Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 20th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I have only one small question for my noble friend the Minister, as we do not have too many hedgerows in north Yorkshire; we mostly have stone walls, which we could have a separate debate on another time.

I am intrigued by the Government’s response to questions posed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its report. It transpires that the Government are now bringing within the remit of cross-compliance farms of less than five hectares but larger than two hectares. For what reason are we going down that path? Obviously, these are quite small farms. The fields that we used to claim on when we owned a couple of fields would have fallen into this category, I think. I no longer have such an interest, but I wonder why we have gone down the path of including farms of between two and five hectares. Does my noble friend the Minister not agree that this seems like a lot of administration for such small farms?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I have been having sleepless nights about this, noble Lords may be pleased to hear. I was always a great fan of cross-compliance. It was quite a low-key instrument; nevertheless, it could be deployed. Of course, hedges are vital for wildlife and for carbon. They provide linear routes through our landscapes and join up patches of habitat. Filling the gaps in hedges, for example, is really important, for all these reasons.

Turning to my anxiety, it took ages to establish whether there was going to be a statutory instrument to fill the gap left by the demise of cross-compliance, and it then took some time for that to come forward. In a way, my great regret is that we have not used this opportunity. For heaven’s sake, the benefits of leaving Europe are few enough, but improving the situation for hedges would have been one of them. I would have preferred it if the Government had removed the three existing exemptions: for fields under two hectares, for hedges younger than five years and for the no-cutting period. When you look at the consultation, you see that there was not really much support among the farming community for retaining them. This could have been an opportunity absolutely to re-recognise the value of hedges, particularly in fields of under two hectares, and the importance of hedges younger than five years having protection from the beginning.

Apart from lecturing the Minister on this and lying awake at night worrying about it, I simply want to ask the Minister for four things. First, will he re-examine these exemptions? We have this wretched statutory instrument, and let us get the damn thing in because, at the moment, there is no protection for these hedges; but there is an opportunity here to improve on what Europe is doing and re-examine the exemptions.

Secondly, there should be a real proposition to extend the no-cutting period beyond even that in the instrument. My own wildlife trust, of which I am patron—I declare an interest—the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, has done a big hazel dormouse project that shows that there are multiple active nests during the period from September to October. If hedges are cut at that point, it prevents the population really thriving, and this is a very threatened species.

Maintaining hedges and not cutting them for even longer provides valuable berries and other food for winter wildlife and, as the Minister said, for farmland birds that are really in decline, such as the turtle dove, linnet, cirl bunting and yellowhammer. Bedford used to be the yellowhammer capital of the world, as far as I could tell, and you would be very hard put to find one at all now. In these species, late broods are disproportionately important. If they can get a third brood away, the population has a greater chance of increasing rather than standing still or declining. Again, extending the no-cutting period is something farmers would appreciate.

Thirdly, I ask the Minister to think about two matters not connected to hedgerows, but whereby we lose as a result of losing cross-compliance: water body buffers and soil erosion conditions, which are absolutely vital. They are hot in the public mind at the moment, particularly in the light of water pollution. Will he undertake to look at them and produce statutory instruments to reinstate them?

Lastly, I know that the Minister likes to tell me when I ask him things that are not particularly germane to the subject in hand, that are not his brief or are above his pay grade—or he will have another way of sending me away with a sore heart—but I hope that he might bump into his DLUHC colleagues and look in a concerted way at not just hedgerows that are subject to agricultural practice but those threatened by development. I know that one should not take personal examples as the norm, but I cannot help feeling that, in both the planning applications against which I have fought in the last two years, the local planning authority chose to ignore the hedgerow regulations in the planning advice. It destroyed hedgerows that not only are vital for carbon and wildlife but have huge historic lineage. If he were to bump into the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in order to tell her that, it would be extremely helpful.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I have Motion P1 in this group. I express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Howe and others who attended the meeting last week, which was extremely helpful. I refer to my interests on the register and, in particular, that I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water. As my noble friend referred to in his opening remarks, we are in the midst of yet another storm and widespread flooding, not just in Scotland but parts of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and other parts of the country as well. My heart goes out to those families experiencing flooding at this time.

My noble friend mentioned that I may be minded to insist, and I hope that we may achieve a closer meeting of minds on this occasion than on the last occasion when we discussed this. In current planning policy, it depends entirely on local authorities, as I understand it, mapping the divisions between zones 3a and 3b, to which my noble friend referred. As I understand it, this currently is not being done as widely as one would hope. If the mapping is not being done, my first question to my noble friend is: how do we know which properties lie in zone 3b and which in zone 3a? Secondly, the information I have received is that Environment Agency advice, to which my noble friend referred, is currently not always being followed. I commend the fact that the Government of the day called on the Environment Agency to be statutory consultees in planning procedures and what a ground-breaking decision that was at the time. But, sadly, between 2016 and 2021, 2,000 homes were given planning permission against Environment Agency advice. If its advice is not being followed, what is the come back for purchasers who live in those houses where the advice has not been followed?

