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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to bring forward plans to strengthen the legal protection of the hedgehog.

This Government is committed to halting the decline in species abundance by 2030, through a world-leading legally binding target under the Environment Act. We will shortly be publishing a Green Paper to look at how we can drive the delivery of that target, including through our sites and protections for species, such as the hedgehog. Other actions under the Environment Act are likely to support species like hedgehogs, such as biodiversity net gain for development including nationally significant infrastructure projects. Local Nature Recovery Strategies will also help identify and drive local actions to protect and recover species at a scale that will be beneficial to species such as the hedgehog. Our new environmental land management schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices, creating and preserving habitat such as such as woodland, heathland and species-rich grassland, as well as making landscape-scale environmental changes, all of which could benefit species such as hedgehog.