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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to create new woodlands.

The Government has committed to bring tree planting rates across the UK up to 30,000 hectares per year by the end of this parliament. The England Trees Action Plan set out how we intend to at least treble woodland creation in England over the same period to contribute to this, and we will continue to work with the Devolved Administrations to deliver a UK-wide step change in tree planting and establishment.

The Plan is supported by £500 million from the Nature for Climate Fund. Furthermore, in the recently published Net Zero Strategy, we announced we will boost the Nature for Climate Fund with a further £124 million of new money, ensuring total spend of more than £750 million by 2025 on peat restoration, woodland creation and management.

The England Trees Action Plan sets out 90 measures to reach our tree planting targets. Since publishing the Plan, we have launched the ground-breaking England Woodland Creation Offer, which will pay land managers to plant the right trees in the right places; supported the existing network of Community Forests across the country, and launched three new Community Forests, in Cumbria, Devon and the North-East; and launched the Woodlands for Water partnership, which will use tree planting to reduce pollution in hundreds of miles of rivers.