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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the environmental impact of land use practice in the UK.

The Government recognises that the way land is used and managed has a range of environmental impacts, both positive and negative. We regularly review and assess these impacts, working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Increasing the public and private benefits of land-use, and of land management, will be critical to achieving our environmental goals – particularly on climate change and nature recovery.

It is critical that the right environmental actions are delivered in the right places, while maintaining food security and sustainable development. In recognition of this, we have recently published our trees and peat actions plans. In addition we are:

o developing new schemes that will reward environmental land management;

o introducing a mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain via the Environment Bill; and

o introducing Local Nature Recovery Strategies across England that will propose priority locations for nature recovery and the delivery of nature-based solutions.