Woodland Cover Protection and Grey Squirrel Control

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my entry in the register. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who has called this debate at a timely moment and speaks from rare and real knowledge of the problem.

This debate is about promoting and protecting our woodland cover but also about controlling grey squirrels—so it is also about saving the red squirrel. Sitting in this Room are three red squirrel heroes of mine. The first is the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who I have been talking to about this subject for well over a decade. He alluded to the knowledge gained through the red squirrel protection partnership, and I suspect he knows at least as much as the Geordie friend he referred to about how the squirrel behaves and how to control it effectively. My second hero is the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, because of his wonderful stewardship of the UK Squirrel Accord and his involvement in this issue. Both those noble Lords have a gentle way of lobbying, but anyone would be foolish if they took that to be a lack of determination. They are both extremely passionate and determined about this issue, and extremely effective in changing policy and making sure that we are doing the right things. The noble Earl is right: we need more funding in the next spending round, and it is an absolute priority for me to make sure that we get the level of funding we want to roll forward these new ideas, which I shall come on to talk about.

The third of my red squirrel heroes is the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, my predecessor in this role. He sits in an absolutely bipartisan position in our proceedings today, but I know of his passion in this role and he is the voice in my head on many of these issues. I thank him for all the work he has done on this subject—I hope that we have noted the tie he is wearing.

Beyond this Committee are a great many more red squirrel heroes of mine. The scientists at APHA have been referred to. Those carrying out immunocontraception work in York are extraordinary, very passionate and gifted people. I want also to mention the team I have at Defra, who are bringing forward the grey squirrel action plan which will be published soon—this summer, I hope. That will show that there is real ambition to tackle this and to use the new technologies that are coming forward.

The other heroes in this piece are land managers, who are tackling the problem—people who are putting in resources of their own because they love the natural world and respect the natural capital for which they are responsible—and those who work for them, particularly gamekeepers, who are often wrongly attacked but who do much to protect our biodiversity and reverse its decline. They are certainly the people who have the skill, the knowledge and the will to tackle the difficult issue of predation control, as well as pest control.

Your Lordships are aware that our tree-planting ambitions are to have 16.5% of England under tree cover by 2050. That is a target in the Environment Act. We want to increase our tree cover by an area the size of Cheshire. That is 7,000 hectares a year by the end of this Parliament, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson. In answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, we want to cut in half the time it takes to put in place the relevant permissions and grants to plant trees. We want to give land managers more understanding about where they will be allowed to plant trees. As my noble friend Lord Caithness said, we do not want to see trees planted on areas where rare waders are nesting, but it is really important to help people make those decisions.

The England Trees Action Plan 2021 to 2024 and the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 contain this desire to boost tree planting, improve woodland management and support a thriving green economy in our trees and woodlands. All this will be done mainly through our £650 million nature for climate fund. Today, around 42% of our woods are not actively managed, a point made by my noble friend Lord Colgrain. Many of the Government’s actions to plant new woodlands need to be balanced by action to improve existing woodlands, because that is where we are locking up carbon, helping our target to reverse species loss and improving our timber security as we bring those woodlands into production. It is there that we are providing more space for people to be close to nature to heal us, as the right reverend Prelate so eloquently put it, and to enhance our landscapes. We get a spiritual uplift from being in and close to nature.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, talked about types of trees. We need to see the right trees planted in the right place. I always slightly chide the Woodland Trust and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, who chairs that wonderful organisation. I am a great fan of it, but it is very blinkered in wanting just native trees. At a time when we are plagued by pests and diseases, and with the threat of climate change, adaptation means that we have to be broader in the species we plant, and we have to be resilient in the species we find to tackle it.

A number of noble Lords talked about deer. This summer we will publish our deer strategy, which will look at this issue from both ends of the telescope. It will not just deal with the problem on the ground from the damage caused but look at where we can create markets. This is a cholesterol-free meat. There are half a million too many deer out there, and if we do not get on top of it the number will be 750,000 before we know it. Wonderful organisations such as the Country Food Trust are looking at creating hubs, with government support, so that we can get deer to a quantity where people who procure for the public and private sectors can get the quality and quantity of deer they want and get it into our prisons, Armed Forces, NHS and other organisations. We are getting a pull factor as well as a push factor to tackle the terrible problem of too many deer in our countryside.

