According to the latest final UK greenhouse gas emissions statistics published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, greenhouse gas emissions from domestic and international civil aviation in 2023 totalled 34.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e). This was 8 percent of total UK greenhouse gas emissions.

The government is making great strides in transitioning to greener aviation, including by introducing the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Mandate and introducing the SAF Bill to implement the revenue certainty mechanism.

The government makes regular assessments concerning the impact of aviation emissions on climate targets. A Carbon Budget Delivery Plan will be published later this year, detailing policies to decarbonise all sectors, including aviation, covering the carbon budget 4 - 6 period (2023 – 2037).

Accelerating to net zero will unlock a range of benefits for businesses, including new market opportunities, access to green finance and reduced energy bills.

Climate Change Agreements provide tax discounts for businesses reducing their emissions, and the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund supports industrial sites with high energy use to transition.

We are currently running a pilot in the West Midlands, providing energy audits and grants to small and medium businesses to support them in decarbonising.

Small and medium-sized businesses can visit the UK Business Climate Hub, which is run in partnership with government, for advice and sources of finance or support on reducing emissions.

The UK has halved its emissions, ahead of every other major economy. The transitions set out in the Net Zero Strategy for every sector of the UK economy keep it on track for Carbon Budgets 4, 5 and 6, the 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution, and net zero by 2050.

The Government has consistently seized the opportunity to attract investment in renewables, with around £120 billion of new investment since 2010 alongside around £80 billion of UK levy funded support. For example, it continues to support new renewable deployment through the Contracts for Difference Scheme, which now runs on an annual basis.

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain which has coped well in responding to unprecedented challenges. We have in place a robust system for assessing and managing the risks facing the UK. The National Risk Register published earlier this year sets out our assessment of the risk landscape facing the United Kingdom, including risks to the food system, risks arising from climate change, and the risk of public disorder. We have in place comprehensive plans to monitor and build resilience to specific risks, including risks to the food system, as reflected in the Government Food Strategy, National Adaptation Programme and UK Food Security Report.

The UK is working closely with African partners to fight climate change, boost resilience and help those whose lives are most impacted. The UK supports initiatives, such as contributing towards the African Development Bank's Climate Action Window (£200 million) and South Africa's Just Energy Transition ($1.8 billion). At the Africa Climate Summit (4-6 September) the Minister for Climate and the Environment, The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, reaffirmed the Government's commitment to spend £11.6 billion on international climate finance, with approximately 40 per cent of this being spent on Africa. Minister Mitchell also announced projects worth £49 million to help African countries manage the impact of climate change and improve the lives of women, farmers and at-risk communities.

The Government published its Third Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) in January 2022. CCRA3 sets out a wide range of climate risks to the UK, including the impacts on the natural environment of the changing climate and extreme events such as wildfires. The Third National Adaptation Programme will be published later this year and will set out the Government’s response to each of these climate risks. In addition, the Environmental Improvement Plan (2023) delivery plan includes measures that build resilience to increasing wildfire threat, recognising the evidence of CCRA3, and outlining several important mitigations and adaptations.

The “Powering Up Britain - The Net Zero Growth Plan” published in March 2023 sets out the Government's approach to reaching net zero, including for the waste sector. Within this, the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan sets out our commitment to the near elimination of biodegradable municipal waste to landfill from 2028, through the Collection and Packaging Reforms, as well as additional policies. To that aim, we will launch a Call for Evidence shortly focused on the near elimination of biodegradable waste being sent to landfill. The Government has also committed to publish an addendum to the Resources and Waste Strategy in the summer, which will focus on net zero.

The Government has made clear in the National Planning Policy Framework that local planning authorities plans should take a proactive approach to mitigating and adapting to climate change in line with the objectives and provisions of the Climate Change Act 2008. The Framework must, as a matter of law, be taken into account in preparing the development plan, and is a material consideration in planning decisions.

Furthermore, as part of our wider ambitions for an improved planning system we intend to review the Framework to ensure that it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaption as fully as possible. The publication of the consultation on reforms to national planning policy, published 22 December 2022, is a first step in this process.

All parties at COP27, the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the UK, agreed to establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Parties agreed to establish a Transitional Committee of developed and developing countries to operationalise the funding arrangements, with which the UK engages closely.

