Farmland Bird Populations

George Eustice Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) on securing this debate. He is passionate about bird life and has been a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for some 50 years, which shows real dedication. I grew up around wildlife on a farm. In Cornwall, we used to get a lot of lapwings, because they often overwintered there. Like him, I have a passion for birds and wildlife, and I want to see the common agricultural policy promoting them.

My right hon. Friend highlighted that the trend in recent decades has been bleak. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs measures how birds fare through the farmland bird index, which is published every year as part of its biodiversity indicator suite. The index looks at 19 widespread species that feed in open farmland during the breeding season, and includes species such as lapwing, grey partridge, greenfinch, wood pigeon, skylark, corn bunting and yellowhammers. The evidence shows that the main decline in the index was from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. While the decline has continued, it has slowed since then.

It should be noted that not all farmland bird species have followed the overall trend. While grey partridge, turtle dove, tree sparrow and corn bunting are among those declining, wood pigeon, jackdaw, goldfinch and stock dove have all shown substantial increases. The wood pigeon, for example, has benefited from the increased availability of food as a result of cropping patterns switching to more oilseed rape, as many farmers could tell us.

The causes for the overall decline are complex and varied, but it is clear that the sharpest rate in decline coincided with major changes in agricultural land management and intensification. First, the switch from spring to autumn sowing of many cereal crops led to a loss of overwinter stubble fields, which has had a major impact on food sources. Secondly, the increased use of agri-chemicals, particularly during the 1970s, played an important part as well. Thirdly, the loss of field margins and hedgerows meant that farmland birds lost not only valuable sources of seed and insect food, particularly over the winter, but suitable nesting habitat. Recently, other natural factors have had an impact, particularly the weather. Many species have been vulnerable to the recent wet summers and cold winters. There is also disease; we know, for example, that trichomonosis has affected the greenfinch.

For some ground-nesting species such as lapwing, and game birds such as grey partridge, we have to acknowledge that predation by foxes and other predators has been a factor. The impact of predation varies between species. For farmland songbirds, for instance, there is little evidence of an effect, perhaps because they often have more than one brood and will re-nest after predation, and are therefore better able to withstand its effects. There is some evidence that predation is likely to have a greater impact on bird populations where habitat is in poor condition, perhaps because it has been degraded through overgrazing; nests may be more exposed and suffer higher loss rates to predators.

Having outlined the causes of the decline and the nature of the problem, I want to say something about what we hope to do, and the possible solutions. Our agri-environment schemes are the principal means of improving habitat for farmland birds in England; they provide funds for farmers to manage the cropped environment and provide additional habitat and food on their farms for farmland birds and other wildlife. Agri-environment measures that benefit birds include providing overwintered stubble, so that there is seed in winter, and wild bird seed mixtures in spring and summer, and the sympathetic management of hedgerows. Today there are about 50,000 farmers in England in agri-environment schemes, representing about 70% of available farmland. As part of the rural development programme for England, we spend about £400 million a year on those schemes.

As I said earlier, although we have stemmed the rate of decline and have turned a corner with respect to some species, we need overall to ask why, having spent a great deal of money in recent years on such countryside stewardship schemes, we have not yet reversed the decline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), other hon. Members present, and I would want.

The first thing to consider is management options under the stewardship schemes. We would certainly have liked better uptake of management options beneficial to farmland birds. My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip highlighted the weaknesses of the entry-level stewardship scheme in particular. We have looked at ways of encouraging greater uptake of those management options to benefit farmland birds.

In 2013, as a result of the review, we introduced into the schemes specific measures that enable farmers to provide supplementary feeding for birds in winter, to begin to address what is known as the hungry gap between midwinter and early spring, when seed food is depleted and before other food sources become available. That simple measure involves providing seeds on the ground or in hoppers to supplement the seed in stubble and wild bird seed crops. Another new measure that we introduced in 2013 involved leaving the last cut ryegrass silage unharvested, to allow grass to set seed and provide a seed source over winter.

