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 Global Resources Initiative Final Recommendations Report, published in March 2020, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the recommendation in that Report that the Government urgently introduces a mandatory due diligence obligation on companies that place commodities and derived products that contribute to deforestation on the UK market; if she will make it her policy to introduce this in the deforestation due diligence schedule under the Environment Act 2021; and if she will make a statement.

Following consultation in August 2020 and building on recommendations from the GRI, the UK Government introduced world-leading legislation through the Environment Act to tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. This is one part of a wider package of measures to improve the sustainability of our supply chains and will contribute to global efforts to protect forests and other ecosystems. The Environment Act provisions will make it illegal for larger businesses operating in the UK to use key forest risk commodities produced on land illegally occupied or used. Businesses in scope will also be required to undertake a due diligence exercise on their supply chains, to assess and mitigate the risk of regulated commodities having been produced on land illegally owned and used, and to report on this exercise annually. To ensure transparency, information about businesses' due diligence exercises will be published. Businesses in scope that do not comply with these requirements may be subject to fines and other civil sanctions. This law will help us to ensure there is no place on our supermarket shelves for commodities that have been grown on land illegally occupied or used and to support other countries to strengthen and enforce their forest protection measures.

The Government ran a second 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. We published a summary of responses to this consultation on 1 June 2022 and are committed to implementing due diligence provisions at the earliest opportunity through secondary legislation.