Land Use in England Committee Report

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Land Use in England Committee Making the most out of England’s land (HL Paper 105).

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is funny—when I stand up, everyone seems to leave.

First, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner and as the chair of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UKCEH. I thank all those involved in our report—first, those Lordships who diligently served on the committee but, above all, thanks are due to our clerk, Simon Keal, and his team, Stephen Reed and Katie Barraclough. We just asked the questions—they produced the report. Thanks are also due to our academic adviser, Alister Scott, whose advice was invaluable.

The premise of our work was the fact that since World War II our countryside has been overfocused on producing as much food as possible, almost to the exclusion of everything else. In 1939, we were only 39% self-sufficient in food, and that fact very nearly lost us the war. We all accept that we must never go there again, but we now produce some 60% of our food, and we think that is a good percentage to maintain. That can be done with the right sort of planning even if, overall, less land is being used for actual food production.

However, the demands for land use have changed considerably in recent years. Apart from food, outputs from land now include, first and crucially, biodiversity. Our record here is one of the worst in the world: we have lost nearly 50% of our biodiversity in the past 50 years; 41% of our species have declined; 26% of our mammals are at risk of extinction; and, worse, some 60% of our insects have disappeared. I say worse because insects are to me the source of all life. Although it is true that 25% of our species, such as otters, are now growing, in general it is a terrible story. In land use, action for biodiversity is definitely required.

It is quite encouraging that, from the farmers we interviewed as a committee, to the groups of farmers I have subsequently spoken to about all this, there is a real recognition, even enthusiasm, for the need to make changes. If the Government can have real clarity in their ELMS programmes—that has yet to be achieved, I fear—and then maintain that clarity and funding for the long term, it is really possible for us all to turn that situation around. However, a farmer said to me the other day, “I know how to grow wheat but I do not know how to grow skylarks”. It could have been curlews—but the point that he was making is that existing farmers—do not forget that they have an average age of 58, or maybe now 59—have almost no training in how to nurture nature. As an aside, that is an area where we need some government help or incentivisation.

The second land use is to help in the race to net zero. Growing more trees could help, and preservation of both upland and lowland peat would definitely help. But we need metrics here: how do you measure a farm’s carbon output? There are more than 50 different companies out there measuring it in as many different ways. There is a desperate need for environmental outcome metrics from government, on everything from biodiversity through soil health to net emissions, to name but a few. The corporate sector also needs guidelines in this respect. If it is going to part-fund many of these different outputs, as the Government hope, guidelines and metrics are going to be essential to ensure that shareholders and others can be satisfied that they are getting good value for their money.

Thirdly, flood relief schemes are another modern output from land which could or should be well rewarded. I see localised ELMS as the most appropriate means of delivery here, via local authorities or maybe the Environment Agency, if that were properly funded.

Fourthly, as we all know, only 10% of England is covered in forestry, the lowest amount in Europe, and we need considerably more if we are to get to net zero, help our biodiversity, increase our leisure facilities, clean our air—it is not well known that trees are a great remover of particulates—and reduce our huge timber imports. We import some 90% of our timber, at a terrifying cost of £8.5 billion per annum. I have been quite impressed with Defra’s recent focus on trees and forestry. However, most farmers are nervous about growing trees: they will lose that flexibility of land use that is the key to long-term successful land management. Also, farmers know very little about growing trees; all they know is that they will not get much income from them for a very long time. But there is land—not our best land—where a farming family, in it for the long term, could be encouraged to grow more trees, so I hope that Defra can succeed with its plans.

Fifthly, we need more renewable energy, and it cannot all be done in the North Sea, so we need onshore wind farms and solar panels—but in the right place and not on productive agricultural land. I came across an interesting statistic the other day: if we were to triple our onshore wind energy, it would mean that wind farms would then occupy only one-fifth of the land currently used for golf courses. Wind farms are now becoming attractive to communities when the promoter is prepared to offer them electricity discounts or some share of the profits, but National Grid needs to get its act together to receive the power from these multiple sources of renewable energy.

