Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the press release entitled England’s peatlands mapped for first time in major step towards their recovery, published on 12 May 2025, whether her Department's assessment of the proportion of peatland that is degraded was based on (a) land management definitions and (b) testing the health of peat.

The England Peat Map has not assessed peatland as degraded or not and so cannot determine the proportions of degraded peatland in each category mentioned.

Work is currently ongoing to incorporate England Peat Map outputs into the Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which will help assess the carbon emissions from England’s peatlands.