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To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress her Department made on developing proposals to end the use of horticultural peat in England; and what is the anticipated timetable for any legislative proposals.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress her Department made on developing proposals to end the use of horticultural peat in England; and what is the anticipated timetable for any legislative proposals.
The Government is committed to protecting nature-rich habitats, including peatlands, and has pledged to ban the sale of peat and peat-containing products when Parliamentary time allows. The timing and approach of the implementation of this ban, including details such as transitional arrangements or exemptions, are currently being considered by officials in the four administrations, and further details will be provided in due course.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Affairs, for what reason the 2024 and 2025 peat use statistics for UK horticulture have not been published.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Affairs, for what reason the 2024 and 2025 peat use statistics for UK horticulture have not been published.
Our contractors have carried out the peat and growing media use surveys in the usual way. However, due to circumstances beyond our control this exercise has been delayed. We aim to publish the results of the survey by the end of the year.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the amount of peat destroyed by the 2025 wildfires.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the amount of peat destroyed by the 2025 wildfires.
The Government is protecting peat from wildfire through peatland restoration and is committed to restoring 280,000 hectares of peatland by 2050. Figures for the scale of wildfires on peat and the amount peat destroyed are not yet available. Work is underway to evaluate the impact of the 2025 wildfires on peatlands.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment her Department has made of the scientific evidence on the environmental impacts of managed heather burning on deep peat; and whether it has commissioned any independent reviews of that evidence.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment her Department has made of the scientific evidence on the environmental impacts of managed heather burning on deep peat; and whether it has commissioned any independent reviews of that evidence.
This Government is committed to protecting moorlands. In September 2025, we amended the Heather and Grass Burning (England) Regulations 2021 to improve the resilience of our moorlands. The Regulations reflect the latest available evidence to guide sustainable land management and protect areas of moorland where intensive management is known to occur on deep peat. A licensing scheme was introduced alongside the regulations in 2021 and has been maintained under the 2025 amendments. This enables land managers to apply for a licence to burn to reduce the impacts of wildfire where there is no feasible alternative. Burning is one of several tools available to land managers to manage vegetation and reduce wildfire risk. Other land management methods are not restricted by these regulations, which cover roughly 5% of England’s land area.
Defra relies on good quality evidence to inform its decision-making and policy design. Whilst we know that damage from burning can occur at any depth, evidence shows that at 30cm, peatlands are capable of sustaining blanket bog habitat. Natural England’s Evidence Review on the effects of managed burning in upland peatland (NEER155) was one source of information which fed into the decision to amend the Regulations. NEER155 built on Natural England’s 2013 review (NEER004) by incorporating 102 new studies, which were assessed and subjected to the appropriate academic rigour. The overall findings and conclusions of NEER155 remained consistent with those of the 2013 review. It concluded that burning, especially repeated burning, results in a departure from the typical structure of these habitats and can impact how they function. The Government remains satisfied that the Regulations are supported by the available evidence.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact on land managers of the change in the peat-depth threshold used for regulating heather burning from 40 centimetres to 30 centimetres; and what scientific evidence was used to...
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact on land managers of the change in the peat-depth threshold used for regulating heather burning from 40 centimetres to 30 centimetres; and what scientific evidence was used to...
This Government is committed to protecting moorlands. In September 2025, we amended the Heather and Grass Burning (England) Regulations 2021 to improve the resilience of our moorlands. The Regulations reflect the latest available evidence to guide sustainable land management and protect areas of moorland where intensive management is known to occur on deep peat. A licensing scheme was introduced alongside the regulations in 2021 and has been maintained under the 2025 amendments. This enables land managers to apply for a licence to burn to reduce the impacts of wildfire where there is no feasible alternative. Burning is one of several tools available to land managers to manage vegetation and reduce wildfire risk. Other land management methods are not restricted by these regulations, which cover roughly 5% of England’s land area.
Defra relies on good quality evidence to inform its decision-making and policy design. Whilst we know that damage from burning can occur at any depth, evidence shows that at 30cm, peatlands are capable of sustaining blanket bog habitat. Natural England’s Evidence Review on the effects of managed burning in upland peatland (NEER155) was one source of information which fed into the decision to amend the Regulations. NEER155 built on Natural England’s 2013 review (NEER004) by incorporating 102 new studies, which were assessed and subjected to the appropriate academic rigour. The overall findings and conclusions of NEER155 remained consistent with those of the 2013 review. It concluded that burning, especially repeated burning, results in a departure from the typical structure of these habitats and can impact how they function. The Government remains satisfied that the Regulations are supported by the available evidence.
Motion, That this House has considered UK-Indonesia collaboration on environmental sustainability. Agreed to on question.
Motion, That this House has considered UK-Indonesia collaboration on environmental sustainability. Agreed to on question.
I beg to move,
That this House has considered UK-Indonesia collaboration on environmental sustainability.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I am also pleased to see the Minister for the Indo-Pacific in her place; I did want this to be an Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office...
I beg to move,
That this House has considered UK-Indonesia collaboration on environmental sustainability.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I am also pleased to see the Minister for the Indo-Pacific in her place; I did want this to be an Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office...
I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this important debate. As she is setting out, peatlands store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined, whether that be on the Somerset levels in my constituency or in the rainforests of Borneo, and their destruction accelerates the climate crisis. Does...
