Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what recent steps the Government has taken to improve legislation on environmental and climate standards in British retailer and company supply chains.

In April 2022 the UK became the first G20 country to introduce mandatory reporting in line with the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, for economically significant UK companies. Additionally, section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 requires directors to have regard to the impact of their company’s operations on the community and the environment, amongst other things. The Government strengthened this requirement in 2019 by requiring directors to make an annual statement explaining how they have discharged their section 172 duty in practice over the previous reporting year.

The UK Government has introduced world-leading due diligence legislation through the Environment Act to help tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. In 2021-22 we ran a consultation to seek views on how we should implement Environment Act provisions, including which commodities we should regulate through the first round of secondary legislation, and have since published a summary of responses, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tackling-illegal-deforestation-in-uk-supply-chains.