Forestry in England

John McNally Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this interesting, topical and timely debate. I wish a belated happy new year to all. It is good to see members of the Woodland Trust present. I will try to be fairly brief and get to the end of this speech without losing my voice.

Many enlightening points have been made during the debate. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) made good points on how to merge forestry and farming. She also talked about ancient woodlands. I am eternally grateful to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) for her ambition on preserving ancient woodlands. She provided me with a huge insight into the problems that exist. The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) talked about addressing short-termism. We have been practising short-termism for far too long. It needs to stop but there seems to be no end in sight. Things are taken week to week, month to month and year to year, and that has to change. The aspiration that she mentioned needs to become a certainty in policy.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) mentioned tourism, a special interest of mine, which I will speak about later. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) for his words recognising the work that the Scottish Government are undertaking. The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) well expressed her local knowledge and interest in the history of her area. She also talked about the conservation of ancient woodlands and the threats to them. All those things are very commendable, and I agree entirely with many of the things that have been said. There is cross-party agreement on many of these issues. Trees, birds, wildlife and the whole habitat depend on the whole transnational situation.

I would like to bring to the Chamber’s attention how the matters we are debating today affect Scotland and their potential impact on Scottish interests. I hope that Members will bear with me—I recognise this is essentially a debate on English issues—if I get a wee bit parochial. The Scottish forestry sector supports more than 25,000 full-time equivalent jobs and contributes some £1 billion gross value added to the Scottish economy. Our forestry sector represents 64% of the UK’s total green wood output. It is an essential part of our landscape’s visual appeal, Scottish industrial supply chains and the provision of a multitude of ecosystem services, from flood mitigation and erosion control to habitat for pollinators.

Considerable social and health benefits are being realised through the Scottish Government’s use of planning policies to encourage the afforestation of vacant and derelict land. Tourism and recreation in Scotland’s national forest estate contributes £110 million each year to Scotland’s economy, supporting around 4,000 jobs. That was brought clearly into focus just yesterday at an event I co-hosted in the Jubilee Room in Westminster Hall with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day). The companies benefiting from the hugely successful series “Outlander” were exhibiting their products there. For providing such a marvellous afternoon, I would like to thank the Earl of Hopetoun; Campbells, which is a successful fine food business located in the Falkirk area; Mary’s Meanders; and Diageo, which supplied the wonderful whisky. It was plain to see that the beauty of our landscape was critical to the success of the series, and the tourism it has subsequently attracted is enormous. Within the series, producers used magnificent trees to set many of the scenes—indeed, trees and forests were crucial to the location sought out.

Our woodlands are to be treasured, but forestry is a sector vulnerable to uncertainty. Trees occupy land for a long time, and leave it in a condition that is expensive to restore to its original state. No sane land manager is likely to consider planting them unless they are certain that they will benefit. In addition, key parts of the sector’s supply chain, such as commercial forest nurseries, find it difficult to cope with surges and crashes in demand. It is therefore vital that the Governments in Scotland and the UK do all they can to provide the sector with a long-term view of the incentives and support mechanisms in the markets that will be available for forestry once we leave the EU.

That brings me to the crux of the matter. The forestry Bill passing through the Scottish Parliament includes the formal devolution of competences over forestry but, as we withdraw from the EU, the allocation of funding for both forestry and agriculture has been retained here in Westminster by the UK Government. As you will know, Mr Davies, European funding has been a vital lifeline for forestry in Scotland and elsewhere, with 55% of the Scottish Government’s forestry grant scheme coming from the European agricultural fund for rural development. The current round of that scheme is worth £252 million from 2014 to 2020. Forestry research is vital as we adapt to and try to mitigate the effects of climate change and the spread of exotic tree pests and diseases. However, as the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee heard during its inquiry, the money made available for it has halved in recent years, and the Forestry Commission’s research agency relies on European money for some 16% of its dwindling budget.

I have a significant question for the Minister, to which I hope she will respond. Professor Graeme Roy, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament two years ago in July 2016, said:

“Scotland has about 8 per cent of the UK population, but about 18 per cent of UK CAP payments come to Scotland. How will that funding reach the Scottish budget? It will not come through tax revenues. If comes through Barnett, you will get 8 per cent of the equivalent spending in England and Wales, which is certainly not 18 per cent. What is the mechanism by which those additional revenues will flow into the Scottish budget?”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 28 July 2016; c. 17.]

I reiterate that question, and ask the Minister how she intends to bridge the financial chasm identified by Professor Roy that is opening up between Scotland’s present share of the UK’s common agricultural policy payments and what we can expect to receive via the Barnett formula.

At present, we have guarantees from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs underwriting the EU funding allocated up until the UK leaves the EU in 2020, but again that represents a cliff edge beyond which nothing is certain. We have no clarity as of yet about what support for agriculture or forestry will look like in a post-Brexit UK, nor do we know how money will be allocated to the devolved Administrations. Since we have recently seen the appointment of a Secretary of State who is a great believer in communities being their own architects of choice, could the Minister provide an update on his plans for funding post-2020? Such an announcement—it may have been made and I have missed it—would do much to alleviate fears in this sector, such as those expressed by the UK forestry sector representative body Confor, which predicted in 2016 that uncertainty over future grant funding availability will discourage investment in large planting schemes.

The Scottish forestry sector is valued by the Scottish people and Government, and is of strategic importance beyond being a source of timber. The Scottish Government recognise the importance of forestry in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change, restoring environmental health and improving human health. It is a vital and expanding part of Scotland’s industrial chain. Considerable private investment has been made in both forest management and processing timber. Investors need reassurance that Scotland is open for business, and clarity regarding future trade arrangements and tariffs. I will end by again asking the Minister for clarity about future funding and trade arrangements, and echoing the call made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton for deeds, not just words.