Land Use Commission

Debate between Lord Roborough and Lord Benyon

Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report of the Land Use in England Committee’s recommendation to establish a Land Use Commission to help landowners and managers make the most appropriate decisions for their land.

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

My Lords, I declare my farming interest as set out in the register. We welcome the committee’s report and agree with many of its findings. The land use framework programme led by Defra is aligning thinking on land use across departments. We have yet to be convinced of the value of a commission.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his Answer and refer to my interest as a landowner, as set out in the register. The Royal Society recently highlighted that government policies could require up to one-third of England’s land to be repurposed by 2050. England is a densely populated nation with multiple overlapping stakeholders on every acre of our country. That makes change in land use complex, time-consuming, expensive and risky for the land manager. How else can the Government help to streamline this process and highlight the optimal uses of different types of land to those who manage it?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend raises really important points. In its Multifunctional Landscapes report, published this year, the Royal Society referred to the UK rather than England; of course, we have to operate within the system that we have. It bases its assumptions about the total areas required by government targets on figures that it describes in the report as “illustrative”. However, we do not want to prescribe particular uses to landowners or land managers from a national level. We would rather make sure that they have the information and guidance they require to make efficient decisions based on local knowledge. I give the example of local nature recovery strategies, which help to steer nature restoration projects to the areas where they can be most beneficial.