I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this important debate. As she is setting out, peatlands store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined, whether that be on the Somerset levels in my constituency or in the rainforests of Borneo, and their destruction accelerates the climate crisis. Does...
I certainly think that peatlands are incredibly important. It has been one of my frustrations that we put so much emphasis on forests, and on the UK on planting trees—like a race to how many millions of trees each party can pledge to plant—whereas, as the hon. Member says, the...
I certainly think that peatlands are incredibly important. It has been one of my frustrations that we put so much emphasis on forests, and on the UK on planting trees—like a race to how many millions of trees each party can pledge to plant—whereas, as the hon. Member says, the...
My hon. Friend is talking about peatlands; she will know that Indonesia had a huge, deep burn of its peatlands in 2019, with 31,000 sq km of land burned. In the UK, when we had a terrible peatland fire on Saddleworth moor in 2018, just the year before, an estimated...
My hon. Friend is talking about peatlands; she will know that Indonesia had a huge, deep burn of its peatlands in 2019, with 31,000 sq km of land burned. In the UK, when we had a terrible peatland fire on Saddleworth moor in 2018, just the year before, an estimated...
I very much agree. We both spent the Easter recess wading through peatlands. I was going to say that we were wading up to our knees; I was wading up to my knees, but for everyone else there the peat came up to about mid-calf on them. I had very...
I very much agree. We both spent the Easter recess wading through peatlands. I was going to say that we were wading up to our knees; I was wading up to my knees, but for everyone else there the peat came up to about mid-calf on them. I had very...
I commend the hon. Lady for rightly securing this debate. She has given us some of the problems and, in her intervention, the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) suggested some of the things that could happen to solve them.
Back home in Northern Ireland, we have a number...
I commend the hon. Lady for rightly securing this debate. She has given us some of the problems and, in her intervention, the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) suggested some of the things that could happen to solve them.
Back home in Northern Ireland, we have a number...
I direct the hon. Gentleman to the Minister, because she is the one with the power to put him in touch with the embassy, for example.
However, I know exactly what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I was at the desertification COP in Riyadh in December 2024, which was all about...
I direct the hon. Gentleman to the Minister, because she is the one with the power to put him in touch with the embassy, for example.
However, I know exactly what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I was at the desertification COP in Riyadh in December 2024, which was all about...
If Members have not had the chance to go to it already, I will just let them know that the British Red Cross is holding an event in a dining room A or B today. Earlier, I was talking to a young lady who is doing some work in Nepal...
If Members have not had the chance to go to it already, I will just let them know that the British Red Cross is holding an event in a dining room A or B today. Earlier, I was talking to a young lady who is doing some work in Nepal...
The hon. Member makes a very important point. At Foreign Office questions last week, I had the first question on the Order Paper, which was very ably answered by my hon. Friend the Minister. My question was about the Tibetan plateau, the environmental degradation there and what China is doing...
The hon. Member makes a very important point. At Foreign Office questions last week, I had the first question on the Order Paper, which was very ably answered by my hon. Friend the Minister. My question was about the Tibetan plateau, the environmental degradation there and what China is doing...
My hon. Friend will recognise that where there is such degradation, huge amounts of biodiversity are lost. Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and I am grateful to the Indonesian Government for the work that they have been focused on in this regard.
My hon. Friend...
My hon. Friend will recognise that where there is such degradation, huge amounts of biodiversity are lost. Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and I am grateful to the Indonesian Government for the work that they have been focused on in this regard.
My hon. Friend...
I absolutely agree. I have just come from an event that Fairtrade is hosting in the Inter-Parliamentary Union room, at which people were talking, among other things, about the forest risk commodities legislation—I will come on to that later, because the Government have announced regulations today—and about the cost to...
I absolutely agree. I have just come from an event that Fairtrade is hosting in the Inter-Parliamentary Union room, at which people were talking, among other things, about the forest risk commodities legislation—I will come on to that later, because the Government have announced regulations today—and about the cost to...
This is an essential point. My hon. Friend will remember the words of Pak Ja Martin, who was in charge of the project that we went to see. He said, “You can’t talk conservation to people who are hungry.” Therefore, local indigenous people, who for centuries have protected and conserved...
This is an essential point. My hon. Friend will remember the words of Pak Ja Martin, who was in charge of the project that we went to see. He said, “You can’t talk conservation to people who are hungry.” Therefore, local indigenous people, who for centuries have protected and conserved...
I could not agree more. I really appreciate all the interventions, which are a very good way of getting the debate flowing, but it is quite easy for me to lose my place. I was talking about the impact of mining, logging and urbanisation, and about the fact that forest...
I could not agree more. I really appreciate all the interventions, which are a very good way of getting the debate flowing, but it is quite easy for me to lose my place. I was talking about the impact of mining, logging and urbanisation, and about the fact that forest...
The hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) said that the first thing for people is always to feed their children and look after their families, and he is absolutely right: that is critical. If we cannot get that right, nothing can happen. Palm oil is in short supply at...
The hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) said that the first thing for people is always to feed their children and look after their families, and he is absolutely right: that is critical. If we cannot get that right, nothing can happen. Palm oil is in short supply at...