Forestry: Independent Panel Report

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I was eager to participate in this debate and I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for raising this vital issue, which has touched the nerves of so many people right across the country, in every part of our nation. I want to pick up four details of the Government’s response. They are minor, not major, points but I hope that they will be helpful.

The first is to build on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, about the unprecedented levels of flooding that we are having in the UK. Over the past week, I have been in touch with many individuals and groups across the country who are working in the 13 dioceses most badly affected by flooding —noble Lords will be aware of many of them; indeed, many will know some of them—in preparation for a meeting that I had yesterday morning with the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I am very grateful to him for giving me, two of my colleagues and some staff time to talk about some of the issues.

A typical response that I received was from the chair of the Plymouth and Exeter district of the Methodist Church, who wrote precisely about the connection between trees and flooding:

“The failure to dredge the rivers is only part of the problem. Not only are measures needed to increase the flow of water off the moors and levels, but the flow onto them is just as much a problem.

Over the last 30 years there has been little integrated thinking about the whole river catchment area—essentially the whole of Somerset and a small part of Dorset. In the upstream areas changes of crop patterns, removal of hedgerows and land drainage improvements, as well as domestic building, have increased flow levels into the rivers. 30 years ago, according to one of our church stewards, a farmer, it took two days between rain and the flooding of the levels. Today it can be as little as two hours. In the last two days flood levels … were raised by a metre overnight.

This is a complex ecosystem which needs to be treated as a single system not as lots of bits under different organisations, drainage boards, district councils, county council, Environment Agency etc.

The solution is not just dredging, though this will help, but tree planting in the upper reaches of the system and other measures to slow flows onto the levels down. A 5 year old tree plantation can absorb 60 times the water of pasture land and much more than this compared to harvested maize fields which after an autumn harvest leave bare, compacted earth over acres of the catchment area”.

It seemed to me that that was an extraordinary thing to receive in the past couple of days, and I wanted to raise it with your Lordships.

In this debate, we are concerned not just with leisure and the economy—although that is terribly important for woodland—but with the protection of thousands of homes and businesses. Flood protection, and the planting of trees to help with that, has a strong economic benefit. Can Her Majesty’s Government ensure that there is as much joined-up thinking as possible in the aftermath of this flooding, including tree planting?

Secondly, some weeks ago I put down a Written Question to ask Her Majesty’s Government,

“whether they are taking steps to ensure that the collective knowledge and experience of Regional Advisory Committee staff is being retained within the new Forestry and Woodlands Advisory Committees”.

Again, I am grateful for the response from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. He replied:

“Around 40% of the current Forestry and Woodlands Advisory Committee membership previously served on the Regional Advisory Committees”.—[Official Report, 15/1/14; col. WA 22.]

Unfortunately, in the past we have seen examples where we have lost from such bodies experienced people who understand woodlands. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to ensure that we do not lose the contribution of such skilled people so that we not only maintain our woodlands but increase them.

Thirdly, the report of the Independent Panel on Forestry contained a section on “Trees in our neighbourhoods”. The section entitled “Aspiration” states that it believes that we need,

“more, and better maintained trees, close to where people live. This means more trees on urban streets, more trees in town parks, and tree ‘corridors’ from the centre of towns and cities out to local woods and forests with good access”.

I am glad that the Big Tree Plant funding scheme, run by Forestry Commission England, is giving £4 million in grants to community organisations between 2011 and 2015 to support the planting of 1 million trees, but the question I want to ask is: what will happen after 2015? This needs to be a long-term project that enhances the urban environment. Anecdotally, I know of two communities that feel that their local council positively discourages tree planting in urban areas. I hope that local councils will be required to address this important area in the legislation for which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is rightly calling.

Finally, perhaps I may share a thought about the potential of woodland in addressing another challenge—namely the acute shortage of land for burial. There are now around 40 woodland burial sites in the UK. In my own diocese of St Albans we have our own St Albans Woodland Burial Trust, which is in north Bedfordshire near the village of Keysoe. It is 12 acres of land surrounded by 60 acres of woodland. There is a very real and sensible concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Eden, pointed out, about the economics of how all this will work—how we are to pay for the upkeep of our woodlands as the surpluses from the sale of timber are likely to decline because we have, of course, been harvesting it rather effectively. In some places there is the potential—admittedly very small potential—for a small section of woodland to be used for green burials. In our woodland burial site, a single grave space costs £700; to bury cremated remains costs £180. You have to be buried in a biodegradable coffin. You can have only a wooden memorial—you cannot have stone headstones—so eventually they will simply disintegrate and rot way and the woodland will be left as woodland. In addition, many people want to plant a tree in memory of their loved one, and for that privilege they are paying £100 a time. In other words, they are paying to plant the forest. Some of these sites are cared for by volunteers, so the cost is small—just a few hours’ administration, as in our own diocesan woodland burial site. Could this not be one small way in which we can pay for the planting of more trees and find a modest amount of further funding for our woodlands?