Plant Health (Forestry) (Amendment) Order 2012

Earl of Mar and Kellie Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for raising this issue. Given his extensive questions, I will limit mine to one and a half. Many of us in this Room did of course have the opportunity three weeks ago to debate the important issue of the future of the British ash tree and the impact of this disease, in the very timely debate initiated by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne.

My first question follows on from the final question from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, in relation to the final point made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and the issue of the costs for this order. It highlighted, as he rightly said, that we are imminently expecting new figures, which are to be much higher. Can the Minister confirm who will undertake that work? It was the Forestry Commission in the first instance, and since the initial measures were laid out in October, where they referred principally to forestry trees, it has now moved to cover all trees, including those for amenity use and in garden centres. Therefore the remit covers a much broader field and I would like to be reassured. Although I have the highest regard for the Forestry Commission, if we are going to get a realistic figure on those costs, it has to be undertaken by an agency that has the competence to do so. As a supplementary to that question, what areas is it looking at? The Minister will know that I have previously raised with the Secretary of State my concern that we get an understanding as soon as possible of the full costs on the rural economy of the impacts of this disease. It strikes me that the outline in the Explanatory Memorandum that we have before us is quite a narrow definition of what those costs might be.

My second question relates to paragraph 12 of the Explanatory Memorandum on monitoring and review, which of course will be extremely important. It leads to the priority that the Government give to plant health. I would like to raise the point that yesterday, at the launch of the Nature Check report by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, which analysed the Government’s environmental commitments over the last 18 months, the Secretary of State referred to a radical reprioritisation within his department, which included a major new focus on animal and plant health. I believe that we would all welcome that, given the significant number of challenges that plants are facing, which we have recently seen and debated in this House.

Will the Minister give us any information about when there might be further clarity on what those plans might be, and when they will come forward? Will we get a chance to look at this radical reprioritisation of budgets within Defra to ensure that the focus on plant health is given the priority that this House believes it is due?

[The Earl of Mar and Kellie]

My Lords, I would like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that I was not here for the first few minutes of his opening remarks. I also declare an interest in that I am yet another woodland owner from Scotland. I would like to ask two questions. First, what is the advice likely to be about the use of infected and possibly infected timber, and what is to happen to the 80 million ash trees in Great Britain? I am certain that noble Lords will be familiar with the fact that ash is used in furniture, framing, in coach building, and by Morgan cars, among others. It certainly bends well in the steam box, and it is, of course, premium firewood. As a supplier of firewood, that is probably my real interest. Have the Government come up with advice on what we are to do with all these trees?

My second point is, with my noble friend the Duke of Montrose, to wonder why British tree nurseries have not been growing saplings. Why has it been uneconomic to do so, and why has it been economic to take them to Europe, to grow them further and then export them back? Finally, before we get too suicidal about this; I understand that there were 20 million elms. We do not have many elms in Scotland, but I noticed that I seem to have a lot of elm coppice, which seems to be working very well.

[Lord Grantchester]

I thank my noble friend for initiating a debate on this order. He has made an expansive analysis of the situation. I also praise the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on its very interesting exposition yesterday in the other place about the disease. Two points came out of that which I thought would be worth bringing to the attention of the Minister. The first is that it seems as if there is not yet a properly thought through control plan, which I would have thought was one of the first things we need to be on top of. Following on from that, we need a comprehensive communication plan of what the control plan means, including making clear the dos and don’ts to people up and down the land.

I should declare my interest as a farmer in Cheshire, and I want to add to the excellent exposition by my noble friend only a word on his first point, which concerned what I perceive to be the striking difference between the handling of animal disease threat and plant disease threat. I would not wish the point to be lost among all the other excellent points he made. It appears that we have not applied the lessons learnt from animal diseases to plant diseases. I think I am right in saying that when a dangerous animal disease is present or breaks out overseas, the importation of animals from the region in question is immediately banned. For example, we still ban imports from South America because of foot and mouth disease, imports from Canada out of the dormant fly season and so on. Imports have not been allowed to continue up to the point when disease is recognised as being present in the UK.

In regard to plant health issues, it seems that the same regime does not apply. Perhaps the Minister can say whether the import of ash trees has already been banned from countries such as Denmark, where the impact of Chalara fraxinea has been devastating. I ask this because the order before us seems to be the first reaction to the disease, which has only been to ban the importation after its presence in the UK has been detected. Had a regime similar to that which applies to animals been followed from the outset, not only could it have delayed the presence of Chalara fraxinea in the UK, it would have allowed this country to exploit its position as a disease-free area, in which cases exports could well have been made from this country back into Europe. However, there now seems to be no possibility of this sort of trade being undertaken.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Earl of Mar and Kellie Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment and I fully support what my noble friend has said about the concerns and needs of the railway heritage sector. I congratulate him on the work that he has put in over many years to look after and preserve the heritage of the railway, which I think is unique. I suppose I would say that because I am very interested in it, but it is part of our national heritage.

Many noble Lords will know that the whole of the Great Western Railway was built to broad gauge by a fellow called Brunel, whom we all revere as having built wonderful smooth tracks, great bridges and excellent locomotives. However, many noble Lords might not know that not a single broad-gauge locomotive has been preserved because at the time the industry was much more interested in conversion, making money and moving forward. However, if this organisation had been around then, I am convinced that one or two locomotives and other pieces of equipment would have been preserved.

I worked on building the Channel Tunnel for 15 years. We managed to preserve one of the boring machines on the UK side and stuck it beside the motorway at Folkestone. The French half of the organisation put another one on a roundabout on the motorway at Calais. The UK one has been chopped up for scrap but the French one is still there, so we do not have a very good record in preserving these things. When something has lost its usefulness, people say, “Let’s make some money and scrap it”, or they are too busy doing something else. Therefore, this heritage committee forms a very important link in ensuring that a selection of the most important pieces of the railways is preserved.

My noble friend also mentioned the history of the heritage committee, starting off in its British Rail days. It went through the Strategic Rail Authority stage and then, as he said, became a bit of an orphan. The Government are going through another reorganisation of the railways at the moment. I do not know what it is going to produce but a similar thing has happened every five or 10 years for the past 20 years. My noble friend’s proposal that the Railway Heritage Committee responsibility should be transferred to the National Railway Museum, which I hope will have a much longer life, until the next railway restructuring is an excellent idea, so I wish him well in his onward negotiations with the Minister. I hope that the Minister in his response will give us some comfort that this might actually happen.

[The Earl of Mar and Kellie]

My Lords, in a single sentence I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to point actively to a secure and active home for railway heritage preservation.

[Lord Bichard]

My Lords, I have a slightly broader question for the Minister. What discussions have taken place between the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Office for National Statistics on what actions current NDPBs need to take in order to shed that status? I declare an interest as chairman of the Design Council, an organisation that is enthusiastically seeking to shed NDPB status and become a charity. A degree of frustration is already arising that this is not as easy as it appears on the face of it. If this frustration is being experienced by a number of similar organisations, it would be helpful if this could be clarified as soon as possible.