Post Flood Re—which was a very welcome development—houses built on a flood plain after 2009 are not covered by insurance. In those circumstances, it may be that someone purchases a house in good faith, perhaps without a mortgage, and may not realise that they are not eligible for insurance. As a Flood Re official expressed it, it would be better that houses were simply not built on functioning flood plains. I am afraid the question of whether houses built after 2009 are covered by insurance, or at the very least offered affordable insurance where the excess is not prohibitive, is still one of the outstanding issues that lie behind Amendment 80.

However, I am heartened by my noble friend saying that national development planning policies should express how best to achieve the lifetime protection that the Government are so committed to and which I support. This evening, can my noble friend put more flesh on the bones and particularly specify how he and the Government expect to achieve this? I am not entirely convinced that what my noble friend seeks to achieve is set out in the latest iteration of the National Planning Policy Framework, published as recently as September this year.

The reason why this is so important is set out very eloquently by the National Infrastructure Commission in its quinquennial assessment published on 18 October, in which it recommends requiring

“planning authorities to ensure that from 2026 all new development is resilient to flooding from rivers with an annual likelihood of 0.5 per cent for its lifetime and does not increase risk elsewhere”.

That aspiration could be achieved by regulation or, as my noble friend set out earlier this evening, in the National Planning Policy Framework. I urge my noble friend before we leave this Motion entirely to confirm this and give a little more detail as to how we expect this will be achieved through the National Planning Policy Framework.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will talk to Motion Q, which deals with developments that affect ancient woodland, and I declare an interest as chair of the Woodland Trust. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall, who supported this amendment at earlier stages of the Bill. Huge thanks go to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who has persuaded whoever needed persuading to take the body of my amendment into a government amendment. Although my amendment has not gone ahead, to a large extent it will bring into the consultation direction the ability for the Secretary of State to call in and direct local authorities against developments that will impact on ancient woodlands by destroying them or by influencing them from adjacent developments. That is terrific, and I really thank the noble Earl for his support and help in this.

Of course—conservationists and environmentalists always have a “but” after everything they say—this is very good, but the Government have introduced a couple of additions to the amendment we proposed. One is good: clarification of the definition of ancient woodland; the other is not so good, as it says basically that when we come to review and withdraw or amend the 2021 consultation direction, we could sweep the legs out from under this one, which would be rather short-lived since a review of the 2021 direction is under way at the moment. I hope that justice will prevail and that anyone reviewing the direction will be of the same mind as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and will support the ancient woodland provisions because there is currently no protection for ancient woodland whatever.

I should say that my two co-sponsors and I and many others will be watching the department’s intent intently, both in the review of the direction and, more importantly, in the implementation of the provision. It will be in operation by the end of this year and the way in which the Secretary of State and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities deal with it will be a real test of whether they recognise the importance of what is currently being put into statute. That is going to be the proof of the pudding. If we do not see any real efforts by the department to hold local authorities and developers to account against this provision and stop some of the frequent damage to ancient woodland caused by development, we will not have achieved much.

At that point, I must stop descending into churlishness and once again I say a big thank you to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for putting forward the alternative government amendment. But we are watching.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Earl. I would like to lend my support in particular to Amendment 176 and others in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. I commend his preparation and the detail he has given us this afternoon on this group of amendments and on what he seeks to achieve.

I am nothing other than a farmer’s friend, a fisherman’s friend and a friendly eco-warrior—I speak as a lay person in this regard. But I recall that, when chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, for five years, there were two opportunities for our then Government—the coalition Government of my own party, the Conservative Party, supported so ably by the Liberal Democrats, when we had Ministers in each department from both parties—to consider abstraction policy. The first was in the context of the water management Act, which was adopted in 2010, and the second was in the Water Act 2014. Despite enormous efforts from the cross-party members of that committee, we were told that that was not the right time to come forward with an abstraction policy. The Government wished to take time, quite rightly, to consider a proper, well thought-out abstraction strategy and policy.

I look at the Bill and Explanatory Notes before us and I do not think we are quite there yet. That is why these well thought-out amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, serve a useful purpose in that regard. We have to accept that none of us wants to damage the watercourses, large or small, in any way, shape or form, and that we want to protect our aquifers and water, and particularly the fish and other habitats that are served by our watercourses. But we also have to accept that there are many competing uses of water.

