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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress he has made on implementing the recommendations of the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform relevant to his Department.

Defra is the lead department for a number of recommendations in the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR) report, concerning agri-environmental innovation, including biodiversity offsetting and greater use of agri-tech vital for sustainability, biodiversity, food security and investment.

Four measures responding to these recommendations were included in Lord Frost’s package of proposed individual regulatory reforms to laws in September: Reform of the regulation of gene-edited organisms, Biodiversity Net Gain, Digitisation of Export Health Certificates and rationalising the existing Environmental Permitting and Licensing regimes.

I am pleased to say strong progress continues to be made with each of these measures:

• The Government response to the Gene Editing consultation was published in September, setting out how we plan to pave the way to enable use of gene editing technologies on plants, where genetic changes could have occurred naturally or could have been a result of traditional breeding methods.
• The Environment Act, which is the legislative vehicle for Biodiversity Net Gain, has now received Royal Assent. A consultation on Biodiversity Net gain is expected to be published shortly.
• Trials of some e-certification systems for Digitisation of Export Health certificates are currently underway, with solutions expected to be delivered in 2022.
• Defra is continuing to develop proposals for reform of environmental licensing and permitting, with a view to ensuring that our regimes are streamlined, proportionate and deliver effective environmental protection.