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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether it is the Government’s policy to reduce the use of palm oil in UK supply chains.

We are committed to supporting sustainable production, import, and use of palm oil. Oil palm is a very efficient crop, producing more oil per hectare than other vegetable oil crops. Substitution of other oils (for example, soybean, rapeseed, sunflower), which typically require significantly more land to produce, may lead to greater environmental impacts as more land is converted to agricultural use.

We are working closely with industry, including with supermarkets and manufacturers, to support sustainable production and use of palm oil. For example, in 2012, the Government established the UK Roundtable on Sourcing Sustainable Palm Oil, bringing together key British businesses and supporting them to shift to sustainable palm oil supply chains. Latest reports show that 71% of palm oil and palm kernel oil imports into the United Kingdom were certified sustainable in 2020 – up from 16% in 2010. It is not HM Government’s policy to reduce the overall use of palm oil in United Kingdom supply chains.

HM Government is also committed to tackling the use of illegally produced forest risk commodities – agricultural commodities whose production is associated with wide-scale forest loss, which currently include palm oil. We have introduced world-leading due diligence legislation to make it illegal for larger businesses operating in the United Kingdom to use key forest risk commodities produced on land illegally occupied or used. From December 2021 to March 2022, we consulted on which specific commodities we should regulate through initial secondary legislation. This included seeking views on regulating the following shortlist of commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, maize, palm oil, rubber, and soy.