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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he plans to take to monitor the value for money of Government-funded biodiversity projects over the next five years.

Defra has a number of schemes which provide funding to support biodiversity projects. This includes the Landscape Recovery Scheme, The Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme, and Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme.

Each individual scheme has its own monitoring and evaluation framework to evaluate the impact of the projects, and this will include evaluation of the value for money delivered. For example, the Species Recovery Programme is currently commissioning an evaluation for the current Spending Review period which will include evaluating whether the Programme is providing value for money.

Defra is also currently developing an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework to strengthen its understanding of progress towards meeting its statutory biodiversity targets, including its target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. This work will include an overall evaluation of the value for money delivered by the suite of government interventions for biodiversity.