At COP27 the UK announced a commitment to increase climate adaptation finance to £1.5 billion in 2025. This funding will help countries build their resilience to climate change impacts. The UK engages closely through the UNFCCC process with partners, as well as through direct engagements with developing countries.

In the Net Zero Strategy, the Government set out its commitments to enable local areas to deliver net zero.

These include continuing the Local Net Zero Hubs Programme to support local areas with their capability and capacity to meet net zero; and funding work to develop business models to increase private sector investment in local net zero.

Separate food waste collections are our biggest waste sector contributor towards reducing waste sector emissions (and towards achieving zero food waste to landfill).

We are bringing forward £295 million of capital funding which will allow local authorities in England to prepare to implement free weekly separate food waste collections for all households. The Environment Act 2021 will enable us to require local authorities to collect food waste weekly, which would divert it from landfill and reduce emissions.

We have been engaging with local authorities as we develop how that funding will be allocated to them to implement separate food waste collections. We are currently drafting the Government response to our recent consultation on consistency in recycling, where we plan to confirm the commencement dates for separate food waste collections to be included in regulations.

We are fully committed to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 target, which seeks to halve global food waste at consumer and retail levels by 2030 and avoid the greenhouse gas production emissions associated with food that becomes waste.

The Government has made clear in the National Planning Policy Framework that the planning system should support the transition to a low carbon future in a changing climate. The Framework is a material consideration in planning decisions. The Government has committed in the Net Zero Strategy to review national planning policy to make sure it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation as fully as possible. We recognise that local authorities can, and do, play an essential role in driving local climate action and we are working closely with them to provide support to help them contribute to delivering net zero.

The Net Zero Strategy, published in October 2021, is a cross-economy strategy which keeps the UK on the path to net zero tackling climate change and emissions.

The Government is working closely with local authorities as they are best placed to understand how to deliver home retrofits for the betterment of their local communities.

The Government has committed more than £6.6bn in this Parliament to make energy efficiency updates to homes as well as community buildings such as schools, hospitals and leisure centres. Schemes such as the Home Upgrade Grant, the Local Authority Delivery Scheme and the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund are being delivered through local authorities. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published a list of participating Local Authorities in England.

The Government and regulators have concluded that to accelerate progress on climate risk disclosures, the UK will become the first country in the world to make Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)-aligned disclosures fully mandatory across the economy by 2025, with most requirements coming into force by 2023.

The UK Government recently published a consultation on Mandatory Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which closed on 5 May. The proposal covers larger companies and is consistent with the roadmap towards mandatory and climate related disclosures, and the interim report that was published in November 2020, which noted that the benefits of mandatory disclosures are likely to increase with an organisation’s size.

We will now carefully consider all of the responses to the consultation and a response will be published by the end of the year. BEIS has committed to review the case for expanding the scope of the regulations in 2023.

The Government is in no doubt that climate change is one of the greatest global challenges we face, and that action is urgently needed in the UK and across the world. It is clear that we are already seeing the impacts of climate change, with the Arctic among those regions being particularly affected.

We are at the forefront of global action on climate change and we are determined to build on the leadership we have shown to date, notably through our world-leading net zero target set in UK legislation in June last year. We are hosting the crucial COP26 climate negotiations this year, and we are determined to use this conference to promote ambitious action to deliver the transformational change required by the Paris Agreement.

Public Health England has not made an assessment of the research by Imperial College London, published on 13 January 2020.

In its most recent advice, the International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) assesses that the North Sea cod stock has been subject to both increased fishing pressure and reduced recruitment levels. This combination of effects has led to the reduced stock status. There is no clear cause of the low recruitment in 2018 although a number of factors including the size of adult spawning stock and environmental variability are known to affect recruitment success. The Government is committed to ensuring our fish stocks are healthy and UK fisheries management is sustainable for future generations.

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification is an industry led initiative to reassure consumers as to the sustainability of the fish they eat. This is not organised nor administered by the Government, but by the MSC.

On 2^nd July, the Government launched its Green Finance Strategy with the ambition to align private sector financial flows with clean, environmentally sustainable and resilient growth, and strengthen the competitiveness of our financial sector. The strategy outlines how we will drive the greening of the financial system and help mobilise private sector finance to meet our environmental objectives, including through infrastructure projects in the UK and overseas. We have also worked with the City of London to launch the Green Finance Institute on 2^nd July.