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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the Waste prevention programme for England 2021.

The Secretary of State has regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues on a range of issues, and Cabinet discussions are considered confidential. However, since consulting in 2021 my officials have been working with their counterparts in other Departments, particularly the Department for Energy and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade, to finalise the new programme, now called ‘Maximising Resources, Minimising Waste’. This will be considerably shorter than the document consulted on to make it easier to read and navigate, but it will set out priorities for action to manage resources and waste in accordance with the waste hierarchy. We plan to publish the new programme in the first part of this year.