Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024

Lord Douglas-Miller Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Douglas-Miller]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024.

Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Douglas-Miller) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.

I am sure that many noble Lords will agree that hedgerows are precious features of our landscape, enriching our environment and wildlife. Many of our wild birds depend on them, including red-listed birds such as the linnet and the yellowhammer. Hedgerows also help food production by supporting pollinators, providing windbreaks and shelter, and protecting the soil. I am therefore pleased to bring before this Committee this statutory instrument, which proposes further to protect our hedgerows. The instrument establishes by legislation a common approach to managing hedgerows on agricultural land in England. It builds on the existing legal protections for some hedgerows, which will remain in place.

In proposing this legislation, we have listened to the views of many who cherish our hedgerows, including many farmers. I thank those who responded to our consultation on protecting hedgerows; their insights have enriched our understanding. We received almost 9,000 responses, which we have considered carefully. The responses showed how much hedgerows are valued. There was strong consensus from environmental and farming stakeholders alike that hedgerows should be protected in domestic law in a similar way to the previous hedgerow management rules provided by cross-compliance.

That is what this statutory instrument does. It aims to provide a familiar baseline for hedgerow management. We want to make sure that everyone knows what is expected and is supported to follow good practice. As a safeguard, we are also making sure that there are clear, proportionate consequences for the small minority who might choose to ignore it.

I know that these rules are simply a reasonable minimum which most farmers have been practising for many years. Farmers are the guardians of our hedgerows, protecting, planting and maintaining them for generations. I thank them for their continued efforts to help wildlife thrive on their farms, alongside food production. We trust them to continue to do the right thing. In fact, many are already going further than required by these regulations. We have seen strong uptake of options to manage and further improve hedgerows under our agri-environment schemes. I am delighted to report that there are already more than 20,000 agreements or applications in place, contributing to the management of over 60,000 miles of hedgerow in England. We look forward to working in partnership with many more farmers to manage and improve their hedgerows in future.

The purpose of these regulations is to protect hedgerows in order to support biodiversity, benefit the environment and enrich the landscape. They will make sure that all farmers are treated fairly by upholding common rules for managing hedgerows, and they will provide clarity on what is expected. The regulations govern the management of “important” hedgerows on agricultural land. Broadly, this means hedgerows which have a continuous length of at least 20 metres or which, if shorter, meet another hedgerow at each end. They do not apply to hedgerows within or forming the boundary of a dwelling house. Because the regulations apply to all important hedgerows growing on agricultural land, they will bring into scope some people who were not subject to cross-compliance, such as those who chose not to claim any direct payments or who have farms under five hectares in size.

There are two main requirements under these regulations. First, cutting or trimming hedges will be prohibited between 1 March and 31 August inclusive. This is to protect hedge-nesting birds and their habitats during the breeding season. There are some exceptions to this rule to give farmers and others flexibility where needed. The second requirement is to establish and maintain a two-metre-wide buffer strip alongside the hedgerow. This will protect the hedgerow and its root system from the effects of cultivation and the application of fertilisers or pesticides. Subject to certain exemptions, these activities will not be allowed within the buffer strip. The requirement for a buffer strip will not apply to fields which are two hectares or smaller.

We recognise that people may need time to establish their buffer strips where they do not already have them in place. We therefore propose that, in cases where a field has no buffer strip and is in crop production on 1 July 2024, the requirements will not come into force until that crop has been harvested. In all cases, the exemptions are needed to accommodate the practicalities of farming, or for health and safety-related reasons. They are largely the same as under cross-compliance. They are in place to ensure that we have the right balance between hedgerow protections and effective farming.

The regulations will be enforced on behalf of the Secretary of State by the Rural Payments Agency. Although the rules themselves will be familiar to many farmers, there will be a different approach to enforcement, with the emphasis being on being fair and proportionate. The Rural Payments Agency will take a primarily advice-led approach to enforcement. This has been shown to be the best approach for bringing farmers into compliance in other regulatory areas. However, the Rural Payments Agency will also be able to use a range of civil sanctions and criminal proceedings for the worst-case scenarios. Such action will be proportionate to the damage caused.

Subject to parliamentary approval, detailed information on how the regulations will operate will be provided once the statutory instrument has been made. The Rural Payments Agency will also hold a public consultation on its proposed enforcement policy. I know that it is committed to taking a modern, pragmatic and proportionate approach, with advice and guidance at the forefront.

Although these regulations govern the management of hedgerows on agricultural land, we recognise the value of hedgerows in other locations. Officials are therefore working separately with stakeholders to consider how to support the sustainable management and protection of hedgerows more widely in future.

In conclusion, this statutory instrument will afford fuller protection to one of our countryside’s greatest assets, the hedgerow. That will, I hope, be widely welcomed. I beg to move.

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, I wish to raise one particular issue. In his introduction, the Minister talked about Defra looking at how further to manage hedgerows sustainably in future. That is incredibly important but I have one concern. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, talked about the fact that they have drystone walls in Yorkshire. We have them in Cumbria but we also have a lot of farm hedgerows along the roads—that is, a lot of roadside hedgerows. Something that has become appallingly obvious recently is the number of ash trees in those hedgerows; we have a lot of ash trees in Cumbria. They have all had to be cut down because they are dying and there are concerns that they are going to fall into the road. Those hedgerows just look devastated. If we are looking at having sustainably managed hedgerows in future, in the same way that we look at how to manage trees, can we also look at how we can support hedgerows through disease and the loss of such an important part of those hedgerows, when we have diseases such as ash dieback?

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

Again, I thank all those who contributed because, from my perspective, this has been a really interesting debate to listen to.

