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 is taking to help ensure that the UK protects nature in accordance with its commitments at the Convention of COP-15.

In the United Kingdom domestic biodiversity policy is devolved. The four nations work together to develop a collective response to United Kingdom wide goals and targets, such as the post-2020 global framework, expected to be agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Fifteenth Conference of the Parties, COP15 in Montreal in December.

We have taken unprecedented steps to protect and restore biodiversity in England, not least through our world leading Environment Act, which requires a new, legally binding target to be set in England to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030, and introduces Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities to work together to protect our native species.

We have also committed to protecting 30% of our land and sea by 2030 to better support and recover biodiversity, announcing a landmark designation programme to help realise this.