The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for calling this debate. I know how passionate she is about the subject and I say humbly that I share that passion. I thank her for her eloquent speech. I strongly agree with almost everything she said, except of course her scepticism about the Government’s intentions.
England’s public forests are a cherished national resource which provides precious habitats for wildlife and natural spaces for people to enjoy, as many noble Lords have said. We want to conserve and enhance them for now and for generations to come. Half of the country’s population lives within six miles of one of the 1,500 individual forests, woodlands and other landscapes that make up the public forest estate. That estate attracts 40 million visits a year, providing a wide range of recreational activities for people to enjoy, from dog walking and picnicking to mountain biking and abseiling. The public forest estate is also a vital natural asset, providing sanctuary for wildlife, as well as carbon storage, water improvement and flood prevention—the importance of which we are all currently extremely conscious, as was referred to by my noble friends Lady Parminter and Lord Patten and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. The public forest estate is also England’s largest timber producer. It helps to employ about 40,000 people in the forestry, wood products and paper industries, and it supports tens of thousands more jobs in local rural economies through tourism and other commercial activities.
The nation holds those things dear, and so do we. That is why we said in our forestry and woodlands policy statement this time last year that we wanted to establish a new public body, in line with the recommendations of the Independent Panel on Forestry, to hold the estate in trust for the nation. We have no intention of selling off the estate; nor do we have any plans to privatise the body that manages it. Our vision for our public forests is crystal clear. The public forest estate will be safe under the stewardship of the new public body that will own and manage it with a clear remit to conserve and enhance the estate.
Our forests will be better for people, better for nature and better for the economy—that is in answer to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. No Government can bind future Governments, so no Government can promise that the estate will be protected in perpetuity, but we can put the right safeguards in place to ensure that it is less vulnerable to short-term political demands and ensure that any plans to dispose of it in future will require further primary legislation and be subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny.
We have made good progress over the past year in developing our plans for the new body. We have held numerous meetings with interested parties including Hands Off Our Forest, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred, and we are most grateful for their constructive contribution to our thinking. We published some initial thoughts on the shape, structure and governance of the new body last summer, and we received more than 250 helpful comments and suggestions on how we might improve our proposals. We have used these to shape our plans for looking after this unique asset, and at the recent National Forestry Forum my colleague the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Forestry, Dan Rogerson, set out 10 core principles that we are using to underpin the new PFE management body, which I shall set out.
The new body should conserve and enhance the estate for the benefit of people, nature and the economy. The precise wording of its statutory purpose and objectives will be confirmed in due course, although we are clear that the new body should be focused on maintaining the quality of the estate and the benefits that it delivers. It should be publicly owned and operationally independent of Government. We confirmed last year that the estate will remain in public hands, owned and managed by a new public body with a clear remit and no day-to-day involvement from Ministers. It should be underpinned by statute. We intend that the new body will have its own founding legislation. We also intend that it will have a charter, which will amplify its statutory functions and objectives and set out how it will work with others in order to achieve those objectives. It should be managed by experts and have access to the best advice. We intend that the new body will have a management board drawn from across the sectors interested in the public forestry estate. This might include experts from the forestry and timber business sectors as well as recreation, environmental and community interests. It should have commercial freedoms but will be required to protect the estate. Forest Enterprise England currently generates around £50 million a year from its timber production and other trading activities.
We want it to continue to earn income from timber production, tourism, recreation and other commercial ventures but any commercial activity will be subject to relevant planning controls, be justified against the wider interests of the estate and its users and be undertaken in a sensitive way so that the long-term quality of the estate is not put at risk. It should be able to buy and sell land, but any land sales must be for the benefit of the estate. As the panel recommended, we want the new body to be able to buy and sell land as part of its everyday management role. We intend, however, that land sales must be in line with the body’s responsibility for maintaining the quality of the estate and that the income generated should be reinvested in the estate. It should be a pioneer in natural capital accounting and payment for ecosystem services, something that my noble friend Lady Parminter referred to. We are developing a set of natural capital accounts for the PFE. These will be used as a baseline for assessing the performance of the new body and will help to inform the innovative funding arrangement that we are currently exploring for it. This will be based on a contract for the delivery of ecosystem services such as recreation, access and biodiversity.
It should work closely with local communities, estate users and businesses. It should have consultation at its heart. Forest Enterprise England already has a good track record of involving local communities in the management of the estate. We intend that the new body should build on this track record and be as open and transparent as possible in everything that it does. It should be an exemplar of sustainable forest management. We want the new body to be widely respected and regarded as a good manager of our public woodlands. It should build on the strengths of Forest Enterprise England, which currently does a good job in managing the estate and has a highly skilled and committed workforce. There is always room for improvement but we believe that the new body should build on the strengths of its predecessor and, over time, become an even better trustee for our vital public forests.
