Land Use Framework

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness. As ever, she has set out her stall very wisely, with many facts and elements that we need to take on board. It is clearly madness that we do not have a land framework strategy. It is a bit like trying to build a house without deciding where you might want the kitchen or the bathroom.

My remarks will concentrate on food, as that is the area I probably know best. As the noble Baroness said, land is a scarce resource. We have used it for three purposes: housing, recreation and food production. The latter currently takes up 70% of English land. That is clearly too much if we are going to hit our climate change targets. As the noble Baroness has just said, we need to get multifunctional in the way we use all our land.

The Climate Change Committee has estimated that approximately 21% of agricultural land in England has to change its function to forestry, energy crops, peat land or agroforestry if we are to get to net zero on the timetable we have laid out. However, that does not mean taking land out of agricultural use entirely. It is about the right kind of farming, such as no-till, mob grazing, almost zero application of pesticides, letting hedgerows grow and herbal leys—a whole range of things that can encourage wildlife and carbon sequestration on land that is also producing food. It is about being, as the noble Baroness said, multifunctional.

I am anxious that we go down this route as if we do not and we agree that we cannot grow enough food to feed us, we will end up entering into trade deals with countries far away. That not only means that we outsource our carbon footprint, but that we lose jobs and undercut our own farmers. Indeed, in Questions in the House yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made this point very strongly in relation to the Australian trade deal.

However, all land is different. Some of the land that could deliver the greatest environmental benefits might not be that good for food growing. The most productive 33% of English land produces around 60% of our total output, while the bottom 33% produces only 15%. Similarly, making farming more environmentally sensitive has many other gains: reducing runoff from just 5% of agricultural land that produces the most water pollution could reduce phosphorus and other sediments in our rivers by 25% and the nitrogen load by 13%.

Food and food growing has dominated our landscape for hundreds of years. Indeed, the phrase “eat the view” is intended to encourage us all to eat more British-grown vegetables, fruit and grains. It was coined some years ago and I think it is a good phrase, but it misses out key elements, such as which bit of land should we be using for this and which bit for that? This is why we need a framework.

I advised a little on Henry Dimbleby’s food strategy. We recommended that by 2022—soon—Defra ought to devise a rural framework. What does this mean? First, Defra should work with local nature recovery networks to prepare basic maps of what is what right now. These maps should include data on how productive the agricultural land is in the network’s area—something we can glean from the agricultural land classification system. There should be an assessment of local priority areas for the environment. For instance, is there peat or ancient woodland? Areas with significant levels of pollution should be identified, together with ideas on what to do. All this needs to be linked in with local tree strategies, the peat action plan and any existing local nature recovery strategy.

Once all this has been collected, Defra then actually has something to work on. This is something it lacks. It will provide a framework for us to decide how we want to use our precious and extremely tiny amount of land. We can tell which land is most appropriate for semi-natural land, low-yield farmland and high-yield farmland, as well as land that is better for housing and economic development such as business parks. At all stages, this report will make clear how this model can help meet the Government’s legal commitments to reach net zero by 2050, while at the same time protecting 30% of land for nature by 2030 —the 30x30 target.

Land change cannot be imposed by central government. Defra should make its national land map freely available to land managers and councils, which can then decide how they will best use it. It should form a guide for how the new environmental land management scheme is delivered and managed. It seems to me that currently, the Government are pinning everything on ELMS in terms of the countryside. I am the first to agree that it is a tremendous advance on the CAP and a step in the right direction. However, a lot of questions remain. ELMS has nothing to say on land management more generally, what happens to land outside of the farm, housing, roads and areas of outstanding natural beauty—or, indeed, on planning decisions. It cannot do all this because it does not have the remit.

For ELMS to truly function in the way that it should, it has to sit alongside an overall land management strategy. There are currently at least eight schemes influencing how we use land—from the England Trees Action Plan through to ELMS itself—and they control funds ranging from £10 million to £2.4 billion. It is a lot of money. We need a framework: it would help shape priorities such as improving areas of outstanding natural beauty. It could help us decide the best place to grow crops and, indeed, which crops, and where to graze cattle.

It could also give us information about where to build new houses. The additional land needed for new housing is relatively small for an issue that attracts so much distress and anger. Just 2.2% of UK land is needed by 2060 to fulfil all current calculated needs. If we had access to a bird’s eye view, we would not need to keep building on flood plains or next to sites of scientific interest like the rewilding project at Knepp, which noble Lords will know I have banged on about. In fact, in a minute I am going to come back to it.

A rural land use framework will outline the most effective way to get to net zero by 2050 and to 30x30 by 2030. We need better data if we are to achieve these goals. If we are to reduce the amount of land we use for farming by a steady 1% a year, while maintaining our food security through healthier and more sustainable farming management, we need a really good plan. We need to know which areas are the best to grow on and which are possibly the best to be rewooded or rewilded.

I want to finish with a story of something that happened in the last few weeks at the recent Tory party conference. Isabella Tree, the environmentalist behind the rewilding project at Knepp, attended the conference to speak on a rewilding panel. As noble Lords know, given how many have spoken on this issue, she and her husband have been fighting a battle against Horsham District Council to prevent it building 3,500 new houses on the border of their land, which would destroy the carefully planned wildlife corridors that connect Knepp and other places like it to the sea and deep inland. The builder is Thakeham, which has given more than £500,000 to the Conservatives in the last three years. Thakeham had the most prominent stand at the conference, sponsored meetings, hosted a drinks party and—which was really shocking to me—had its company name on the lanyards of every single delegate at the four-day event. As Isabella Tree said:

“This isn’t democracy … There is a lot of money … shouting for more housebuilding. Where is the money shouting for nature?”


However, there is a small, good note. Buglife has just discovered a very small snail—the little whirlpool ramshorn snail. It is in the water catchment area underneath the development that Thakeham plans to build. This tiny creature—just 5 millimetres in diameter—is so rare and so in need of protection that the planning has been temporarily halted. Talk about David and Goliath! It shows what a crazy system we live in. Just as it has taken a footballer to get the Government to agree to feed hungry kids in the holidays, so it has taken a miniature snail to get someone to look again at a really ridiculous planning project.

This is an urgent situation. We only have one planet. We have to start now. A rural land framework and a land use strategy is an essential part of our journey forward.