High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Carrington and Baroness Randerson

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a landowner, as set out in the register. I am also directly affected by HS2 south of Birmingham. I had not intended to speak on these amendments, but the groupings changed at some point, and my name seems to have been retained. Now, on further research, I think it worth making some basic observations.

HS2 claims that only 43 out of 52,000 ancient woodlands will be affected, and 80% of the 43 will remain intact. Therefore, we are talking about just 0.005% of ancient woodlands. We should also remember that, as we heard last week, some of these ancient woodlands are far from being ancient. I happen to own and manage such a designated wood. It was owned by the Forestry Commission, which felled and replanted it almost entirely with Corsican pine shortly after the last war. The wood failed: Corsican pine was the wrong tree to grow on heavy Oxford clay. I have replanted it with hardwood, and it is thriving, together with all the flora and fauna. I did not need a special report to do this—I just got on with it. HS2 will have a similar responsibility and opportunity.

My real comment is that although these amendments are well intentioned and harmless, they are unnecessary and a further bureaucratic exercise, something that most woodland owners and managers dread. The compilers and others involved in these suggested reports would be better occupied in actually managing these woodlands on the ground with planting, weeding, pruning and pest control. Erecting hides to help manage the barking deer population as well as removing squirrel dreys with poles and setting humane traps for this worst of pests would be a more constructive use of everyone’s time.

Having said this, I would certainly not oppose Amendment 13 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, but I believe that Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is a little over the top.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, because he picked up on an issue that I raised in the previous debate on this. Ancient woodland does not necessarily mean ancient trees—they are of variable quality. However, of course, they include a number of fine pieces of woodland that have rich ecosystems because they have been on that site for a very long time.

I am pleased that the Minister has indicated that she will accept Amendment 13. The previous debate was characterised by very vigorous discussion between Members of this House with a considerable knowledge of environmental issues. There was an obvious level of disagreement among the experts and, therefore, Amendment 13 enables this not to become the subject of the debate. One assumes that the reports concerned will follow on from expert advice.

I hope that these annual reports will not be yet another bureaucratic process but a mechanism to enable public scrutiny of how HS2 is performing in practice and to ensure that there is progress and improvement in standards of land and woodland management as the project progresses. This is a massive project and there is no excuse for getting anything other than the most expert advice on woodland issues. In financial terms, the cost of woodland replanting and improvement is very small indeed in comparison with the costs of the engineering aspects of the project.

I will repeat a question I have asked before and come back to a topic I have dealt with before. Our rich environments—areas of outstanding environmental importance—are not just limited to ancient woodlands: wetlands and meadows can be every bit as important in terms of environmental and ecological significance.