From what I have seen and experienced, the farmers seem to be left as the last thought-about in that list. The mover and supporters of the amendment have explained that it is often the water companies and then industrialists who are considered. For example, it could be a brewery or a manufacturer; on a number of occasions I have visited Wilkin’s jam manufacturer—I admit to having a sweet tooth, and it is always a joy to visit. Many companies such as that are users of water and responsibly control its use. I urge my noble friend Lady Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist to look carefully at ways in which farmers can have adequate provision of water supply.

The grace period should remain until 2028, for all the reasons that those speaking in support of the amendments have given. As the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, requested, there should be a licence plan, a formal appeal system and clarification of a new agreement—in fact, I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who suggested it. I entirely agree with what he signed up to, but moving that proposal forward to 2023 would be extremely ill advised.

I shudder for the future of farmers and their use of water at certain times of the year. I am concerned because, when one considers North Yorkshire, as one of the most rural counties in the country, there are times when there could be a flood in one part of the county and severe stress in its north-east. We must be mindful of the fact that there may be a need to abstract water in the summer months. I urge my noble friend the Minister in her response to express a note of caution, and I hope that the Government will take this opportunity to come forward with a proper, well thought-out abstraction policy within the context of the Bill.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the pressure on our wetlands, rivers and aquifers is huge and growing. Demands for water from domestic and business customers, and from agriculture, are increasing. Climate change is reducing the supply and reliability of rainfall, as well as increasing our demand on water resources. I cannot believe that it is 20 years since I started campaigning for the withdrawal of damaging abstraction licences; it is a sad state of affairs that the argument has not yet been completely won.

I cannot support Amendment 176 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. Water is a resource that we all must share. Historic abstraction rights are just that—historic happenstance—and can be inequitable in their impact on the environment and other water users. Overabstraction of water from low-flow rivers can have long-lasting damage; it can cause fish and other wildlife to be lost for ever, particularly in chalk streams. None of that will help with the Government’s biodiversity target if overabstraction continues. It can also result in salt water contamination of water resources, including groundwater, which is difficult to remediate.

In the Water Act 2003, we made some progress with the right to compensation for holders of licences that were causing serious damage being withdrawn, but that was a small provision, and rarely used. The Water Act 2014 removed the requirement to pay compensation for water company abstraction licence changes, which was another step forward.

Many farmers already farm under sustainable abstraction licences and have developed innovative solutions for reducing the amount of irrigation water needed, and developed more on-farm reservoirs, as outlined knowledgably by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. We need to pay farmers under ELMS for developing innovative solutions in adapting to a changing climate. Amendments 176A, 180A and 187ZA, tabled by the noble Lord and outlined so eloquently by him, are highly reasonable, practical and fair, and would enable an acceleration of the deadline by which abstraction should cease. His amendments are based on a lifetime of practical agricultural experience and gain much stature from that. There can be no argument at all about removing compensation for variations to licences to remove excess headroom, where historic licences with unused headroom are hampering the more flexible allocation of water.

I also support Amendment 179A—again, one of the splendid amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington of Dillington—which would correct the narrow definition of ecological health and enable changes to be made in licences that are preventing the effective conservation management of sites of special scientific interest and where abstraction is causing damaging low flows in chalk streams and the main salmon rivers.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and his co-signatories on bringing this amendment forward. It is absolutely essential that farmers have the best advice available before they make a decision. I notice that the explanatory statement for the amendment given by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, refers to

“training, guidance and advice to be made available to persons receiving financial assistance.”

I make a plea to the Minister that this advice should be given before they even apply for financial assistance to enable them to decide how best to seek that financial assistance and to put it to good use.

I urge the Minister, when she sums up this debate, to agree to the sentiments behind the amendment and to consider who would best give such advice. Agriculture societies, such as the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, and many farming charities are very well placed to do so, in addition to many government bodies such as Natural England and others that the Minister might have in mind. I commend the amendment to the House.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my support for the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Grantchester on the provision of advice, training and guidance for those in receipt of financial assistance. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, made a good point about there being a kind of free application need as well.

As a nation, we are asking farmers and land managers to make big changes in the way they manage the land —to deliver not only productive and efficient farm businesses but a whole range of public goods as well. Therefore, good advice covering all those issues will be really important.

It was delightful to hear the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, reminisce about the demise of the publicly funded agricultural advisory system. It flourished after the war to get productivity up but got knocked on the head in the 1990s. Now, many farmers get advice solely from their commercial agronomists, which is altogether too narrow a focus. Advice and training will be particularly important for small farms.

