Global Deforestation

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government policies to limit global deforestation.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this debate, Mr Vickers. I know how important these matters are to your constituents in Brigg and Immingham, as they are to mine in Brent West.

It may seem strange to start a debate on policies to combat deforestation by speaking about rivers, but I want to pose a challenge to colleagues this morning, to see whether any of them can name the largest river on the planet. I will happily give way to anyone who thinks they can.

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

Is it the Plate?

[Barry Gardiner]

No, it is not the Plate. It is not the River Nile, and it is not the Amazon, but if anyone thought it was the Amazon, they are getting close. The river I am speaking of is actually, for the most part, invisible and airborne. Every day, 20 billion cubic metres of water—that is 20 billion metric tonnes of water—is pushed up into the atmosphere by the forests of the Amazon basin. That water does not stay in the atmosphere; it is not like evaporation from the oceans. It is generated by a unique combination of the organic forest interacting with the inorganic atmosphere. It is seeded with microscopic spores of pollen and fungi. These make the Amazonian clouds heavy, which means that all that water rains back down across the continent, replenishing the forest and irrigating a land mass that otherwise would probably be a desert. The Amazon river as we know it—all 4,000 miles of it—pours just 17 billion tonnes of water into the Atlantic ocean every day, so the invisible river of transpiration beats it by 3 billion tonnes a day. Imagine the power it takes to push 20 billion tonnes up into the atmosphere.

On Brazil’s border with Paraguay is the Itaipu dam, the second most powerful hydroelectric power station in the world after the Three Gorges dam in China. Itaipu’s capacity is 14 MW. That is about four and a half times the capacity of Hinkley Point C, if Hinkley ever manages to get built. We would need 5,000 Itaipu power stations to push the 20 billion tonnes of water up into the atmosphere that that forest does every single day.

Forests are amazing. The Amazon is not alone, of course. The second lung of our planet is the Congo basin in Africa, and while we are talking about famous dams, it is worth noting that the Aswan dam, some 2,000 miles away, relies for 85% of its power on water that the Congo forest transpiration has deposited into the Ethiopian highlands, coming down through the Nile to Aswan.

Forests are amazing, or, to be a little more scientific about it, forest ecosystems provide critical and diverse services to human society. They are a primary habitat for a wide range of species. They support biodiversity and conservation. Forest growth sequesters and stores carbon from the atmosphere. It contributes to regulation of the global carbon cycle and mitigates climate change. Healthy forests produce soil and conserve it. They stabilise stream flows and water run-off, preventing land degradation and desertification. Forests reduce the risks of natural disasters such as droughts, floods and landslides. They contribute to poverty eradication and to economic development by providing food, fibre, timber and other forest products for subsistence and income generation. They are a key genetic source for the pharmaceutical industry, contributing to global human health, and they even serve as sites of aesthetic, recreational and spiritual values in so many cultures.

Forests may be home to 80% of land species, but they are also vital to the survival of our own. They produce 40% of the oxygen we breathe, support 1.6 billion livelihoods and play a crucial role in holding back a climate disaster on a massive scale.

What about deforestation? That has been happening for a long time. In fact, since the end of the last ice age, the world has lost one third of all its forests—that is about 2 billion hectares, or two United States of Americas. But even though it has been happening for about 11,000 years, the rate of acceleration is rather recent and incredibly alarming. More than half of all the forest lost since the Pleistocene has gone in the last 125 years—1.1 billion hectares gone.

The drivers of deforestation are well known. Agricultural expansion remains the single largest cause, and according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, is responsible for 88% of global deforestation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that it contributes 11% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Similarly, in its report on deforestation in January last year, the Environmental Audit Committee identified what we might call the seven deadly sins of deforestation—the seven commodities that are driving 90% of global deforestation: beef and leather, soy, timber, palm oil, paper, rubber and cocoa.

However, the EAC was only picking up on the Global Resource Initiative taskforce’s recommendations from 2020. I commend the previous Conservative Government for establishing the GRI taskforce under the chairmanship of Sir Ian Cheshire as part of the 25-year environment plan. Sir Ian realised that if the market was to transition to sustainable commodity supply chains, it would need Government to adopt a strategic, co-ordinated approach to align and accelerate action.

