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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect farmland birds in the development of agricultural policy.

On 27 February the Government launched the consultation document ‘Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit’.

Our new agricultural policy will be underpinned by payment of public money for the provision of public goods such as biodiversity, which farmland bird populations could contribute to. In the consultation document, thriving wildlife and improved biodiversity are listed as some of the potential outcomes of a future environmental land management system.

The consultation closed on 8 May, the results of which will help to inform our future policy.