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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including soil health in the indicator frameworks for environmental progress and in legally binding future targets.

Our recent consultation on an indicator framework for measuring progress against the 25 Year Environment Plan proposed inclusion of an indicator of healthy soils.

The consultation document proposed measurements of soil properties which could be included in this indicator, however the full specification of this indicator will be developed when Defra research into innovative monitoring for soils completes at the end of 2019.

We are considering the consultation responses as well as the outputs from a workshop of soil stakeholders. We will be publishing our updated, finalised indicator framework alongside the 25 Year Environment Plan annual review in due course.

In December 2018, the Government confirmed that it was exploring options for including cross-cutting targets for environmental improvement as part of the broader governance framework being established through the Environment Bill. We would expect any targets to contribute to implementing the 25 Year Environment Plan goals.