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 balance (a) public and (b) private sector responsibilities in achieving net-zero targets.

Both the public and private sector will play a key role in achieving net zero targets.

Private investment will be crucial to delivering net zero, building climate resilience and supporting nature’s recovery.This government is committed to building a robust and stable policy framework so that all parties – from farmers and land managers delivering improvements on the ground, to businesses and investors financing high quality projects – can do so with confidence.

We are working at pace with the private sector to help farmers transition to greener practices, establish a taskforce to plant millions of trees to help remove carbon from the air and move towards a circular economy to reduce our demand for raw materials that destroy the environment. To take this forward, a Taskforce has been established comprising members from industry, academia, and civil society, to lead the development of a Circular Economy Strategy

At the last budget in 2024, the Government secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history, with £5 billion committed in the farming budget over a two-year period. The Environmental Land management schemes (ELM) are critical to supporting farming and landowners in their low-carbon practices. There is now a record 50,000 farm businesses in ELM schemes and more than half of all farmed land is now managed under schemes.