Land Use in England Committee Report

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my interest as president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, but also as co-chair of the APPG for the Timber Industries and the work that I do with them.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for his excellent introduction, and all the members of the committee who have taken part in producing the report and who have spoken in the debate today. It has been a really important debate, and one that I am sure that we will continue. In particular, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle on his valedictory speech and wish him happy birthday for yesterday. It has been a real privilege knowing the right reverend Prelate—Bishop James—initially through the Church in Cumbria, then as a Member of Parliament, and now in your Lordships’ House. He has given many of us his experience, knowledge and wisdom in everything that he has worked on. He will be missed both here and in Cumbria.

When I was reading this report, I found that it drew a close focus on to why we need a land use framework: the fact that there is a finite amount of land in England yet increasing pressures on what this land needs to deliver. The current system, where different needs are delivered in isolation by different teams and organisations following policies set by different departments, is inefficient and, as we know, can have unintended and unforeseen consequences. The report talks about the challenges, pressures and missed opportunities from working in these siloes. This point has come across very strongly in the debate. As we have heard, it does not have to be like this, and I hope the Government will take much of what is in the report and actually act on its suggestions.

My noble friend Lady Mallalieu talked about the fact that there is already a land use strategy in Scotland and that Wales has produced Future Wales, its spatial plan. So, England is missing out on this cross-departmental approach to how we are going to use our land in the future. It is good that Defra is developing its land use framework for England, and I am sure we all look forward to its publication in May.

Listening to the debate has thrown up a number of questions that face planners, farmers, landowners, land managers, local authorities and local communities all over the country. For example, how much food should the UK actually aim to produce? Where should it be produced? How can we improve our food security? How do we grow more healthy food that is suited to current conditions and future conditions as we face the challenges of climate change?

How much land needs to be devoted to energy—to solar, wind, nuclear, tidal—and where should this infrastructure go? How do we incorporate this green infrastructure right across the landscape while improving public access to nature, as noble Lords have said? How sustainable does the UK want to be for timber production, for example, and other green building materials? What should we be growing and where? Where should we build our houses? As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, said, what are we going to do about water and reservoirs? Again, that is something we need to take much more seriously.

There has been much debate about food production and the challenges facing farmers and agriculture. The food strategy the Government set out last year said that domestic food production is a vital contributor to national resilience and food security, but we have heard about the challenges of Brexit and Ukraine, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, mentioned. They demonstrate that our food system has a fragility, with many farmers struggling.

We also know from this debate the importance of nature and food security working together. It is critical that land use and yield are viewed in a holistic and balanced way, recognising that some land—we have heard about the peat and wetland we could use for carbon sequestration, for example—is better used for nature restoration while other land needs to balance the needs of nature at the same time as delivering good agricultural yields. The noble Baroness, Lady Rock, talked about the challenges for tenant farmers; that has to be taken into account.

If we are looking at nature and biodiversity, agriculture and land use change is not only driving climate impacts but causing a dramatic decline in wildlife—as we have heard from many noble Lords today—meaning that we are one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. It is shocking to me that that is continuing to get worse; we are not turning it around. We really have to grasp the nettle on this—I know the Minister feels strongly about it—because, with the right approach, responsible land management can produce the food we need while at the same time creating space for a diverse range of plant and animal life to thrive.

Noble Lords have talked about the importance of forestry and woodland, but the woodland targets set out in the England trees action plan have not been reached. There were a number of reasons why Confor said that this was the case, the first being uncertainty as to what land trees can be planted on. We need to grasp this.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned farmers’ concerns about moving to tree planting, so how are we going to address this? As the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, mentioned, we have heard how trees and different planting schemes can contribute to carbon sequestration. However, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked a number of questions about exactly how we measure this—how do we know what we are achieving?

Tourism and access to nature was mentioned by noble Lords. Many people want better access, improved rights of way, and value; as we heard, the benefits of enjoying the countryside and getting outside in nature were very much apparent during Covid. In particular, my noble friend Lord Rosser talked about the section of the report which mentions access and open spaces and how important that is for health and well-being, and that the commitments to access do not have the same status as other land commitments. He asked a number of important questions about how we will manage rights of way in the future.

Housing and planning were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, the right reverend Prelate and a number of other noble Lords. How do we consider new housing and associated development alongside the energy and related infrastructure we need when we are developing new housing? Water is part of that, because it puts significant demands on land in very specific areas. Again, how do we decide where those areas are and what we need?

The report does not propose that the land use framework set any distinct housing development policy or replace the planning system in any way. However, you cannot ignore the interaction of housing with land use, so we need to somehow bring this together in a sensible and practical way.

Green infrastructure was discussed. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said that it needs to be in the right place, not on productive land, and the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, talked about that in relation to solar farms, for example. In the report, Natural England suggested that

“it would be beneficial to fully integrate energy and other infrastructure planning with other aspects of the land use and marine planning systems”.

Again, I would be interested to hear the Government’s and the Minister’s response to those comments.

However, the key thing that came through was the issue of multifunctionality. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, talked about this at some length, and about the NFU’s concerns and the pressures that come from farmers on how to deliver this. The NFU’s briefing, for which I thank it, said that its vision for a land-use framework is based on a principle of land sharing—the delivery of multiple outputs and benefits from the same parcel of land—not land sparing, which is the repurchasing of farmland to deliver new outcomes, and that it must represent viable business propositions. That is a really key point. You cannot expect farmers not to maintain viable businesses. Given the finite land area of the UK and the importance of our food security—it has been fairly volatile recently, and we need to recognise that—we need to ensure that our countryside is a multifunctional and dynamic space.

I also thank the Nature Friendly Farming Network for its report, Rethink Food, which explicitly recognises that farms play multiple roles in our national economy and landscape. They produce food but also protect, restore and expand habitats and ecosystems. We must therefore ensure that these land-use decisions have all the different targets, needs and aspirations we need as our country moves forward. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, we need to achieve a flexible framework, and we need flexible encouragement; we do not need a top-down approach.

In the light of the Government’s land use framework, which is due in May, and their decision not to accept the report’s recommendations on a land use commission to deliver on the outcomes we need, can the Minister confirm that the May report will be substantial and, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, said, that all the different sections of government will have contributed to it, so that it is substantial and capable of delivering what the excellent report we have been debating today clearly shows is needed for the future of our land?