Biodiversity and the Countryside

Lord Hart of Tenby Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hart of Tenby (Con)]

My Lords, I join in the chorus of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for bringing this matter before the House. There are never too many occasions to raise this, and the level of expertise, passion and dedication shown should come as no surprise—it certainly comes as no surprise to me, and neither do the two themes that seem to be emerging from this discussion: relationships and respect; that is, the relationship between central government and the people on the ground who have to deliver, or certainly live with, these policies, and respect for those people.

I am just about old enough to remember my family farm in Wiltshire. I was pretty tiny at the time, but I remember that biodiversity—it probably went by another name back in those days—and food production were seen not as an either/or but as an essential combination. They were seen as nothing surprising; it was our obligation, not just our pleasure, to deliver biodiversity in the most interesting and diverse way we could, because doing that ensured that we were able to produce food—in our case, it was a dairy farm—to the highest standards. Buying patterns, food production and the larger political landscape have changed since then, but the fundamentals have not. I remember very clearly that, back in those days, we did all that because we wanted to do it, not because we were obliged, forced or even paid to do it by whoever were the Government of the day.

Noble Lords will have received yesterday an interesting briefing from the RSPB. It was quite solid in parts, as you would expect, but I wanted to highlight two aspects of it that concerned me a bit, because what started as a solid document drifted into the usual sort of lazy stereotyping in part of it. I will highlight two case studies. One, fairly close to my heart these days, is Lake Vyrnwy in north Wales, a substantial 5,000-hectare area of land, owned and managed by the RSPB since 1996. You would think, therefore, that it would be the epitome of biodiversity success. Yet, in that time, the numbers of hen harriers, merlin, black and red grouse, breeding curlews, and peregrine falcons have all fallen. Every single one of those crucial, iconic species has declined in the 30-odd years that one of Britain’s leading conservation and biodiversity charities has been in charge of that site.

Contrast that with case study two: Bolton Castle, in Wensleydale in Yorkshire—a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area and a special site of conservation. In 2024, it boasted 250 pairs of nesting curlew—there are only 450 pairs in the whole of the south of England—and that is not to mention ouzels, dunlins, stonechats and a range of other upland birds that, for many of us, are a very rare sight indeed. My message, which emerges from this, is that that success story is not despite the shooting interests of that estate in Yorkshire or despite the incredible, dedicated work of gamekeepers, land managers and farmers there; it is because of them. That is why it is such a success. We could say it was despite government, if we wanted to be cynical. This is an area commended by the British Trust for Ornithology—BTO—and even by Mary Colwell, the director of Curlew Action, an important charity looking after the interests of one particular species. You could multiply this incredible success story many times across the UK, but particularly across upland areas of the UK.

What does all this mean? It is a message, I hope—to the Government Front Bench, stakeholders and other people with an interest in this agenda—that all these ambitions will succeed only if we show the necessary degree of co-operation and respect to those who will have to deliver them, who want to deliver them and who will have to live with the consequences of government policy around food production, farming and, in particular, conservation.

Certain comments were made by my noble friend Lord Grayling at the beginning about growth. It is perfectly possible to have growth at the same time as an enhanced and improving biodiversity landscape. However, we need to be careful that there are agencies and quangos—and I hate to pick on Natural England, but it is probably the most powerful agency in this particular field—that have the ability to put their foot on the brake of growth, apparently in the interests of conservation. That is not always the case, because biodiversity includes the human population just as much as it does the animal, bird or wider biodiversity ambitions that we have. Without the communities of these fantastic parts of the British Isles, these schemes will find it very difficult to get off the ground.

So my message is: let us not repeat the mistakes of the past; let us involve the people who matter, who know and care; and let us co-operate in a collegiate way and not fall into the trap of some of the divisions that always seem to accompany the decisions of Parliament, particularly with regard to our dealings with rural issues and conservation.