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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to support the private sector to (a) invest in and (b) develop new technologies to help meet her environmental targets.

We have set out our delivery plans for each of the environmental targets in our Environmental Improvement Plan which was published on 31 January 2023. The delivery of the targets will require a shared endeavour across the whole of Government, business and the individual decisions we all make. We will continue working with the private and third sector to ensure we are tapping into their expertise.

We will support the development of and investment in new technologies through a variety of routes including the forthcoming update to the Green Finance Strategy, the introduction of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill and Government’s own R&D funding such as the £270m Farming Innovation Programme and £75m net zero pathway funding. We will also work to enable the appropriate regulatory environment to enable investment in innovation, such as through the Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat to support water company innovation, and wider regulatory reform outside the European Union.

Defra continues to work alongside the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to build Earth Observation Capacity in order to monitor the environment, to meet targets.