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 help ensure habitat (a) creation and (b) enhancement through biodiversity net gain.

It is evident that the previous Government failed to protect and restore nature. The previous Environment Improvement Plan did not focus enough on delivery of our Environment Act targets and as a result nature is in crisis.

Biodiversity net gain requires most planning applications to deliver a 10% increase in biodiversity compared to what was there before. The biodiversity to be delivered is calculated using the biodiversity metric, developed by Natural England together with stakeholders over a period of many years, drawing on the best science available.

By applying the biodiversity metric to all eligible development sites, we will make sure that the right habitat creation and enhancement takes place to both compensate for what has been lost and deliver a gain.

The metric also rewards biodiversity actions taken in line with Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs), incentivising the right actions to be taken in the right places as LNRSs are brought forward across England.