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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to grant hedgehogs greater legal protection.

As set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, the Government is committed to taking action to recover our threatened native species.

As part of the recently announced Green Paper, my department will explore opportunities to enhance and modernise protections for declining native species such as the hedgehog. We intend to publish the Green Paper and seek views later this year.

Our Environment Bill will also strengthen our commitment to our native species. We have amended the Bill to require a new, historic legally binding target for species abundance for 2030 to be set, aiming to halt the decline of nature. We are also taking action through our net gain provisions in the Bill, to support the role of new development in helping protect, improve and create the habitat that our native species, including hedgehogs, need to thrive.

Beyond the Bill, we are introducing three schemes that reward the delivery of environmental benefits: the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the Local Nature Recovery scheme and the Landscape Recovery scheme. These schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices, creating and preserving habitat such as such as woodland, heathland and species-rich grassland, as well as making landscape-scale environmental changes, all of which could benefit species such as hedgehog.