The Government’s response to the taskforce’s 14 recommendations showed real understanding of the issues. They said:

“When nature’s free services fail, the poorest people suffer first and worst. Over a billion people rely directly on forests for their livelihoods—including indigenous peoples who look after around 80% of biodiversity.”

They continued:

“Protecting and restoring mangroves, forests, and peatlands could provide around a third of the most cost-effective climate change solutions we need, while supporting species and helping communities adapt to become more resilient. Shifting towards more sustainable forms of agriculture would not only protect the planet’s lungs, but it could add a further $2.3trn in productive growth to the global economy and create a further 200 million jobs by 2050…We know that there is no pathway to Net Zero emissions—or indeed the Sustainable Development Goals—that does not involve protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. But despite the huge contribution nature can make, it attracts just 3% of global climate finance.”

I suspect that the excellence of that written response is directly attributable to the noble Lord Goldsmith. But an excellence of understanding requires an excellence of follow-through, and that was less excellent.

It is true that in response to the taskforce’s recommendation to mobilise

“a global call for action to tackle deforestation and build sustainable commodity supply chains in the lead up to COP26”,

the Johnson Government did deliver a call to action—but a call to action and action are two different things. Yes, more than 100 global leaders signed up to the pledge to halt deforestation by 2030, and, yes, 30 financial institutions, managing nearly $9 trillion in assets between them, promised to disclose the

“deforestation risk and mitigation activities in their portfolios”

by 2023, and to eliminate harmful practices from their portfolios by 2025. But ’23 has come and gone. Today it is 2025, and we are still not eating the

“guilt free chocolate…that’s carbon not calorie guilt free”,

that Boris Johnson boasted about. We are nowhere near on track to halting forest loss by 2030.

One of the things that fuels people’s disillusionment with politics is that so much fanfare surrounds policy announcements, but so little of the hard graft of delivery gets done after the announcements have been made. The public understand that our diets and supply chains are deeply entwined with this issue. We may not see the bulldozers or the farmers who are eking out a living with slash and burn, but the products we consume every day, from chocolate bars to cooking oils, link us directly to the deforestation that we say we want to stop. If we told the public that we had just destroyed the entire New Forest, they would be horrified, yet that is the area of forest that our failure to enact the due diligence recommendations has eradicated since 2021. With that knowledge comes the understanding that we are complicit.

But there is only so much that people can do through their individual action and choices. That is why the taskforce’s recommendations about a due diligence obligation were so important. It said that the Government should “urgently” introduce

“a mandatory due diligence obligation for companies that place commodities and derived products that contribute to deforestation on the UK market”,

and that they should take action to ensure that similar principles are applied to the finance industry. That due diligence obligation would require companies to analyse the presence of environmental and human rights risks and impacts within their supply chains, take action to prevent or mitigate them, and publicly report on actions taken and planned. The financial sector would also be covered by a similar mandatory due diligence obligation, requiring it to exercise due diligence to ensure that its lending and investments do not fund deforestation.

The taskforce demanded action, and in the Environment Act 2021 it got a pale version of it. The Act introduced measures to prohibit UK businesses from using commodities grown on illegally deforested or occupied land. At the COP28 summit in Dubai in 2023, the UK delegation announced the list of commodities that could be included in environmental law and explained that businesses with more than £50 million in global annual turnover that use more than 500 metric tonnes of commodities a year would need to source from land they could prove was not illegally deforested.

Although well intentioned, by focusing on legality, the Act failed to hold out an absolute standard of whether the supply chain was in fact involved in deforestation. It ignored the fact that politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro would simply change their domestic legislation to grant legal status to what had previously been illegally deforested land, and so get round the Act’s intention.

The failure to impose adequate due diligence on companies, banks and finance houses and institutions has meant that, since the Glasgow declaration, UK banks have provided more than £1 billion to companies that present a forest risk. Last July, UK investors still held £1.4 billion-worth of assets and shares issued by these companies. The largest 50 of those investors make up 99% of the total UK forest-risk investments, yet 18 of them were actually signatories to the net zero asset managers initiative. Sadly, just eight have made any clear public commitment to eventually removing deforestation from their portfolios. That leaves 42 that should be ashamed of themselves.

