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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether in implementing Schedule 17 of the Environment Act 2021 the government can strengthen the provisions of the Act to include an absolute standard of deforestation rather than focussing on producer country legality and whether this can be done in secondary legislation or would require an amendment to the Act itself.

The forest risk commodities regime in the Environment Act 2021 extends only to commodities that are illegally produced.

The Government recognises the urgency of taking action to ensure that UK consumption of forest risk commodities is not driving deforestation. The Government is actively considering the best regulatory approach to address deforestation in UK supply chains; we will set out this approach in due course.