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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to tackle nitrogen pollution.

The Government has made ambitious commitments to improve the environment, including air and water quality. Addressing nitrogen pollution remains a priority for delivering these commitments and we are taking steps to achieve this.

We are taking action to address pollution from agriculture by utilising a suite of effective advice programmes, incentives, and regulations. Recent actions include but are not limited to a near doubling of funding for the Catchment Sensitive Farming Programme; providing financial support for positive action from farmers, such as through the Countryside Stewardship scheme and the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund; and promoting compliance with regulation by allocating £1.2 million to the Environment Agency to recruit an additional 50 inspectors. We continue to review and consider options to deliver our commitments in this area.

In addition, we are helping to tackle local nitrogen dioxide exceedances for air quality by providing £880 million to help local authorities develop and implement local air quality plans.