Following the move to Plan A and in anticipation of the lifting of all Covid-19 restrictions, the Department will be working closely with train operators to develop a passenger offer that it is fit for the future, and carefully balances capacity and performance, while protecting the public purse.

The Department has been working closely with rail operators as they mitigate the impact of staff absences on rail services.

The current temporary train timetable is providing passengers with certainty so they can plan their journeys confidently as they return to work in person. As staffing pressures ease and passenger demand increases, operators are increasing rail services accordingly to meet demand.

In October 2020, the Department asked the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to review how Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions were used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and whether they had been inappropriately applied. Interim findings were published on 3 December 2020, with a final report due shortly. The review will take a national view of how these decisions were made across all health and care settings and will inform national learning and good practice development.

The Cultural Recovery Fund for Heritage has been jointly coordinated by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Heritage England. In the first round of funding, 277 awards were made to historic areas, buildings and monuments, totalling £49,486,500.

At least 15% of these awards were made directly to historic houses and gardens, including Blenheim Palace, which received £1,896,000.

The second round of funding is now live. Listed historic houses and gardens can apply for grants that will support reopening to the public in the late spring.

There is no specific distance applicable to all circumstances. However, the advice is that to meet the legal requirement not to leave home to travel unless for work or other legally permitted reasons and to reduce the risk of transmission, individuals should stay local and avoid travelling outside of the village, town or the part of a city where they live and look to reduce the number of journeys they make overall.

We do not have median figures. The Department began work on facilitating repatriation 90 days ago (as at 29 July). At that time there were 11,374 crew in the UK. To date we have facilitated the repatriation of over 13,000 seafarers and there are currently 4,258 awaiting repatriation.

Many vessels arriving in the UK are able to repatriate large numbers of seafarers over the 2-3 days after arrival. However, for seafarers from certain countries the length of time in the UK will be longer due to restrictions in their own state.

It should also be noted that seafarers arriving in the UK may still be under their original contract and, outside the pandemic conditions, would not be due to be repatriated. The cost of repatriation is met by the shipping company and not by the Government.

There are currently 4,028 Foreign National crew on board 25 cruise vessels that are not registered in the UK or within the wider Red Ensign Group. 1,250 of these crew require repatriation.

We have so far repatriated 7,752 Foreign National crew from cruise ships not registered with the UK or the wider Red Ensign Group.

We continue to work with the industry, unions and maritime charities to provide support and assistance to all seafarers in the UK.

Defra is committed to protecting our trees from pests and diseases and building the resilience of our trees, woods and forests. In May we published a new Tree Health Resilience Strategy. The strategy sets out a joint action plan for how government and others can work together to address threats to tree health, including threats to ash and oak nationally.

One example of joint action is Action Oak, a hugely important partnership of charities, landowners and government, proactively working together to protect and conserve our oak trees for future generations.

The UK has robust controls in place to protect against tree pest and disease threats. These include being the most prolific user of the EU Protected Zone system, comprehensive official inspections and surveillance, and a statutory notification scheme for certain tree species imported from the EU. Horizon scanning for new and emerging threats associated with tree imports is carried out continuously and the results are considered monthly by all UK Plant Health Authorities, facilitated by Defra’s Plant Health Risk Group. The UK Plant Health Risk Register is the principal screening tool used for this purpose and all outputs are published. The Register now has over 1000 entries, informing decision making and prioritisation in relation to tree health threats. We also contribute to a similar process at EU level and legislation is updated on a frequent basis, to protect against new and revised threats.

The Government plans to publish a report on this year’s licensed badger control operations as it has done for the first three years of the programme. The Animal and Plant Health Agency continues to assess annually the incidence of tuberculosis in cattle in areas where badger control is licensed for the purposes of controlling the disease. The analysis of the first two years impact is available on the GOV.UK website.

Defra officials have regular conversations with the National Trust about the Government’s 25-year strategy to eradicate bovine tuberculosis (TB) in England. The National Trust has published its view on badgers and TB on its website.

Alongside strengthening cattle testing and movement controls and improving biosecurity on farm and when trading, licensed badger control in areas where bovine TB is rife, like Exmoor, is an essential part of the Government’s 25-year strategy to eradicate the disease in England.

Badger control licence applications from groups of local farmers and landowners are assessed against criteria that include the area of accessible land. Provided that enough land is accessible to achieve an effective badger population reduction across the wider area, Natural England can issue a licence. Thus, even if some local landowners do not participate, long term disease reduction benefits can still be realised across the wider area.