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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the 2020 25 Year Environment Plan progress update, what steps the Government (a) is taking and (b) plans to take to reach its target to restore 75 per cent of protected wildlife sites to favourable condition by 2042.

There are a range of management mechanisms currently in place aimed at maintaining or restoring protected wildlife sites in or to a favourable condition. These include those delivered through Countryside Stewardship and broader strategic action such as catchment sensitive farming, to improve air and water quality in high priority areas. Natural England is also working to improve the efficiency of SSSI monitoring, which will make better use of new technologies, such as remote sensing and greater partnership involvement.

We are exploring the use of powers in the Environment Bill to strengthen our commitment to improving the condition of our protected sites on land and in the sea by setting a target in law, as set out in our recently published policy paper on environmental targets. In addition, we plan to publish a Nature Strategy in 2021, following the agreement of the post-2020 global framework under the Convention of Biological Diversity, which will set out further detail on our action for protected sites.