Seagulls

Debate between Gary Streeter and Thérèse Coffey

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Coffey]

That is a fair point. I also point out the example of Herefordshire, which is not too far away from my right hon. Friend’s constituency. Herefordshire County Council has taken sensible and effective steps, such as removing gulls nests and eggs from April to August, which has meant that the number of pairs of breeding gulls has dropped considerably, from 500 in 2008 to approximately 200 in 2015.

The Local Government Association is well placed to share best practice on this issue. However, I must disappoint the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) by saying that central Government cannot provide additional resources on this matter. Having said that, it so happens that one of my councillors from Suffolk Coastal Council, Councillor Andy Smith, is chair of the coastal special interest group at the LGA, and I will ask him to consider this matter. I will also make sure that he invites councillors from inland towns as well as from coastal towns to contribute.

I am grateful to all Members for debating this issue and raising their constituency concerns. I encourage local authorities to continue to work together to share examples of methods and techniques that successfully deal with the issue of gulls in seaside towns and cities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport referred to “Desert Island Discs”. I insist that he has a record from that excellent Liverpool band, A Flock of Seagulls. My particular favourite is “The More You Live, The More You Love”, but he can refer to my contribution to find more song titles that he might wish to know about.

I hope that my hon. Friend understands that, although this issue is important, a lot of the action to deal with it must be taken locally and individually, and we must strike a balance between protecting species such as gulls and also fulfilling our international commitments, while mitigating the impacts of such species in our towns and cities.

I am sure that many hon. Members will be able to go back to their councils and their constituents over-brimming with the ideas that we have heard about, including those from over the border in Scotland; we heard some great examples from there. In fact, a professor from Leeds University has said that Aberdeen was getting this matter right, including flying a bird of prey around one of the local sports stadiums before matches, such is the prevalence of gulls and the risk of their attacking. So there is plenty of good practice to share.

Mr Streeter, I hope that we never again have to debate this matter. Nevertheless, I am sure that we will return to it. As we have heard, these gulls are clever creatures, but I am sure that we can defeat this menace.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Oliver Colvile, you have a few minutes to respond.

Food Prices (Planning Policy)

Debate between Gary Streeter and Thérèse Coffey

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Sedentary interventions are never helpful.

[Dr Coffey]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. I think the hon. Gentleman was suggesting that financial carrots may be more worth while than actually growing carrots.

There is also a desire for lower-carbon energy, for which there is community support in parts of my constituency. Applications are starting to come in all of a sudden, and there is no question but that when a 7% or 8% return on land is offered for basically doing nothing, it is quite attractive to landowners who have hard lives working the land. As has already been mentioned, that might offer, among other things, biodiversification and allow landowners more time to focus on the quality of the food they produce on other parts of their land.

What are particularly starting to crop up—no pun intended—in East Anglia are solar farms. We are starting to see a significant number of applications, although the only application in my constituency was withdrawn because it is in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Although council officers recommended onshore turbines in the AONB, for some reason their recommendation was not to have solar farms in it. Outside my constituency—a couple of applications abut my constituency—we are starting to see a trend for significantly sized solar farms, which is of concern to local residents both because they are quite a change in land use and because of the effect on future food security.

Having addressed energy in AONBs, I do have a nuclear power station, and I hope to get another, so I am not saying that the two things are incompatible—far from it. We know that industry can co-exist with agriculture and nature without necessarily destroying them, but one of the big local concerns is that some of the subsidy is driving decisions on land use. As well as potatoes, Suffolk Coastal is best known for pigs and poultry, which are the two things not subsidised by the common agricultural policy. As an aside, there are more pigs than people in Suffolk, which shows how much we love that particular source of food for the future.

The issue is translating into other areas. We are starting to see planning applications for straw-based incinerators, and there may even be one in the Minister’s constituency. Farmers are worried that their local access to straw is increasingly expensive. We are trying to encourage better animal welfare, which leads to different use of such materials, so food costs are starting to go up, and many farmers are concerned that it will be more worth while to import food that we would naturally take for granted.

A mixture of things are going on, all of which seem designed, unintentionally, to hit the food bills that our constituents pay every week when they go to their local butcher or supermarket. A number of factors are coming together, so what can we do? My Government, quite rightly, do not want to prescribe the development of growth agendas to local councils, whether on housing or energy; they want to allow local communities, led by councils, to make such decisions for themselves.

The Government need to encourage, not compel, Departments to work with each other—the Department for Communities and Local Government working with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—to ensure that our approaches have no unintended consequences and do not conflict.

Ultimately, I support the Government’s desire to build new homes, which is what we want to encourage local councils to do. DCLG has come up with great schemes such as the new homes bonus, which proactively rewards councils that recognise the need for more housing for their constituents. That is true in my part of the country, but for our longer-term security we need councils to think carefully about the displacement of land, whether for housing or energy, and planning policies that currently do not exist. We do not want to return to being an importer of food that we could easily grow ourselves; instead, we should focus on energy security, food security and creating a coherent message. We encourage our local councils to take full advantage of that.