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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Statement by Lord Benyon on 16 December 2022 (HLWS449) regarding the target to "increase total tree and woodland cover from 14.5% of land area now to 16.5% by 2050", how many hectares that two per cent increase will involve; and how much of that increase will be completed by 2030.

Increasing tree and woodland canopy cover from 14.5% to 16.5% of land area would mean increasing cover by around quarter of a million hectares, an area the size of Derbyshire, although the precise figure will be dependent on the revised baseline which will be published later this year. We will publish an interim woodland cover target, to be achieved in 2028, in the Environmental Improvement Plan.