Departmental Responsibilities
Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Priti Patel (Witham, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what his Department's core statutory obligations are; and what estimate he has of the annual cost of delivering each such obligation.
Richard Benyon (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Natural Environment and Fisheries), Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Newbury, Conservative)
The overall annual public expenditure resulting from obligations under the Department's regulations (including costs to regulators and other public agencies) was estimated at around £0.2 billion (2011 prices) in the report “The Costs and Benefits of DEFRA's Regulatory Stock: Emerging Findings from DEFRA's Regulatory Stock Assessment” in August 2011.
This report is available at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13623-costs-benefits-defra-regulatory-stock110816.pdf