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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans his Department has to (a) review the 25 year Environment Plan and (b) include public consultation in that review process.

We have begun work on the first review of the 25 Year Environment Plan. We will complete the review by the end of January 2023 and any revised plan will be subject to the relevant parliamentary laying procedures as set out in the Environment Act 2021.

The Government is issuing a series of public consultations relating to environment policy this year. These include consultations on new long-term, legally binding targets and on proposals to ban the supply of single-use plastic plates, cutlery and balloon sticks and expanded and extruded polystyrene food and drink containers. We will also publish a public consultation on Nature Recovery in due course. We do not plan to overlay these with a further public consultation, adopting the same approach as we did for the original 25 Year Environment Plan. The development of the revised plan will be open and collaborative so we can draw on expertise available outside Government. It will also be subject to the relevant accountability and scrutiny procedures as set out in the Environment Act.