General election news 2019 LIVE: Tories and Liberal Democrats compete with tree-planting pledges

The Conservative Party has said they will triple tree-planting rates if they win the election, while the Liberal Democrats promised they will plant twice as many trees as the Tories.

Boris Johnson announced a £640 million Nature for Climate fund which would increase tree planting in England, with the Government aiming to work with the devolved administrations to boost tree-planting rates to 30,000 hectares every year, which the party said could mean 30 million more trees.

But the Lib Dems said they will plant 60 million trees every year, describing it as “the largest tree-planting programme in UK history”, while pointing out that the Tories have “woefully failed to meet their own targets for planting trees in the past year”.

Meanwhile, Labour's Jeremy Corbyn will hold a gathering of senior party figures today to finalise their 2019 general election manifesto.

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