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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the need to ban the commercialisation of products derived from deforested areas and certify more strongly the origin of products imported to the UK.

The Government recognises the impact of consumption in the UK on the world’s forests. In 2019 we asked an independent taskforce - the Global Resource Initiative (GRI) – to provide the UK Government with specific recommendations on addressing the problem. The GRI submitted its first report in March 2021, and recommended the Government introduce a mandatory due diligence requirement on organisations using ‘forest risk commodities’ – commodities whose production is associated with wide-scale deforestation – in their supply chains.

The Government introduced new legislation through the Environment Act to tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. Recent research estimates that around 70% of global tropical deforestation for commercial agriculture between 2013 and 2019 was conducted in violation of national laws.

The Government announced further details of our forest risk commodities regulations at COP28 in December. The new law will make it illegal for larger organisations, with a global annual turnover of more than £50 million, to use key forest risk commodities produced on land illegally occupied or used. Initial secondary legislation will focus on four commodities identified as key drivers of deforestation: cattle products (excluding dairy), cocoa, palm oil and soy.

Organisations in scope will also be required to undertake a due diligence exercise on their supply chains and to report on this exercise annually. To ensure transparency, information about businesses' due diligence exercises will be published. Businesses in scope that do not comply with these requirements may be subject to fines and other civil sanctions.

The secondary legislation required to operationalise the Environment Act provisions will be laid as soon as parliamentary time allows.