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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to support research and development into alternative materials to peat in growing media that meets the requirements of consumer and professional horticulturists.

The Government has always been clear about the need to end the use of peat and peat-containing products in horticulture in England.

We have worked with the horticulture industry to develop a Responsible Sourcing Scheme for Growing Media, which allows manufacturers and retailers to make informed choices of growing media inputs to peat free products, based on environmental and social impacts.

We continue to support industry in their efforts to go peat free, this has included over £1 million on a project to provide the necessary applied science to help underpin the development and management of alternative growing media. We are co-funding monitoring with the horticultural industry on the composition of growing media (including peat) supplied for amateur and professional use in the horticultural market.

While there has been some progress, the voluntary approach to phasing out the use of peat in horticulture has not succeeded. The Government therefore published a full consultation on banning the sale of peat and peat-containing products in the amateur sector by the end of this Parliament in England and Wales. The Government also asked for any evidence stakeholders can provide on the impacts of ending the use of peat and peat-containing products, we will publish our response to this consultation in due course.

We will continue to work across Government, and the private sector, to find solutions that will enable the use of peat and products containing peat to end. This includes the ground-breaking work being conducted by Forestry England to reduce peat use within tree nurseries; and identifying regulatory barriers in respect of potential peat replacement products.