Oral Answers to Questions

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The reason that we have not yet had that summit is quite simple: it is that the coronavirus outbreak has taken up quite a lot of our time and obviously made it very difficult to physically travel to areas. I think it would be better to have a summit such as that physically in the location, rather than it being yet another Zoom meeting. However, I can give the hon. Lady a guarantee that that summit will indeed take place. I gave that commitment and it will happen.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

The green belt is rightly described as the green lungs around our towns and cities, and it is rightly cherished by residents across the country, including myself. Can my right hon. Friend advise what cross-Government working has been taking place to promote our manifesto commitment to protect and enhance the green belt, including areas such as Elton reservoir and Simister in my constituency?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. Of course, people have valued all of these green spaces in this lockdown period; that has been more clear than ever. Our manifesto commitment says that, through the Environment Bill, we will set a new domestic framework for environmental governance, and this will enable us to work with developers, landowners and managers to create and restore wildlife-rich habitats, with wildlife thriving everywhere. We will have biodiversity net gain through that environment plan, and we will have local nature recovery strategies and a whole new area called nature recovery networks. All of this will help to look after our precious green space.