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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the findings of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds report entitled Mind the Gap, published in November 2021; and what steps he is taking to improve agricultural policy to protect hedgerows and wildlife in the UK.

While no formal assessment of the report has been made, we agree about the value of hedgerows to our countryside. Hedgerows provide vital resources for mammals, birds and insect species, and they also act as wildlife corridors, allowing dispersal between isolated habitats. Many are also important historical and cultural landscape features.

Legal protection for hedgerows in England and Wales is provided by the Hedgerows Regulations 1997. These regulations prohibit the removal of most countryside hedgerows (or parts of them) without first seeking approval from the local planning authority. It decides whether a hedgerow is ‘important’ and should not be removed because of its wildlife, landscape, historical or archaeological value.

Alongside the Hedgerows Regulations, all wild birds, their eggs and their nests are protected, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it an offence to kill, injure or take wild birds or to take or damage their eggs and nests. This provides important protections for farmland birds.

Hedgerows are also protected by standards under cross compliance. As we move away from cross compliance, we have committed to maintaining our high environmental standards. Our new environmental land management schemes will continue to recognise the role and fund the management of hedgerows. The hedgerow standard, part of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, will pay farmers to plant more hedgerows, leave them uncut or raise the cutting height, and buffer them from agricultural operations.

We will also continue to keep our domestic regulatory standards under review, raising standards sustainably and as needed over time, as new research and evidence emerge.