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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made protecting peatlands in England; and what discussions they have had with the devolved nations and regions about this issue.

In the Net Zero Strategy, we committed to aim to restore approximately 280,000 ha of peatland in England by 2050, with the Nature for Climate Fund providing funding for the restoration of approximately 35,000ha of peatland by 2025. In the England Peat Action Plan, published last year, we set out the steps we will take to protect and restore our peatland.

In 2021, Defra established the Lowland Agricultural Peat Task Force to explore ways of preserving the carbon stored in our lowland farmed peatlands, both to reduce emissions and to safeguard productive agriculture, and we look forward to receiving its recommendations later this summer.

The Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021 prohibits burning on deep peat in protected sites without a licence and the accompanying guidance sets out the very limited circumstances where burning will be seen as a permissible activity conducted in the right place for the right reasons. We are continuing to engage with stakeholders to encourage sustainable land management practices that reflect our ambitions to restore and protect our peatlands.

Through the England Peat Action Plan, we are encouraging landowners and land managers to adopt or create good quality wildfire management plans and use sustainable land management practices to reduce fuel loads - making the land more resilient to and mitigating the risk of wildfire. Last April we supported the development of a new training program, to consolidate knowledge, skills and understanding of vegetation fires including wildfire incidents. Defra has committed further funding for the next three years and we continue to share learning and good practice with the devolved administrations.

We have consulted on measures to end the use of peat and peat containing products in horticulture, including a ban on the sale of peat in the retail sector by the end of this Parliament. We continue to engage with the industry on making the transition to peat-free alternatives as seamless as possible and will publish our formal response to the consultation in due course.