Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

4. When his Department plans to bring forward legislative proposals to ban the sale of horticultural peat.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

This Government are absolutely clear about the need to end the use of peat products in horticulture in England. The use of peat has halved since we signalled that in 2020, and in August 2022 we announced that we would ban the sale of peat for use in amateur gardening. We remain committed to legislating for that when parliamentary time allows. In the meantime, we are continuing to work with the industry to explore ways to help it transition completely to peat-free working.

[Tim Loughton]

UK peatlands store over 3 billion tonnes of carbon, which is more than all the forests in the UK, France and Germany combined. The Government were right to bring in proposals for a ban, but that was back in 2022 and we have had no primary legislation yet. The Royal Horticultural Society, which is committed to being 100% peat-free, says that 40% of the industry is waiting for the legislation, so it can get on with a ban across the whole sector. The industry wants to do it, but it needs the legislation urgently.

[Rebecca Pow]

I too have met the RHS, and went to see its wonderful experiments on peat-free products very recently, some of which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs put money into. This Government are committed to ending the use of peat in horticulture in England, and we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows. I can assure my hon. Friend that in the meantime we are working closely with those who want peat-free mediums, as well as the businesses supplying those growing mediums. A wide variety of work is going on, including research and experiments. As I have said, peat use has halved, and my hon. Friend might be interested to know that the Forestry Commission promises to go peat free—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

Obviously, we are keen for tree planting to expand everywhere, including Scotland. Scotland already does a lot of tree planting, because the nature of its landscape is somewhat different from ours. We have a raft of measures, and our officials will be speaking to officials in Northern Ireland. It is very important that we keep all that contact and do this as a joint thing. Trees work on the atmosphere: they hold the carbon dioxide, and that goes everywhere, so we need to be doing this jointly.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is absolutely right that we vastly ramp up tree planting to help with carbon capture, but may I ask the Minister not to overlook kelp? It absorbs more than six times the amount of carbon as trees. We have vast tracts of seabed available, not least off Sussex. It helps with marine conservation, and it is also a food source. Please could we look at that more closely, and at how we can promote it, as we want to do, in Sussex?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly interesting point. It is something I am personally very interested in. As we speak, there is a project under way to plant kelp and to look at how its carbon capture is going. Mudflats are similarly really important, as are salt marshes. There could be a big future for this on our new horizon of dealing with the land and the landscape. All this carbon capture is a new feature in relation to climate change, and I think kelp will definitely be part of it.