Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about where she wants to get to, but I think that her regret Motion is like driving down the wrong side of a motorway.

The regret Motion talks about peatland, but the statutory instrument does not even mention it. Peatland is not defined anywhere, but what definitions one can find of it do include peat. Nobody is talking about burning peat; they are talking only about the vegetation on top of the peat.

The regret Motion goes on to say that peatland should be “a haven for wildlife”. It can be a haven for wildlife only if it is properly managed. I have lived on blanket bog, or beside blanket bog, for many years in my life, and the best biodiversity was found on the managed peatlands.

My main concern is wildfires. One can talk about the amount of carbon that is produced from cool burns—managed burns—on hillsides, but they produce about 1% to 5% of the carbon emissions from peatlands; 95% of the carbon emissions come from lowland peat, which is not covered by this statutory instrument.

I want to talk about the Flow Country in Caithness and Sutherland, which is the biggest blanket bog in Europe. In 2019, there was a fire there. Every day that fire burned, and it burned for six days, it doubled the amount of Scotland’s CO₂ emissions—700,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent—because it got out of control. With climate change advancing, we need to manage peat so that we minimise the chance of any fire spreading.