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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to expand its existing tree nursery production scheme.

In the England Trees Action Plan the Government committed to provide funding to support UK public and private sector nurseries and seed suppliers to enhance the quantity, quality, diversity and biosecurity of domestic tree production. Our interventions will help the sector to modernise existing facilities and explore innovative technologies and practices. This is necessary to create a resilient, healthy, and genetically diverse planting stock.

In the past year £1 million has been made available through the Tree Production Innovation Fund to encourage adoption of new technologies and ways of working, and a further £2.6 million has been made available in capital grants to support climate and disease resilience and expand nursery capacity. We are also exploring new data sharing practices to help better plan for supply and demand in the sector. This will support nurseries and seed suppliers to produce the right stock at the right time.

We continue to work to monitor our interventions and see how the nursery sector can best be supported.