To ask His Majesty’s Government what contributions and initiatives they have undertaken in support of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility.

My Lords, the UK has had a long-standing role in protecting forests and supporting efforts to halt and reverse deforestation. While the Government did not announce an investment in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility at COP, we very much remain supportive of the TFFF and are proud to have substantially assisted Brazil to develop the initiative. We will continue to provide support to the TFFF, including through co-funding the World Bank trust fund that will operationalise the facility and through the AIM4Forests programme, which will provide critical technical assistance to support delivery of the TFFF.

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his new role. It is deeply disappointing that the Government have let down historic allies such as Brazil, Norway and Germany by not investing in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility at COP 30. It is a desperately needed initiative to end tropical deforestation, and it has cross-party and public support. I have two questions for the Minister. First, why will the Treasury not count investment in the TFFF as an asset on its public balance sheet? Secondly, when will the Government implement the long-overdue Schedule 17 due diligence provisions under the Environment Act?

The decision on whether to invest in the TFFF, as it came up, following the intense work that the UK did in developing it with the Brazilian Government, was very much part of the question of our fiscal position around the time of the Budget. That does not mean that this is necessarily gone for ever; it will be under continuing review in the future. I will write to the noble Baroness on the implementation of the schedule that she alluded to, because I am not exactly sure of its status at present.

My Lords, I appreciate that the Minister may need to write to me too to answer my questions. In the autumn the Joint Intelligence Committee produced a report on the impact on the UK of global biodiversity loss, which the report is believed to say is very significant. Will the Minister please find out what has happened to that report? When will it be published? Will the Government continue to make clear that biodiversity loss, the loss of forests and global deforestation are damaging to us all?

I will indeed have to write to the noble Lord about where exactly that report is at the moment. I remind him that the UK is extremely active on its biodiversity arrangements, particularly its forestry and woodland arrangements. The target for the 16.5% coverage of woodland and forestry in England by 2050 is already being substantially adhered to: 21,000 hectares of new woodland were introduced last year, which is a generational record. The UK will continue to act in that manner on its biodiversity commitments.

My Lords, I pay tribute to our Secretary of State for DESNZ and his team for their dedication to keep attention on the climate agenda. Does my noble friend agree that, besides finance, the United Kingdom’s organisational support and commitment to encourage deeper participation from other nations are critical to realising effective change?

Yes, I agree with my noble friend. The UK continues to be one of the major donors to forest conservation and restoration, and we expect to deliver on the £1.5 billion of spending on forests pledged at COP 26. The UK is co-chair of the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership, a coalition of more than 30 Governments working together to accelerate delivery of the goal to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. This played an instrumental role in delivering key commitments for indigenous peoples and local communities —who are, after all, the best stewards of tropical forest development and protection—including a commitment that will regularise land tenure in 160 million hectares of forest, one of the most effective ways to protect forests. We also backed the Belém call for the Congo Basin, which will deepen forest protection in the world’s second-largest rainforest.

My Lords, further to the noble Baroness’s Question, is the Minister aware that Ed Miliband said that the TFFF is a key game-changer in reversing the destruction of rainforests and that that is why the Government worked closely with the World Bank and with the Brazilian Government to get this in place? The Minister mentioned that the last Budget was a problem in terms of UK decision-making, but France had similar issues, as did Germany, Malaysia, Singapore and Norway—I could go on—but all those countries came up with hard cash to support this very worthy scheme. Was Ed Miliband overruled?

No. The particular circumstance surrounding the TFFF itself, as I am sure the noble Lord will be aware, was one of intense UK participation in the setting up of the TFFF. As the noble Lord mentions, we consider it to be an essential and significant initiative as far as the future of forests and biodiversity is concerned across the world. That is why we put so much effort into getting this off the ground and support the continued funding for the operationalisation of that fund. It is just that, at that particular moment, we were not able to produce some additional funding for the TFFF initiative. We very much welcome that other countries have initially put some in. As I have mentioned, it does not mean that the issue is gone and forgotten; it is under continuous review for the future.

My Lords, this might as well have been considered a Defra Question, so I offer my sympathies to the Minister. But here we are, and I am always grateful to be able to ask a DESNZ question, my first to the new Minister. In the COP 30 Statement repeat last week and his initial response today, the Minister did not rule out contributing to the TFFF fund in the future. He may not have had the opportunity to read the letter entitled “Nuclear necessities” in yesterday’s Times, signed by 14 senior academics and luminaries in that industry. Given our country’s current economic situation and the need for large capital investment to meet the Government’s own green targets, can the Minister now rule out funding the TFFF and instead guarantee that future funding will, as the letter requests, prioritise re-establishing our critical domestic infrastructure, perhaps including a medical isotopes reactor and a thermal hydraulics facility—preferably in north Wales?

I very much welcome the noble Baroness to her new position on the front bench opposite, and I hope we will have constructive discussions in the future. She underlines the question of the different priorities that are ahead of us at the moment in terms of where to put money at particular junctures. I must admit that I am not a habitual reader of the Times, so the noble Baroness is one step ahead of me there, but I will have a good look at that letter. What she says underlines that at the moment this country has a huge number of sometimes not always well-anticipated demands on our funding—nuclear is one of them, and obviously defence is another—and that clearly has an effect on where you put money at particular points, however much your heart tells you that you would like to do so.

My Lords, the Minister mentioned earlier the tree planting that has been going on in the United Kingdom. Is he aware that the biggest threat to those trees reaching maturity and helping with the net-zero calculation is the grey squirrel? Can he give signs of the Government’s determination to deal with the grey squirrel problem and the main research in fertility control going on at the government laboratories at the Animal and Plant Health Agency?

I am not sure I can give the noble Earl the assurance that the Government will go out and shoot large numbers of grey squirrels in the near future. I accept that squirrels, deer and other similar animals are probably the biggest threat to what we plant as a woodland plantation and whether it actually gets to maturity in 50 years so that it can make its impact on reafforestation and carbon emissions reduction. That is one reason why the UK is concentrating its woodland afforestation and forest development efforts on managed plantation woodlands, so that the best protection is available within those woodlands from the sort of predation that the noble Earl mentions as a barrier to the development of mature woodlands and forests.