To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to take steps to include all forest risk commodities in the secondary legislation that will implement schedule 17 of the Environment Act 2021.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress she has made on bringing forward secondary legislation to operationalise the due diligence systems established in schedule 17 of the Environment Act 2021; and if she will include (a) cattle, (b) soy, (c) palm, (d) cocoa and (e) timber within the scope of that legislation.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to regulate the import of (a) cattle and (b) derived products from deforested land under schedule 17 of the Environment Act 2021.

The UK Government has introduced world-leading due diligence legislation through the Environment Act to help tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. We recently ran a consultation to seek views on how we should implement Environment Act provisions, including which commodities we should regulate through the first round of secondary legislation, and have since published a summary of responses, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tackling-illegal-deforestation-in-uk-supply-chains.

While a wide number of commodities have played and continue to play a role in driving global deforestation, we identified seven key commodities in consultation that are responsible between them for driving the majority of recent and ongoing deforestation. These commodities were: cattle (beef and leather), cocoa, coffee, maize, rubber, palm oil, and soy. The consultation also sought evidence on other commodities driving deforestation. We will take into account consultation responses in decisions around which commodities to regulate.

Whilst timber and timber products are also linked to widespread deforestation, the United Kingdom's Timber Regulations already prohibit the placing on the market of illegally harvested timber or timber products, and so these products are out of scope.