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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to incentivise private investment in large nature recovery projects.

Defra has put in place a number of interventions to scale up private sector investment in nature recovery projects across England. These include:

• Supporting market development through our partnership with the British Standards Institution to develop a suite of nature investment standards
• Stimulating a pipeline of investable nature projects, working with farm clusters and leading Local Authorities, through our Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund and Local Investment in Natural Capital programmes
• Developing blended finance models including through our Landscape Recovery scheme; our investment in the forthcoming Big Nature Impact Fund; and our work with Government’s public financial institutions such as the National Wealth Fund

We are analysing responses to our call for evidence on expanding the role of the private sector in nature recovery and will set out next steps in due course.