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 plans to take to help ensure the (a) progress and (b) acceleration of the tree planting strategy after the conclusion of COP26.

Trees are at the forefront of the Government’s plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, to help to bend the curve of biodiversity loss and to create thousands of green jobs while better connecting people with nature as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are committed to increasing tree planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by the end of this parliament. We published our ambitious England Trees Action Plan on 18 May which sets out our plans to at least treble tree planting rates in England by the end of the Parliament in support of this, using more than £500 million from the Nature for Climate Fund.

In the recently published Net Zero Strategy, we announced we will boost the Nature for Climate Fund with a further £124 million of new money, ensuring total spend of more than £750 million by 2025 on peat restoration, woodland creation and management - above and beyond what was promised in the manifesto.

Moving forwards, we are also exploring whether a longer-term statutory target for woodland creation in England would be appropriate, including possible interactions with other potential environmental targets being considered.