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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what her Departments planned timeframe is for implementing UK Deforestation Due Diligence regulations; and what priority forest risk commodities it plans to cover.

The UK Government has introduced world-leading due diligence legislation through the Environment Act to help tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains.

We ran a consultation from 3 December 2021 to 11 March 2022 to seek views on the details of regulations that will implement the Environment Act provisions, to ensure that these are designed effectively. This included a consulting on which forest risk commodities should be covered by these regulations. These commodities include cattle (beef and leather), cocoa, coffee, maize, rubber, palm oil, and soy. The consultation also sought evidence on other commodities driving deforestation.

The Government published a summary of responses to this consultation on 1 June 2022 and is committed to implementing due diligence provisions at the earliest opportunity through secondary legislation. Government’s approach on which priority commodities the regulations will cover will be published in due course.