The Minister praised Alex Mayer's speech on the importance of young trees and their role in enhancing environmental sustainability. She acknowledged the concerns raised about high failure rates of newly planted trees due to inadequate aftercare and improper management practices. Mary Creagh emphasised the need for better species selection, stake management, watering schedules, and overall care to ensure tree establishment. The Minister committed to working with relevant Departments such as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to improve record-keeping, implement minimum three-to-five year aftercare plans, and enforce reporting requirements tied to planning permission and public contracts. She also expressed support for a cross-departmental approach and highlighted ongoing initiatives like the England tree action plan which aims to promote best practices in tree planting and establishment. The Minister reaffirmed the Government's commitment to addressing these issues through collaborative efforts with industry experts and stakeholders. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Steve McCabe) for securing this important debate and for his passionate speech in support of trees and woodlands. As the Minister with responsibility for forestry, I have the privilege of regularly seeing the majesty and benefits of our woodlands up close, and I reassure my hon. Friend that we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that we have woodlands and trees for the future. Just last year, I opened Forestry England’s Delamere seed processing centre—a net zero building made of timber—which is named after long-serving Forestry England team member Vernon Stockton. The centre will process up to 4 tonnes of high-quality tree seeds, providing the starting point for the forests of the future. I have stood in Kielder forest with the people who manage it. I have visited the Community Forest Trust, which sent me home with two Scots pines and two hornbeams. Three of those trees have survived three London droughts. Of course, back in 2011 I led the fight against the Conservative party proposal to sell off the public forest estate; I am passionate about trees. My hon. Friend is right to list the benefits of trees. Tree-planting in England is at its highest-recorded rate for 20 years—7,000 hectares last year. We will boost that further through our manifesto commitment to create three new national forests. What a privilege it was to plant a tree as part of that establishment. We will plant 20 million trees over the next 25 years to create that new western forest. On Monday, we opened the expressions of interest process for the planned forest in the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. We will launch the competition for a new national forest in the north or the midlands by July this year. These new forests will bring peace, shade and joy to millions around the country, and the Ox-Cam forest will bring forestry much closer to my hon. Friend’s constituents. As my hon. Friend says, without maintenance in the early years to help establishment of the trees, the impact of the investment can be reduced. That is why the Government fund establishment and provide expertise and advice to keep trees alive. All Government-funded woodland creation must be designed and planted to the UK forestry standard—a world-leading technical standard for sustainable forest creation and management agreed between all four UK nations. At its root is planning and design. Good planning grows strong woodlands and gives our trees the best start in life. Paying for planning is not a cost; it is an investment in resilience. That is why we offer the woodland creation planning grant—thousands of pounds to fund the groundwork before the first sapling goes in. Of course, once they are in the ground, young trees are vulnerable and need maintenance to establish. Maintenance includes checking young trees for disease, replacing dead trees, and sometimes even watering during periods of drought. That is why we also fund ongoing maintenance through the England woodland creation offer. Capital payments cover the planting essentials, followed by £400 per hectare per year for 15 years, to support maintenance tasks that give the trees the best possible chance of survival. We do not rely on planting alone; we back nature’s own hand. Funding for natural colonisation lets woodlands expand organically, allowing species to establish where conditions suit them best. It may appear tatty and scruffy to some, but nature thrives in the mess and wild—it thrives best when we let it go. It is unrealistic to expect 100% survival rates, because that does not happen in nature, as we have seen during recent storms. Last autumn we witnessed a great spectacle of nature: a mast year in which the overproduction of seeds and acorns meant that they blanketed woodland floors. After woodland species have gorged themselves and are ready for winter—the squirrels in my garden are absolutely fat as butter—there is still more than enough intact material to produce the next generation of trees. Species choice is ever more important in a changing climate. Today’s species and the trees of the past may not thrive in the near future. For example, I have been told that as we have hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters, cherry trees are a species that may not be climate-resilient in the future. Forestry England has published a list of 30 priority tree species selected for ability to withstand extreme weather and resist pests and diseases. The Government have a robust regulatory regime in place that minimises biosecurity risks from imported material while meeting World Trade Organisation standards. Recipients of many Government grants are required to source trees from suppliers that meet the plant health management standard. Healthy saplings stay healthy because we prevent pathways for harm. In our urban tree planting grants, we require evidence of good establishment rates, and we withhold payments where that has not been met. That is not always the case for planting that is not funded by Government—for example, on the new housing estate my hon. Friend talked about, where, despite planning conditions, the same effort towards tree survival is not always made. We are improving guidance on what the right tree for the right place is and we urge people to use it. We have invested over £150,000 to investigate in greater detail the causes of mortality in recently planted trees. That work is ongoing. Our Trees Outside Woodland project compared the survival rates of different establishment approaches and concluded last year. The Forests With Impact programme is working with prisoners at His Majesty’s Prison Haverigg in Cumbria, where 250,000 saplings have been produced to create the forests of the future. This work offers prisoners a route out of crime and hope for their future when they leave prison. I want to conclude by thanking everyone who loves trees: thank you for believing in the power of trees and in the potential of people, and for your commitment to a greener, fairer Britain. This Government will work with those who love trees, and we look forward to creating and amplifying the impact they make.