Three names stand out, but for all the wrong reasons: HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered. Between them, those three banks have provided 97% of the £4.5 billion-worth of credit lines for forest-risk companies since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015. It is not just in government where there is a gap between policy and action. In 2017, HSBC committed

“not to provide services to customers either directly or indirectly involved in deforestation”.

In fact, it has provided credit lines amounting to £1.9 billion to forest-risk companies such as JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which, despite a record of corruption and forest destruction, just last week was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission to list on the New York stock exchange, giving it access to new sources of finance and capital markets. It is, of course, just a few months since JBS dropped its net zero by 2040 climate pledge, claiming, “Well, it was never a formal commitment.”

The Environment Act was an important marker that the UK takes seriously its role in the global supply chain, and that it wants to lead the way and manage the responsibility that comes with it. But a marker only stands in place of action for so long. Four years later, it has become an ironic sign of failure.

UK financial institutions continue to bankroll deforestation. Trade agreements lack meaningful environmental safeguards, and indigenous land defenders face daily violence and intimidation. Unsustainable logging fuels forest destruction; weak governance and corruption continue; and infrastructure projects and mining operations further encroach on forested lands, fragmenting ecosystems and threatening indigenous territories. Land tenure insecurity, poor enforcement and a lack of economic alternatives all conspire to make deforestation a systemic problem.

There can be no one silver bullet but, my goodness, there must be a desire to start. With COP30 this November being hosted in Brazil, there is a compelling case to move from intention to delivery. First, the Minister knows only too well that we must urgently expand the due diligence regime to cover all forest-risk commodities, whether legal or illegal, under producer country law. We should introduce criminal liability for companies knowingly profiting from deforestation, and require UK banks and investors to disclose their deforestation risk.

There will need to be a phased timeline, but my question is not when it will be done but why it has not been done already. If we understand where the blockage in the machinery is, perhaps we can help apply a bit of pressure to assist the Minister in getting it done. I know she will be keen to do so. Some say the blockage is in the Cabinet Office, some say Northern Ireland and the Windsor framework. I would point out to the Minister and her ministerial colleagues that the strong due diligence measures of the European deforestation legislation are due to come into force in December this year. It would be best if the regulation of the whole of the UK were consonant with that. Will the Minister set out a clear timeline for the full implementation of schedule 17 to the Environment Act?

Secondly, the UK must champion a trade model that values environmental protection and human rights. As the UK is in advanced trade negotiations with the EU and India, and to a lesser extent with the USA, what discussions has the Minister had with her colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade about the need to embed deforestation safeguards and environmental standards in all future trade agreements? I immodestly recommend to her the blueprint set out in the Labour party’s green paper of 2018, entitled, “Just Trading: What would a just trading system look like?”, when I was shadow Trade Secretary.

Thirdly, the tropical forests forever facility—TFFF—championed by Brazil, will inevitably assume centre stage as we progress towards Belém and COP30. By using arbitrage between the cost of long-dated Government bonds and loans and the returns of a more diversified portfolio, the TFFF fund seeks to provide a long-term payment for conservation and restoration of tropical forests. The facility would help to address a significant market failure, placing a value to the ecosystem services that those forests provide, and returning that to the forest communities that curate them.

Will the Minister tell us how the UK will be involved in the TFFF? What conversations has she had with colleagues in international development? How will the fund prioritise and reward the role of indigenous and traditional knowledge partners in forest stewardship? She knows that indigenous peoples need specific legal protections, recognition and direct funding. Forests thrive when indigenous rights are upheld. Our aid and climate finance must prioritise those locally led solutions. That is fundamental, not just for nature and climate mitigation, but for justice, for addressing poverty and for human rights.

