Horticultural Peat (Prohibition of Sale)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am not going to oppose the right of the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) to bring in a Bill, because I believe in the right of Members to bring forward whatever Bills they want. Most of them are ill conceived, and I have spent much of my time in this place attacking Bills that would have unintended consequences. I think the hon. Lady’s Bill will fit into the category of Bills that have good intentions, but would have unacceptable unintended consequences.

It will not go unnoticed that this Bill is a full-frontal attack on British horticulture, and that it is being promoted by none other than the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Lady referred to the previous Bill, which I spoke against on 16 April. It is a salutary reminder of the work of democrats in this country that none of the 12 Members of this House who supported that Bill is still a Member of the House—the electorate gave their verdict on the ill-conceived support for it. I am delighted to say today that a number of my new and not so new colleagues have said to me, “Why can’t you divide the House and oppose this Bill?” I say to them, including my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), that we should allow the Liberal Democrats to stew in their own juice and bring forward their Bill, so that it can be criticised and never reach the statute book.

One would have thought from the remarks of the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton that she was a supporter of the Horticultural Trades Association. Yesterday, the association ran an event in this House, and so many people attended that the free indoor plants on offer were all scooped up about halfway through. If the hon. Lady went to collect her free plants, she obviously missed the opportunity to talk to representatives of the association, who believe that her proposals would completely undermine British horticulture. What is most important—the HTA makes this point—is that we should have a level playing field with European growers.

We want to grow more trees. Too few trees are being home-grown, and too many of them are being imported. Likewise, we want to promote garden products, but too many of them are being imported. A very large proportion are being imported from Holland, because, far from having a peat-free environment, Holland is the fastest-growing export market for peat coming into our country. Holland is also one of the largest importers and exporters of peat, and it gets a lot of its peat from Germany, Estonia, Belgium, Latvia and Sweden.

The Dutch use peat to make horticultural products, which are then sold into our market because those products are more acceptable to consumers, not least because they tend to last longer, as peat is a substance that enables plants to retain moisture and water a lot longer than products that are peat free, such as coir. Some of the people who promote peat-free products do not seem to realise, when they talk about coir as a substitute, that it is produced mainly in the far east, particularly in Sri Lanka, and that it has to be washed and de-salted before it can be prepared for horticultural use and then has to be transported halfway across the world. That is not an ecologically friendly way of producing a peat substitute.

There is another dimension to the issue of peat. What proportion of it is used in horticulture? It is a very small proportion. I am told that about 95% of the peat consumed in the world is used for peat fires. It is put into domestic boilers and mega-incinerators or used as a substitute for coal or even natural gas. By concentrating on just one aspect of the use of peat, in horticulture, we are ignoring the much larger problem of the burning of peat for fuel. I have looked up how easy it is to buy peat for fuel in this country, and the latest information is that I could get a pallet of 10 or so bags of peat delivered to my home for £260. That peat comes from exactly the same source as peat for agriculture. Why are we having a go at the use of peat in horticulture and agriculture when we could be dealing with the much larger issue of the extraction of peat for heating our homes?

This is a sensitive, emotional subject, but we need to have some hard-headed realism around it. If you, like me, Madam Deputy Speaker, support British horticulture, you should be very much opposed to this Bill, because it is a full-frontal assault upon the viability of our horticulture industry and will result in less choice for all those who engage in horticulture, whether as amateur or professional gardeners.

I urge the hon. Lady to think carefully before she drafts her Bill. If she thinks that it will be mitigated by having a lot of exemptions set out in it, I challenge her to include on the face of her Bill all the exemptions she thinks will be necessary, because only with thousands of exemptions will the Bill be in any way acceptable. That is the challenge to her. That is why I am not going to oppose her bringing forward her Bill. Let us see what it says, but I fear it is going to be absolutely ghastly. I am disappointed, because I thought the Liberal Democrats were the friends of people working in the countryside and in agriculture and horticulture, but this Bill suggests quite the reverse. I strongly oppose it.

Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Sarah Dyke, Wera Hobhouse, Tim Farron, Pippa Heylings, Martin Wrigley, Caroline Voaden, Carla Denyer, Layla Moran, Tessa Munt, Richard Foord, Vikki Slade and Steve Darling present the Bill.

Sarah Dyke accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 January 2025, and to be printed (Bill 122).