (a) Department and (b) Department’s (i) executive agencies and (ii) the non-departmental public bodies have sold in each of the last five years; and how many of these have been sold for housing development. [266493]
Huw Irranca-Davies: Shown in the following table from the available departmental records are the numbers of disposals of surplus land and buildings noted as completed by the Department, including its executive agencies, during the period in question with the number of sites specifically sold for housing noted against each year:
| Sites sold for housing | Number of property holdings | |
The Department does not currently hold details of disposals for its non-departmental public bodies.
Departmental Public Expenditure
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what efficiency savings his Department has made in each of the last three years; and what estimate he has made of the amount saved by such means in each year. [269528]
Huw Irranca-Davies: DEFRA has delivered significant efficiencies during the last three years. We report on the delivery against our efficiency targets twice yearly, in the departmental and autumn performance reports.
2006-07 and 2007-08 (years 2 and 3 of the 2004 Spending Review period)
Under the 2004 Spending Review (SR04), DEFRA was required to deliver by the end of 2007-08 efficiencies of £610 million compared with 2004-05. At the end of March 2008, DEFRA had delivered total net financial efficiency gains of £752 million per year, with £433 million arising from the Department together with its executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies (NDBPs) and £357 million from local authorities. Even after carrying forward £38 million cashable and sustainable gains to the 2007 comprehensive spending review (CSR07), DEFRA’s efficiency programme (excluding local authorities) delivered a total of £84 million financial gains in excess of its target for the SR04 period. The table details the progress made in delivery by area in both 2006-07 and 2007-08 (2007-08 figures are cumulative across the SR04 period) against the SR04 savings baseline.
| £ million | |||
| Efficiency gains | |||
| Initiative | Original target | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| (1) Total efficiencies delivered, of which £38 million was carried forward to CSR07 resulting in net saving of £752 million. Note: Totals may not sum due to rounding | |||
2008-09 (year 1 of the 2007 comprehensive spending review period)
Full year efficiency savings delivered in 2008-09 are still being validated for inclusion in the 2009 departmental report. Our latest published progress report, for the first half of 2008-09, was included in DEFRA’s autumn performance report published in December 2008 at:
At the end of September 2008, the Department had, subject to further validation, confidence in delivering £218 million of full year savings against its target for 2008-09 of £228.4 million. Delivery of savings up to the end of September included the following:
Over delivery of SR04 efficiency savings: £19 million.
Allocative savings: £41 million, based on reduced input costs in lower value activities, allowing savings to be released and factored into budgets for higher value activities, leading to improved outputs.
Delivery of other value for money improvements including:
programme areas following zero based reviews: £14 million;
minor programmes and projects: £11 million; and
cross-departmental core functions: £12 million.
DEFRA’s original CSR07 target of £379 million was reduced to £306 million following the creation of the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in October 2008 and the transfer of elements of the target—and delivery against these—to DECC. However, it has now been increased by an additional £75 million to £381 million to reflect DEFRA’s contribution to additional cross-Government VfM savings confirmed in the 2009 Budget. A full report on delivery in 2008-09 will be published in the next departmental report.
Departmental Training
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much has been spent on media training for each Minister in his Department in each of the last three years; how many sessions have been provided; and who provided such training. [268608]
Huw Irranca-Davies [holding answer 2 April 2009]: Training is provided to Ministers as necessary in order to carry out their duties effectively under the Ministerial Code.
Domestic Waste: Waste Disposal
Charles Hendry: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what volume of doorstep waste was collected by each local authority in the latest period for which figures are available, ranked in descending order; and what proportion of the total domestic waste generated in each local authority area that figure represents, ranked in descending order. [270955]
Jane Kennedy [holding answer 24 April 2009]: I am arranging for a table showing the information requested to be placed in the Library of the House.
Fishing Catches
Mr. Cox: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will estimate the level of over-fishing undertaken by foreign trawlers in the Bristol channel. [271121]
Huw Irranca-Davies: The inner parts of the Bristol channel are considered Internal Waters eastward of a base-line between approximately Worms Head and Morte Point. No foreign vessels are allowed to fish within six miles to the west of this line. Beyond that in the UK six to 12 mile belt, only French and Belgian vessels have any access to fish.
Levels of fishing effort and catches of quota species by all member state vessels outside the six mile limit may be subject to both EU and member state controls. Overfishing of days or quotas by vessels flying the flag of other member states is a matter for the respective
member states’ enforcement authorities. The Marine and Fisheries Agency direct fishery protection activity, conducting inspections at sea within UK fishing limits and in UK ports to ensure that vessels from all member states are completing logbook records of their catches correctly. Most, if not all, of the other member state vessels fishing in the Bristol channel and the Celtic sea are above 15 metres in overall length. They are therefore also monitored by satellite position reports sent to the UK Fishery Monitoring Centre in the Marine and Fisheries Agency headquarters in London.
Hydroelectric Power
Tim Farron: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the evidential basis is for his Department's policy proposal to require a mandatory screen installation programme for all waterway abstractions. [271851]
Huw Irranca-Davies: Extensive evidence and reference to fish entrapment by abstractions was given in the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review 2000. The proposed regulations would extend the current arrangements for salmon to other freshwater fish species, to be applied on a risk-based approach and to fulfil the water framework directive requirements. It is not intended to require mandatory screening of all abstractions.
Tim Farron: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many applications for abstractions and empowerment of hydro energy schemes have been (a) received and (b) approved by the Environment Agency in each month of the last five years. [271859]
Huw Irranca-Davies: The number of abstraction and impounding licence applications received and new licences granted for hydropower schemes is given in the following tables. The Environment Agency introduced a national water resources authorisations receipt tracking system in November 2008. As a result, data on the number of applications received are only available from November onwards.
| Abstraction and impoundment applica tions received for hydropower | |
| Month | Number |
| Abstraction and impoundment licences grunted for hydropower | ||||||
| Month | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
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