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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the effect of rural depopulation on the carbon intensity of delivering public services in remote and sparsely populated areas.

Rural policy is a devolved matter. Defra regularly publishes statistics on a range of social and economic topics including rural population trends, and rural service provision in The Statistical Digest for Rural England.

Net internal migration within England tends to be towards rural authorities, and in 2023 the rate of this migration was higher than in 2013; the exception to this is 15- to- 19- year-olds for which there is net migration from rural authorities, reflecting the movement of students.

Defra has not made a specific assessment of the effect of rural population decreases - or increases - on the carbon intensity of delivering public services.