Lord Skelmersdale
Main Page: Lord Skelmersdale (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, follow that, as they say. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, on bringing this report from the Royal Horticultural Society, Why We All Need Greening Grey Britain—the website says simply “GGB”—to our attention so quickly, only a month after its publication; would that everything in politics happened so quickly.
First, I should declare a sort of interest. The first and probably the best investment I ever made was to give myself a present on my 21st birthday. I was already well into my horticultural training by then so I spent £120 on a life membership of the Royal Horticultural Society. When I say that today’s annual subscription is £41.25, I think that your Lordships will agree that that was, and still is, enormous value for money. I also admit that my wife was a trustee for 11 years and is still a member of one of its committees.
That said, I have two regrets today. I mean no disrespect to the Minister, but to me the whole foundation of this report is environmental, not the built environment, for which she is probably partly responsible—certainly today she is. Whether my noble friends Lord Lawson and Lord Ridley are right or wrong when they say that global warming is happening much more slowly than we are told by some—probably most—scientists, there is no doubt in my mind that climate change is very much with us. You need to look only at the precipitous rainfall we have had—and the flooding that has resulted—over the past few years. This brings me to my second regret. At least in part, the report is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted in regard to the impermeable paving of front gardens in our towns, cities and, as the noble Baroness said, suburbs to provide off-street parking for thousands of cars. This is increasing every year, as the extensive Library brief shows.
In the past two days I have seen two very different types of these paved areas. Last night I was in a house in Chelsea Harbour, which, although it had no front garden, had a back yard. This was closely paved with cement between the concrete slabs. Mercifully, at the back, there was a three-foot wide bed, marked with what looked very like coal, through which were growing two cyclads and what appeared to be a phormium. At the back of the bed was a fence, beyond which was a line of horse chestnuts—planted some 20 years or so ago, I would guess from their girth—on the edge of a deep ditch running down to the river. I do not think that the developer thought much about all this but, although not ideal, we can hardly complain.
The evening before, I was entertained at Kew Gardens. Having just been in Copenhagen—visiting, among other things, the longest herbaceous border in Europe—I was interested to see the Broad Walk, as it is known, with its borders on either side. I was told that, when completed, it will be two metres longer than the one in Copenhagen—a sort of horticultural one-upmanship, or perhaps today I might say keeping up with the Joneses. The point of this description is that the very wide and long Broad Walk has just been resurfaced, not with concrete or even tarmac, as it would have been in years gone by, but with the kind of bonded gravel that you see around street trees in London. It is a hard-wearing surface—and, most importantly, permeable—so the run-off will be practically non-existent; it will not wash away the light topsoil of the beds on either side.
As both noble Baronesses have pointed out, it can be done. As I have said, the problem is that far too many front gardens have been concreted over. The report indicates that this practice has escalated dramatically over the past few years—would that we had this report 10, or even five, years ago. It is all very well that permeable covering of front gardens does not need planning permission any more, but does anyone ever check? Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will respond to that point.
I am not critical of the whole report. The title is very apt because many of our towns and cities are indeed grey and the RHS is right to say that there are many things homeowners can do to correct this. A plant or a pot containing plants in the corners where cars cannot reach, or a wall shrub climbing up the house or along the fence, would have two effects: it would not only beautify the site—perhaps even making the house more valuable when it comes to be sold, as my noble friend Lady Fookes said—but, more importantly for all of us, it would lock in the carbon dioxide that we are all so afraid of.
The problem is that there is little the Government can now do. They could continue with their policy of making it the norm to have permeable paving by means of sticking to the current planning regulations but, again, it is all very well to be allowed to do these things but does anyone bother to check when the homeowner does not? I am afraid that this would be too little, too late, although not for the thousands of new gardens that I am sure have been concreted over.
Again in the excellent brief from the Library, I saw that the RAC Foundation has pointed out that almost 7 million front gardens have been concreted over. My noble friend the Minister will talk about all sorts of things—not least, perhaps, the conurbation of Bolton, which is included in the criticism that we have made of concreted-over front gardens—but can she tell the Committee how many of the 7 million will have “concretable”, for want of a better expression, front gardens? Will the Government insist on a planning regime which continues to mandate permeable surfaces? For now, though, I am afraid that the horse has bolted.