Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what strategy his Department has in place to ensure that the Government's tree planting targets are met.
This Government stood on a manifesto commitment to increase tree planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025. This is in line with Committee on Climate Change recommendations, and we are working with the devolved administrations to achieve this target.
We will set out plans to increase planting in England through a new England Tree Strategy, which we have recently consulted on. We will deploy the £640M Nature for Climate Fund, agreed in the March 2020 Budget, to do so. The Prime Minister recently reiterated our commitment to tree planting when he set out the first steps in the strategy to rebuild Britain, building back better, greener and faster.