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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to identify (a) cocoa, (b) coffee, (c) soy and (d) other forest-based commodities in secondary legislation under the Environment Act 2021.

The UK plays a leading role in supporting global efforts to protect and restore forest landscapes, driving international action to tackle deforestation and ensure forests are sustainably managed. This effort is underpinned by a commitment of £1.5 billion to international forests between 2021-26.

This package of work includes new due diligence legislation through the Environment Act 2021 to tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. We ran a consultation to seek views on how we should implement Environment Act provisions, including which commodities we should regulate through the first round of secondary legislation, and published a summary of responses in June 2022, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tackling-illegal-deforestation-in-uk-supply-chains.

While a wide number of commodities have played and continue to play a role in driving global deforestation, we identified seven key commodities in our 2021-22 consultation that are responsible between them for driving the majority of recent and ongoing deforestation. These commodities include: cattle (beef and leather), cocoa, coffee, maize, rubber, palm oil, and soy. The consultation also sought evidence on other commodities driving deforestation.

We will take into account consultation responses in decisions around which commodities to regulate and will publish the UK Government’s approach to secondary legislation in due course.