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 provide citations of all the scientific literature used by his Department to establish the weightings of risk factors when establishing the metric for biodiversity offsetting.

The current metric was developed for use in the biodiversity offsetting pilots. Defra published a paper at the start of the pilots describing the metric and explaining the rationale behind it. That paper is called “Biodiversity Offsetting Pilots. Technical Paper: the metric for the biodiversity offsetting pilot in England”. Pages 18-19 include the list of references http://archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/biodiversity/offsetting/documents/110714offsetting-technical-metric.pdf. The time multiplier reflects HM Treasury “Green Book” guidance.