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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in light of the proposed Environment Act targets published by his Department on 16 March 2022 to increase tree canopy and woodland cover from 14.5 per cent to 17.5 per cent of total land area in England by 2050, what assessment he has made of the (a) tree canopy cover provided by existing hedgerow trees and (b) potential area enhanced hedgerow trees could provide in the future by 2050.

Hedgerows are one of the most important ecological building blocks in our farmed landscape. They maintain the distinctive character of our countryside, providing crucial habitats and food for wildlife. The trees that appear in hedgerows and outgrown hedges are defined as 'linear features in the National Forest Inventory', which details all tree cover in Britain. Forest Research's ' Tree Cover Outside Woodland in Great Britain', 2017, reported the last comprehensive inventory and is due to be updated again in 2022/23. This will act as the proposed target's baseline for trees outside woodlands, including hedgerow trees, and both losses and gains from that baseline will be accounted for.

Along with the proposed tree target, the Environment Act 2021 requires us to set a world leading target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030, alongside other biodiversity targets we are consulting on. The species abundance target will require creating more, better joined up habitats, which will include hedgerows to help tackle the causes of decline and drive actions to deliver nature recovery. We also propose that hedgerows should be one of the wildlife-rich habitats in our proposed legally binding target to create or restore in excess of 500,000 hectares of a range of wildlife-rich habitat outside protected sites by 2042.