The establishment at the convention on biological diversity COP16 meeting in Rome of the Cali fund, which commits 50% of its resources to indigenous communities, was an overdue recognition of their role as custodians of forests and the nature and biodiversity that make them. I ask the Minister to update the House about the steps our Government are taking to help operationalise that fund, and to ensure that its resources reach those local communities quickly and without loss. Can she tell us whether and how indigenous communities are represented on the fund’s board of management, and how the Cali fund will work alongside the TFFF? Is the UK planning to invest in the TFFF, and now with the 40% cut in official development assistance from 0.5% to just 0.3% of GNI, what will happen to the £11.6 billion that was ringfenced for climate in ICF3, and the £3 billion within that that was further ringfenced for nature?

After years of declining indicators, we now have an opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation. I am proud of the direction that our Labour Government have taken since July, from creating a special envoy for nature to committing to deliver three new national forests. Domestically, the Government are investing up to £400 million in tree planting and peatland restoration over 2024-25 and 2025-26. However, if we are to lead globally we must also act globally, and that includes how we mobilise capital. Public funding is crucial, but on its own it is not enough. We need to unlock private finance to support conservation and sustainable development, especially in regions safeguarding the planet’s remaining great forests, and that means scaling up tools such as green bonds, blended finance and debt-for-nature swaps. The City of London can and should be a hub for that kind of innovation, not only for climate finance, but for nature-positive finance.

We sometimes hear the environment and the economy pitted against each other, as if nature is a subset of the economy. Of course the truth is the other way round, because without nature and the ecosystem services that it provides, there is no economy, and the most vital part of that nature is our amazing forests.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) on securing this debate on such an important issue, and on taking us to the Amazon forest and its atmospheric river. That was a brilliantly poetic way to talk about the aerial rivers that forests produce, and an important way of explaining ecosystem services. We sometimes talk about the forest as if it is an economic asset, which of course it is, but we are not very good at the poetry.

We know that trees bring us peace, shade and joy, as well as all the other stuff. It is important that we talk about the emotional and spiritual connections that trees bring to people and to places, and the threats that they face from deforestation, whether legal or illegal. I very much take my hon. Friend’s point about illegal versus legal deforestation, which is an observation that I also noted about the previous Government’s approach.

This nation is afforesting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) stated. We are planting a new national forest, the Western forest, which the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) mentioned. Indeed, I was delighted to go there and plant a crab apple tree as part of the agroforestry part of that. The forest will deliver flood prevention services and, critically, link up ancient woodland, which has become fragmented in the landscape. It will stretch from the Forest of Dean right down to the Mendip hills—a truly massive undertaking.

We are here to talk about deforestation, which is an issue that touches on many different Departments, including the Departments for Business and Trade, and for Energy Security and Net Zero—I have a DESNZ official with me in the Box, as well as officials from DEFRA. That three Ministers are responsible for international forestry—those from FCDO, DESNZ and myself—shows the complexity around this issue, and explains why I have about 25 different notes in my hand. I do have a prepared speech, which I will try to deliver, but I will also try to answer questions as we go along. If Members feel that we are getting to five to 11 and they have not had satisfaction, I ask them to intervene on me, but I will try to get through my notes.

First, tackling the climate and nature crises is central to the UK’s national interest, for both security and prosperity. Our forests are a strategic asset, and protecting them is fundamental to achieving the Government’s vision for a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West said, nature is the monopoly provider of everything that we need to exist. It is not a subsection of the economy; the economy is a subsection of nature.

More than 1 billion people rely on forests for sustenance and their livelihoods. We have heard, in the many passionate and brilliant speeches from colleagues, that forests provide food, energy, water and medicines worldwide and play a vital role in global economic resilience. They host most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, including the slightly terrifying giant otters from the Amazon that we can see at Chester zoo. I have never seen anything like them—they are utterly terrifying animals, like something out of “Jurassic Park”, the size of a Great Dane and quite terrifying for those of us who are used to the more manageable British otter.

Forests contain rare and endangered species and, of course, plants that are essential for modern medicines. Almost everything we have, whether aspirin from willow or heart medicines from foxglove digitalis, has come from ancient herbal and medical practices. The biodiversity COP’s Cali fund is an important statement and an important way for the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and beauty companies—who profit from those discoveries and now have access to the data sequenced internationally —to make a contribution to protecting and preserving the future discoveries of medicine and the beauty and cosmetics industry—because their future innovations are literally on fire.

