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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department will take to (a) raise environmental standards in the UK and (b) provide the necessary resources to his Department's executive agencies to enforce those standards.

The Government has already introduced a range of domestic measures in the Environment Act 2021 which will ensure we continue to drive forward environmental standards and are transparent about environmental protections. Through the Act, we will clean up the country’s air and water, increase biodiversity, reduce waste, and better use resources.

These changes will be driven by new legally binding environmental targets and enforced by the Office for Environmental Protection, which will hold the Government and public bodies to account on their environmental obligations.

As set out in the Nature Recovery Green Paper, we are considering how we organise Defra and its Arm’s-length Bodies to deliver our long-term targets. We are due to publish a response to the Green Paper in the near future.