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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department gives to wildlife and conservation bodies to help purchase land for conservation and shooting purposes.

In England, we provide a range of payments to landowners, farmers and rural businesses through our Countryside Stewardship scheme and other rural grants and payments. Some of these are used to support land management for wildlife and other environment benefits and are open to a wide range of landowners or managers, including wildlife and conservation bodies. These payments cannot be used for land purchase.

Defra and its non-departmental bodies have purchased land to provide compensation for habitat loss, working with wildlife and conservation bodies to ensure appropriate management: this does not involve provide funding for those bodies to acquire the land.

We do provide grant-in-aid to the National Forest Company which is the charitable body established to lead on the development of the National Forest. Some of this funding can be used to acquire land for woodland planting and for promoting public enjoyment of woodland.