On hedgerows, I say to the noble Earl that I am hugely impressed by what the Crown Estate is doing across its land, which it farms both in-hand and, mainly, with tenants. It is planting precisely the sort of hedgerows that we need. We are about to publish more about our hedgerow standard, and I think the noble Earl will be pleased when he sees that.

However, all this ambition for restoration of nature, increasing timber security and achieving our net-zero ambitions will fail if we do not protect the woodlands we have from pests and diseases. Taxpayers’ money will be wasted, nature will be depleted and we will have a view of abject failure of successive Governments who were not prepared to take the tough choices that needed to be taken to tackle pests and diseases. Those will be our failures if we do not tackle pests such as the grey squirrel.

Recollections about this vary, but I understand that the first grey squirrel was introduced in 1876 by a banker called Thomas U Brocklehurst, at Henbury Hall, near Macclesfield. Further releases happened throughout the Victorian era and into the Edwardian era. In 1905-07, 91 were released in the Regent’s Park. The right reverend Prelate is here, so I will be careful with the words I use, but I hope that there is a hot corner of hell for the eccentrics who visited this gross act of environmental vandalism on us. It is now up to us to see if we can reverse it.

The problem is that one or two land managers can do their bit to control grey squirrels in a landscape but, if they stop or their neighbours do not play their part, the grey squirrels win and nature loses. As has been said, the way to deal with this is across a landscape—a catchment, a range of hills or a peninsula. We need to work with the topography of nature and work out how we are going to do this. The noble Lord who instigated the debate understands this, and we need to use the skills and knowledge of him and others in developing this plan.

The grey squirrel action plan, shortly to be published in its refreshed form, will set out the many incentives for action that we will provide. The countryside stewardship payments include an incentive, on a hectarage basis, to control squirrels. The UK Squirrel Accord will be supported to build on the £1 million it has used to explore innovative methods of control.

Immunocontraception is a game-changer: it fills a gap where there has been either a lack of skill or a lack of will to kill grey squirrels. The APHA has successfully identified an oral contraceptive vaccine, which is being tested. It has designed a feeder that will ensure that only free-living grey squirrels will access the contraceptive. The results of field trials showed that these feeders can deliver this game-changing solution, but there is more work to do. I assure the noble Lord that there will be no reticence among Ministers in making sure that the licensing of all aspects of this solution allow its delivery to be rolled out as quickly and cheaply as possible, and will not impair the ability to deliver what I think will be an absolute game-changer.

Other noble Lords referred to CRISPR gene-editing, which may provide another means to limit the population growth of grey squirrels. This is potentially massive. We are monitoring developments closely with colleagues from the research and woodlands management communities. The Forestry Commission is working with the Roslin Institute, which is part of Edinburgh University, to fund a PhD to understand how a gene drive approach might be used to manage grey squirrel populations in the future. I cannot add to what has been said about this, but it presents the possibility of a real solution.

What is the prize if we get this right? The prize is woodlands that survive and, in many cases, thrive. The other day, I was in a woodland of 44 acres, which was planted by my father as a woodland grant scheme, with free public access. There were thousands of oak trees, none of which will get any higher than this Room or support the 2,000 species that exist in the iconic mature oaks that we all love. That is because of squirrel damage. Biodiversity benefits are also a prize. Red squirrel numbers will stabilise and their range will increase. Everyone, not just those who are concerned about timber production, needs to be part of this great endeavour.

“Iconic” is an overused word, but the red squirrel is emblematic of our fight to restore nature across this country—it is on the front of our environmental improvement plan. If we succeed in encouraging red squirrels, we succeed across so much of our threatened natural capital. I hope to live until the day when I can walk through St James’s Park and not grind my teeth because I see a tourist feeding a squirrel; I would be delighted if they were feeding a red squirrel.