I do not think that a publicly funded or publicly promoted advisory system needs to be top down and statist. Many noble Lords have made the point that local conditions are very important, and that is absolutely clear. We have experience in this country of a number of organisations that have set up county branches to give advice and support, and to bring together farmers around common issues on a local basis. I think that we could rapidly reinvent that. Therefore, the role of the Government needs to be to stump up some money and to give a modest amount of assurance on the quality of the advice being given. At the end of the day, farmers will take advice only from people whom they trust and feel comfortable with, so that has to be built into whatever system is introduced. It would also be beneficial to create some small local businesses in the advisory field to help boost the rural economy. There is a real role for government here.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for his explanation of Amendment 55. It was slightly mystifying when Schedule 10, which was brief and pithy and revoked four articles and one annexe of the common fisheries policy regulation, suddenly spanned eight pages of the Marshalled List. Some of this is tidying, as the Minister says—although I am not wholly convinced that tidying needs to be done at this moment.

Many of the provisions are in reference to the fisheries objectives. Can the Minister confirm whether the schedule would need to be amended further if your Lordships’ excellent amendment on the sustainability objective, which we voted for on Monday, were upheld in the other place or—dare I say—accepted by the Government? He also mentioned provisions relevant to the landing obligation and to multiannual plans for stocks, which give the Secretary of State powers to make decisions that depart from some of the requirements of the Bill as a result of a “relevant change in circumstances”. I understand that flexibility is required owing to relevant changes of circumstances, but can the Minister tell us what safeguards will be put in place to ensure that those powers are not overused?

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have just a couple of questions. Can my noble friend the Minister reassure us that this is not a change of policy? It is good to have the opportunity to discuss these amendments as part of our discussions on the Bill.

My noble friend said that under the review, particularly when a calendar year is being replaced by

“such year or other period as may be specified in the determination”,

this would be based on scientific evidence. In order to be absolutely clear, may I ask what that scientific evidence will be? Will it include not just the home scientific evidence that we have from England, Scotland and other parts of the UK but scientific evidence from ICES?

I have two anxieties. As my noble friend explained, changing the period from a calendar year could be eminently sensible, but would it not be better to say something like “such year or part-year as may be specified in the determination”? The amendment as drafted is quite open-ended. I would like some reassurance that we are not looking to set, for example, a 20-year value. The ability to use a non-calendar year, or a part-year, seems useful, and I could support that. I just want reassurance that we are not going to see 20 years’ catch allocation being taken in the first year, which would obviously lead to a disproportionate result. I hope my noble friend can reassure me on that.

Amendment 33 is about issues involved in setting the quota of catch or effort for English purposes. Are those issues affecting the setting of the quota of catch or the effort for English purposes only? It suggests that only the EU quota will count as quota that can be overfished, but can my noble friend explain the position of quota that the UK sets for whatever reason? Surely, we in the UK need to know what is happening to stock for which we are responsible. If overfishing is not recorded, how can we address the issue? This is a matter of taking the scientific evidence and the actual recording over whatever time period, whether it is part of a year, and to rule out a 20-year period in the first instance. That is what I am particularly concerned about. Lastly, I would like a reassurance that this is not a change of policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on bringing forward this debate on a key topic in the Bill. I agree entirely with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy: the key to coastal community economic success is processing activities. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, put so eloquently how these have been devastated in communities such as Grimsby.

There is another side-effect. If we do not have a national landing requirement, as set out in this amendment, I struggle to see how we can apply Clause 28, in which the Government hope to introduce a discard prevention charging scheme. My noble friend will recall my disappointment that we have moved away from discard being an objective in Clause 1, but we are now going to have a discard prevention charging scheme. A bycatch objective has now been added to Clause 1. How can we police the bycatch and impose a discard prevention charging scheme if we do not have a national landing requirement?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The situation reminds me of what used to happen with EU structural funds, which were intended to promote regional development and often funded roads and railways into remote rural areas. These promptly allowed all primary agricultural and other products and skills to be sucked out of those rural areas and processed elsewhere, which resulted in more impoverishment of the very areas the investment was intended to help. We do not want an example in the Fisheries Bill of inadvertent consequences of this sort.

Bearing in mind that we are repatriating and setting forth towards a brave new world of our own fisheries management independence, it is highly appropriate that this amendment aims at ensuring that our new fisheries regime will make sure that UK producers, processors and coastal communities play a full role in a thriving and sustainable fisheries market, and at the promotion of UK jobs and skills. This is a highly appropriate amendment.