I turn to noble Lords’ questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester asked about legislation. As I have said, we are working on how we might establish the new body. Good progress is being made but our priority must be to get things right because forestry, as noble Lords have said, is for the long term and forestry legislation must last for many years. Therefore, I cannot say at the moment when a Bill might be published. However, I can say that we as a Government remain committed to allowing an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny. Once a draft Bill is published, I will of course be very happy to discuss it with noble Lords.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked about the prospects for Forestry Commission staff. I can say to her that there is absolutely no intention that there should be any redundancies. She also asked about access. We are committed to protecting the public benefits that are currently provided by the public forest estate, including public access. The new management body will ensure that public access to the public forest estate is maintained and improved wherever possible. Current access on foot is guaranteed where the land has been dedicated under the provisions of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, as all of the freehold estate has been.
The noble Baroness asked about the board. We would like to see the interests of relevant sectors, including local communities, properly represented in the governance arrangements. She also noted the importance of the guardians. We are in the process of determining the final details of the guardians in collaboration with interested parties. We are clear that the guardians will play a vital role in overseeing the conservation and enhancement of the estate for the benefit of people, nature and the economy. They would be drawn from across the full range of interested sectors, including not only forestry and business but also environment, recreation and local community interests, to advise the new body and hold it to account.
The noble Baroness suggested that a public corporation might be a halfway house to privatisation. Public corporation classification has no bearing whatever on whether or not a public body might be privatised. I can confirm that we have no plans to privatise the public forest estate. We are designing the new body to own and manage the estate within the public sector for many years to come.
The noble Baroness mentioned the charter. I have already mentioned that the new body would have a charter which would amplify the statutory duties and objectives in its founding legislation and set out how it plans to work with others to deliver its statutory remit. We intend that this charter would be laid before Parliament.
The noble Baroness asked about land sales. The body will need to be able to buy and sell land as part of its day-to-day management role, as I have mentioned. We intend that there should be appropriate checks and balances to ensure that land sales decisions are in line with the body’s responsibility for maintaining the quality of the estate and that income generated from sales should be reinvested in the estate. We certainly do not intend for it to sell any part of the estate to raise revenue to sustain itself. In answer to her specific question, the Secretary of State will have a veto on land sales. There are no plans for anyone else to have such a veto.
The noble Baroness knows, but I will repeat clearly for the record, that we have no plans whatever to privatise the estate. We are designing the new body to own and manage the public forest estate within the public sector for many years to come.
My noble friend Lord Eden asked about economic benefits. England’s woodland cover is as high as it has been since the 14th century. We want woodland cover in England to increase through planting of the right trees in the right places for the right reasons. We also want more of England’s woodlands to be sustainably managed to maximise their public benefits. We believe that the current rate of planting, of 2,500 hectares per year, can be accelerated and that an eventual level of 15% coverage could be achieved over time. However, this is not a matter just for Government. Conditions need to be in place so that landowners choose to plant trees in locations where it best suits them and their local conditions and priorities.
My noble friend Lord Patten raised the issue of woodland in the context of new housing development. I share his aspiration for people living in new housing developments to benefit from the social and environmental improvements that woodland planting can bring to these sites. There are many good examples of such sympathetic landscaping and planting on developments across the country. I am sorry to hear of the far less successful example to which he referred.
My noble friend Lady Parminter referred to natural capital accounting. I can tell her that good progress is being made on national natural capital accounting. The Natural Capital Committee is working closely with the ONS and Defra to implement the road map to 2020 which the ONS published in December 2012. Early progress had been made with accounts for woodlands. Further work is being taken forward on accounts for enclosed farmlands, wetlands, marine and a more detailed set of accounts for the public forest estate.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester referred to skills and experience, both within the Forestry Commission and more widely. I agree entirely. We are keen to see experience retained and new blood coming in and adding to the skill base and experience levels.
I am being prodded; I have run out of time. One thing that is really important to finish on is the reference made by a number of noble Lords to flooding. The allocation of Defra grant in aid for flood and coastal erosion risk-management projects is undertaken by the Environment Agency. Afforestation is funded where there is sufficient evidence that it will reduce flood risk or for experimental purposes. The Slowing the Flow project in north Yorkshire is an example. In addition, the Forestry Commission has contributed to various assessments of using woodland to alleviate flooding. In 2011 it joint-funded a review called Woodland for Water, which highlighted how woodland could contribute to reducing flood risk as well as deliver other water and wider ecosystem benefits. That led to the development and use of national, regional and catchment “opportunity maps” to direct planting to where woodland would be most effective.
In conclusion, good progress is being made on how we might establish the new body, but our priority must be to get things right. As I have said, forestry is for the long term, and forestry legislation must last for many years. We remain committed to allowing an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny. Once a draft Bill is published, I will of course be happy to discuss it with noble Lords.