I am pleased that UK officials led the establishment of the Cali fund, as hon. Members know. We will officially launch it at London Climate Action Week in June. I hope we will be able to say more about that in due course. We are also hosting the conference of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—IPBES, the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for nature—in England in February 2026, and we hope to make an official announcement about that. Next year will be a very big year for nature.

We know that forests are major carbon sinks: 662 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 15 years of human-made emissions, are stored in them. They cool our planet, providing up to 1° of cooling at mid latitudes. Hon. Members have made brilliant speeches, so they do not need to hear from me about the problems of deforestation, but time is running out. Deforestation is pushing critical biomes such as the Amazon towards potentially catastrophic tipping points, from which they will not recover. We are seeing annual Canadian wildfires, and even wildfires in our own country, with peat fires. All that is putting a massive strain on forest ecosystems.

I am just as concerned about the collapse of the Russian and Canadian boreal forests, to use another slightly jargonistic word; those northern forests are as important to our ecosystem services and our wildlife as the tropical mega-forests. It is essential that we protect, restore and manage forests in a cost-effective way to tackle climate change while supporting livelihoods. Often, the forest is seen as less economically valuable than other land uses such as cash crops, agriculture, infrastructure and urban development. I remember, on a visit to the eastern Congo in 2008, seeing the Batwa forest people living in a tea plantation. Their forests had been cut down as a cash crop, and they were living among those tea bushes because of the disastrous security situation obtaining in South Kivu at that time.

To halt deforestation, forested communities and countries need money to conserve forests. It must become more positive to conserve them than to clear them. That means three changes: an economic shift that values forests and rewards sustainable practices, governance reforms that support effective forest stewardship and tackle illegal activities, and market transformation here in this country to grow green enterprises, protect nature and enhance local livelihoods—not only livelihoods in forested countries, but changing the way that we as consumers purchase. We have heard about consumer demand leading to 35,000 hectares of forest loss overseas.

We import 45% of our food and 80% of our timber; we are the second largest importer in the world after China. That creates resilience problems for the future. Many sectors are underpinned by forest goods and services. A loss of forest will disrupt UK supply chains and businesses, pushing up prices for consumers and undermining our national resilience.

On the point my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West made about the financial industry, I had a meeting yesterday with Sacha Sadan of the Financial Conduct Authority—not specifically on deforestation, but about the sustainability branding of investment managers. I am pleased to say that the FCA, as the regulator, is taking strong and firm action to clean up greenwashing. If they are called sustainability funds, they have to comply with a series of rules and recommendations. That is why many funds have pivoted to “stewardship”, because they can no longer use “sustainability”. I say that for us all to understand what is happening in the financial context.

We are setting significant steps to protect and expand our domestic forests. Our key achievements include a legally binding target to increase tree cover to 16.5% of England’s land area by 2050, and planting more than 21,000 hectares of woodland across the UK between 2023 and 2024, including 5,530 hectares in England, the highest rate in a generation. When we see this year’s figures, they will be even higher. That is good news on the England tree-planting target. There has been some fallaway in Scotland and a slight change in the mix.

I take on the board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) to increase our conifer planting, because that is the productive forest we need. I am going to visit a factory constructing timber housing in Kenilworth and Southam on Friday; I am coming to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) for a three-day visit, because it is so difficult to get to, and to see the brilliant timber production that is going on there, as well as enjoy a midsummer night sky. I have much to do and look forward to.

Internationally, the previous Government persuaded partners to commit to halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. We want a just transition for forest-positive economies. That means securing development and the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities, while tackling climate change and protecting nature. Through overseas development assistance, we support stronger forest governments.

I have been asked about ICF. We continue to support Brazil in its development. To begin with the TFFF, we are also supporting Brazil in its development. We cannot commit to an investment while work is still being done to develop the mechanism, but we will, of course, consider it in due course. Forests are a pillar of the UK-Brazil partnership, and we will support Brazilians ambitions for COP30, including through co-chairing the forest and climate leaders’ partnership, which I believe is covered by my colleague, the Minister for climate change.

