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 is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help protect high-grade agricultural land from (a) housing and (b) other non-agricultural developments.

We work closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that planning supports agriculture and food production as well as delivering other goals. This is reflected in the National Planning Policy Framework. The Framework makes clear that local planning authorities should take into account all the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land.

Where significant development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, planning authorities should seek to use poorer quality land in preference to that of a higher quality.