A study by Baker and others published in 2012 for the British Trust for Ornithology showed that there is strong evidence that the provision of winter food resources produces positive effects in relation to the population growth of a number of species. The study results underline the importance of getting farmers to choose those targeted measures that we have already introduced, to deliver the outcomes we need.

Natural England, which administers environmental stewardship, has worked with many conservation bodies to develop farmland bird packages, setting out minimum requirements for the options by which farmers can provide nesting habitat, invertebrate chick food and adult seed food. They have been targeted at areas in England known to hold important populations of farmland birds and have been promoted by Natural England and the RSPB.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

The Minister makes a strong argument for the way modern farming can live in harmony with wildlife, and for how environmental schemes can improve bird numbers. All those present for the debate will agree about that. However, he has not touched on habitat destruction through uncontrolled planning and flooding. Is he in conversations with any of his ministerial colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government about whether that aspect of the matter can be tightened up?

[George Eustice]

It is probably a topic for a separate debate, but my hon. Friend will know that we are considering approaches such as biodiversity offsetting; when planning permission is granted and a habitat is damaged, there would be a process enabling local authorities to put things right somewhere else. There is potential to get that moving and to try to help habitats damaged by development.

Natural England has worked with the RSPB and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust to try to improve the working of the ELS scheme. The Campaign for the Farmed Environment has also done a lot to promote good practice. It is a voluntary industry-led initiative, where key industry partners work with environmental groups to encourage farmers to undertake voluntary environmental management. It is funded jointly by the industry and DEFRA, which has committed about £700,000 for this year and next to support its activities. Currently the campaign is promoting skylark and lapwing plots, wild bird seed mix strips, unsprayed overwinter stubbles and winter feeding.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip mentioned the common agricultural policy. As he said, we have gone to a 12% modulation rate. We have also taken the decision to increase the percentage of the pillar two budget spent on agri-environment schemes from 83% to 87%, so increasing the total amount being spent. Between now and 2020 we shall spend well over £3 billion on agri-environment schemes, and I confirm that we intend to review the position in 2016, with a view to moving to a full 15% modulation, subject to sufficient demand for the schemes and to concluding an analysis of the competitiveness of British agriculture.

My right hon. Friend highlighted some of the shortcomings of the ELS, and as he said, we plan for a new environmental land management scheme to replace it. The new scheme will build on the acknowledged successes of the environmental stewardship scheme in a positive way: it will be more targeted and focused. The new proposed mid-tier will identify areas of particular priorities for given objectives and incentivise the right options; we call that the directed option choice.

Biodiversity is among the things that I want to promote as we design NELMS. I want to make sure we have those directed options, so that there must be certain options, from a particular list, that will prioritise the recovery of farmland birds. I want us to look at that closely as we develop the approach. The directed option choice will enable us to encourage farmers to maximise the environmental outcomes on their land, in response to the agreed environmental priorities in their area, rather than simply seeking the lowest-cost or most convenient options. In addition, we shall adopt a landscape-scale approach to establishing NELMS. I hope that that will result in some critical mass and wildlife corridors, and a concentrated improvement in habitats to sustain the recovery of certain bird species.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury and my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, I want to reverse the decline in bird populations, and I do not believe that that is incompatible with continued farming. Many of the measures that can help farmland birds are entirely compatible with modern farming practices. I recently had a meeting with the RSPB, and we discussed some of the good work that they are doing at Hope farm in Cambridgeshire. I hope to visit in the spring; this very morning, my office has been trying to find a date for that.

The number of farmland birds at Hope farm has doubled since 2000, mainly because of land management undertaken through environmental stewardship. A particular success has been the fourfold increase in skylark numbers, which has been achieved simply through skylark plots. The RSPB representatives described to me how during the drilling of a cereal crop the drill is shut off periodically to produce the skylark plots. That is a simple management measure, which does not really affect the profitability of the farm, but has a huge effect on the skylark population. I look forward to my meeting with the RSPB and learning more about that.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend again on obtaining the debate, and reassure him that we shall prioritise biodiversity as we design the new environmental land management scheme.