I start by picking up on the issue of ash trees, disease and stuff like that. Like the noble Baroness, I take the train—up to and down from Scotland most weeks. If you look out, you see that things are really horrifying right now. All the leaves are out, and there is dead tree after dead tree. It illustrates the importance of our wider biosecurity. I know that the BTOM has not been to everybody’s approval. Frankly, as we all know, if you are in government, you cannot get this right whichever way you go because some people think that you have not done enough and others say that you have done too much. However, this is a really important issue; on ash trees, it is just a horror.

Keeping some of the pests and diseases that affect our flora and fauna out of the UK is absolutely key. If noble Lords get a chance to go to the Chelsea Flower Show, I recommend that they go to the APHA site. It is based on Asian hornets and is absolutely incredible. It just shows you what we are up against every day of every week. At this time of year, everything is coming alive, and it is all on its way over here. The Defra team and the wider Defra family do an unbelievable amount of work to stop a lot of this stuff coming in. I forget exactly what the cost of ash dieback across the country will be, but it is in the tens of billions; it is going to leave great holes in our hedges and in our woods. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, makes a great point: what are we going to do to fill that gap? Perhaps we need to start thinking about that more.

I was really interested in the debate started, I think, by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on this conflict between farmers and environmentalists—if I may phrase it as crudely as that. Several speakers implied that, because we have had a few months without these regulations, somehow we will be ripping out hedgerows two to the dozen, because we could do that without the regulations. I do not understand that mindset at all; I have never come across it anywhere. I do not know whether the noble Earl, Lord Russell, has; we could perhaps have a conversation afterwards it that is happening, but I have never come across it anywhere and I think most farmers would take proper exception to it being implied. Again, I would be delighted to have a wider conversation.

To answer the specific point, I have heard nothing to suggest that any farmer would remove any hedgerow. On the contrary, there has been a huge increase in people wanting to do better, which is where the farming community comes from.

However, the debate was interesting, because it touched on a few other issues about exemptions, exceptions and so on. There was talk about why we are not protecting young hedges, as if not applying the buffer zone would have a negative impact on young hedges. I do not know if your Lordships have ever planted and looked after a hedge, but it takes quite a long time to get settled in and a lot of careful work each year to keep it there. Buffer zones would overwhelm a young hedge; the weeds would overwhelm it and you would get a properly scrawny hedge with high leaf cover because the understorey would have been taken out completely. I appreciate that some of the exceptions may be counterintuitive, but it is important to do the homework and understand the reasons for some of these things before suggesting that they are somehow improper or not correct. People put a lot of effort and energy into this sort of stuff, so it is perhaps good to appreciate that more widely.

Soil erosion and water body buffers were other issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and others raised. Perhaps I could take them both away, come back with some more information and write to her.

There were quite a lot of questions on people cutting hedges in their gardens. Why can they do that when farmers have to obey the rules? How does that extend to golf courses, public authorities and all the rest of it? Again, this is a pretty challenging area. We do not live in a police state; we are trying to do our best. Education, not enforcement, is the best way of solving this problem. We are consulting on wider issues with hedges. We are just about to start that consultation, which will be an interesting exercise, because the practicalities of enforcing against someone cutting their garden hedge are pretty challenging and I am not sure that we want to get into that space.

A number of noble Lords raised specific issues with the timing of when you can cut a hedge and when you cannot. It is a trade-off between farming and the wider environment. Farmers have other things to do and, by the time we are into September, they are planning for next year and have a lot of other tasks. Sometimes there is a little gap when this can be done. I do not have information on the specific example of a dormouse, but 99% of species have fledged and gone by early September.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord needs to look at the latest information about the impact that climate change is having on extending breeding seasons. It is notable; I will send him some.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I have not looked at that and I appreciate that these dates are moving, but we have to start somewhere and those dates have been chosen for the moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, quizzed me on two-acre fields or less, and why they might be exempt. I hope everybody can understand that, if you have a smaller field, taking up a two-metre buffer zone around the edge of it will have a disproportionate impact. The Government recognise that and it came through pretty clearly in the consultation.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Just to clarify, the question was why under five hectares was being brought in under the de minimis rule.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

That was to try to include as many of our precious hedges as we can; that is still quite a big space. Again, through the consultation, it did not seem to cause a great deal of alarm, so it seemed perfectly sensible to include it.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked a number of questions about who is accountable, who is the regulator and who is the enforcer. The regulations will be enforced by the Rural Payments Agency on behalf of the Secretary of State. The Rural Payments Agency has a history of enforcing the hedgerow maintenance requirements under cross-compliance rules. It is well placed to develop and implement the new enforcement regime for all these regulations. The RPA will be taking an advice and guidance-led approach to enforcement.

On his supplementary question of who you should ring if you are driving along and you see someone doing damage to a hedgerow, I guess that question has always been there. Presumably, people will ring the police in the first instance if they see something going wrong, and they will guided by them to the appropriate agency. In this case, it is the RPA.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, enquired about the definition of “important” hedgerows. The definition used for these regulations is designed to allow them to replicate as closely as possible the requirements for hedgerow management under cross compliance. For this reason, it was not practicable to use the same definition as is used in the Hedgerows Regulations 1997.

There were a number of slightly more detailed supplementary questions on which I will write to the noble Earl.

I am grateful for the thoughts and questions raised in today’s debate. They underline the value that so many of us place—

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

Forgive me—I do not want to take up the time of the Grand Committee or the Minister; we have taken up a fair bit of time. However, I would value a clarification on Cornish hedges, which are very specific, at some point.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

My apologies—I think I can answer that question. Those are not covered by these regulations but they are being consulted on under the new ELMs model, so they will be included there.

In conclusion, I hope your Lordships will support these important regulations. I commend them to the Committee.

Motion agreed.