On UK-China relations, we continue to work with key partners, including Indonesia and China, to support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change global stocktake objective to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. On TFFF, we are providing technical assistance. We are involved in all the technical workstreams on environmental criteria, financial mechanisms and governance. From what I have seen, that seems to be similar to the Cali mechanism, which tries to crowd in funding from the private sector as well as public finance, because there is a limit to how much public finance can support this.

[Barry Gardiner]

If the Minister could clarify whether indigenous communities are represented on the board of the Cali fund, that would be really helpful.

[Mary Creagh]

I am afraid I have absolutely no idea; I will have to write to my hon. Friend. That is genuinely not my area.

We welcome the positive conclusions to the COP in Rome. The key outcome is the launch of the Cali fund, which will drive benefit sharing from the use of DSI—digital sequence information—on genetic resources, allowing companies using this information to direct funds towards indigenous people and local communities who safeguard biodiversity. At the biodiversity COP, for the first time we created the process by which IPLCs now have a seat at the table, which is very important.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) mentioned the UK-Indonesia joint energy transition. As I have said, we will continue to work with key partners, including Indonesia and China, on the stocktake that supports the objective of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030. Future ICF is subject to business planning this year and to the spending review from next year. I am meeting the Minister for International Development this afternoon to discuss our approach on that; this is all work that is happening at the moment.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a particularly important region, but it has received less attention and less climate finance than the Amazon and south-east Asia. We are committed to working with others to secure the next phase of support, which will be announced at COP30, for the forests, people and biodiversity of the Congo basin countries. That will sit alongside the pledge for IPLCs’ land tenure. We know that communities are better able to protect ecosystems when their land rights are secure, and that areas managed by IPLCs are better protected than any other areas. The Foreign Secretary has already announced that the UK will lead on this IPLC land tenure pledge.

[Sarah Champion]

Will the Minister be covering the regulations on due diligence and when they will be published?

[Mary Creagh]

I am coming to that. Legislation complements the measures I have described. The UK timber regs aim to eliminate demand for illegally harvested timber, and the EU’s timber regulation continues to apply, unamended, in Northern Ireland. Both regs require operators that place timber on the market to implement due diligence and review their supply chains, and a recent review of the UK timber regulations demonstrated that they have led to a reduction of illegal timber in UK supply chains.

Over the past 12 years, our delivery partner, the Office for Product Safety and Standards—which, again, is part of the Department for Business and Trade, so not my area—has reviewed the due diligence systems of more than 600 businesses and issued 100 warning letters and 100 notices of remedial action. Recent notable enforcement by OPSS includes the prosecution of luxury yacht maker Sunseeker International, which received a fine of £360,000 plus prosecution costs in relation to illegal imports of timber from Myanmar and Africa.

At home, the Government must also abide by the rules we have made. The Government’s timber procurement policy requires all Government procurers and suppliers to prove the legality and sustainability of timber. We will only accept sustainable timber, and we have a wider approach to encouraging legal and sustainable forestry domestically and internationally. We are currently reviewing the timber procurement policy, with the aim of securing better recognition of British certification schemes such as Grown in Britain and FLEGT—forest law enforcement governance and trade—licensed timber.

We are at a critical moment for forests, and the international community must go further and faster to deliver our ambition. We need to tackle nature loss and enhance planetary stewardship. We are working to unlock more finance for nature, promote deforestation-free agriculture and reform global supply chains. Supporting indigenous rights and access to finance are also vital, and require targeted efforts across all tropical forest basins.

COP30 in Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, will be a pivotal moment. We are working closely with Brazil and other partners to ensure that forests and nature take centre stage. We are partnering with Guyana as co-chairs of the forest and climate leaders’ partnership to build a valuable forum for driving wider ambition.

Agricultural expansion, particularly for a few key commodities, is the primary driver of illegal deforestation worldwide. As colleagues have said, the Environment Act made provision for the Government to bring forward legislation to exclude commodities. We recognise the urgency of the task to ensure that UK consumption of those commodities—

[Barry Gardiner]

Before the Minister runs down the clock, I just want to say that it is clear from Members across the House that we will not accept any further delay to the due diligence regulations, and that they must be placed not just—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).