Sixthly, since Covid, the demand for land for access has risen considerably in recent years. Our physical and mental health both depend on it, particularly near town centres. That output occupied quite a bit of our report, rightly, so I shall not repeat our messages here in this short speech.

Finally and seventhly, I am afraid that we undoubtedly need more land for good housing—but, again, in the right places. I said this yesterday in a debate: I believe that the political party that can provide a solution to this desperate shortage of affordable housing, to rent or to buy, in rural England, will win much of that vote at the next election.

Our committee believes that we can satisfy all these land use demands if we get the right sort of analysis, planning and frameworks in place. This is a whole new agenda for government to get to grips with. I stress that what we are looking for is a flexible framework of flexible encouragement, and definitely not a top-down, or even a bottom-up, dictatorial approach. It is not rocket science, and to me it is obvious: the changing pressures on land mean that we need now to really plan our land use on this our very small but densely populated island. The Government have already promised 1 million acres of new forestry, 1 million acres of new habitats, and 1.8 million acres of new national parks and AONBs. I should point out that 1 million acres would take up a county the size of Kent—so we have to ask: where are all these Kents coming from, without some sort of plan?

The key to such a plan, in our view, is multifunctionality. Where you have food production, you can also have biodiversity. With conservation headlands, you get minimal reduction in yield but a massive explosion in biodiversity. Where you have energy, you can mostly have food production as well, or you can also have biodiversity. On our family farm in Somerset, our FWAG officer declared that our field array of solar panels was one of the best wildlife sites in the county. Where you have woodland, you can also have access and biodiversity—et cetera. As I say, it is not rocket science.

All this is possible, but we need to constantly monitor what we have on the ground and plan, both from the top down, through a dedicated land-use commission, in our view, and the drawing-up of a national land-use framework, producing the statistics and advising all government departments on policies and the promotion of best practice locally on the ground, but also—this is really important—it is vital that we work from the bottom up, using local authorities and in particular the new local nature recovery strategies, the LNRSs. It is a great shame that we have lost the LNRS section of ELMS, because local authorities have absolutely no money to buy these services. I get the impression, from conversations that I have had, that if, as I have said, farmers are keen on this new multifaceted agenda, county councils are also enthusiastic about maximising the outputs from all the land in their public ownership, if only to set an example to other land managers—but they do need help with the data and the metrics.

Turning to the land-use commission issue, I know that Defra is not very keen on the idea and is trying instead to work, this year, alongside other relevant departments to bring together the necessary expertise, but my point, and the point of the committee, is that this is not a one-off. This plan or framework is not a “devise, report and finish” exercise; the project will be going on from year to year. It will have to include a constant, flexible analysis of the data, different aspects of which might have to be specifically commissioned in any given year. It will have to be flexible enough to adapt over the years to changing national and international circumstances and needs. For instance, just last week the Government added a whole raft of new land uses required by their Third National Climate Adaptation Programme. It is bound to be an ever-changing framework.

The question the Government have to ask themselves is whether it is better to have a commission, or whatever we want to call it—a panel, perhaps—with a few dedicated employees and part-time board members who become experienced in these various multidepartmental fields; or whether it is better to have to work hard to convene annual one-off get-togethers of people from different departments who, each year, will be struggling to keep up with the knowledge and data requirements which require a lot of work to manage. I have to say to the Government that having a dedicated interdepartmental body—or panel, if you like—must surely be the more efficient and also the cheaper answer.

I might add, in this respect, that in New Zealand, where they have far less pressure on the use of their land than in our very crowded England, they have a national Spatial Planning Policy Unit. This SPPU reports to an executive board, made up of politicians in their case, and it creates a unifying link with regional spatial planning bodies, providing the models of best regional practice, as proposed in our report. I do hope the Government can reconsider their view on a central land-use body, panel or commission. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I must first thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, especially the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle, who has contributed so much to this House. I join others in wishing him well in his retirement, although I suspect that, like most people who are born contributors, his retirement will not be retirement in the sense that a lot of people think of it. I also thank the Minister and his team for the meeting we had last week, and I thank the Minister for his concluding remarks just now.

As I hope I managed to get across in my introduction, the main point is that this subject is not business as usual in the countryside. The Government, I hope led by Defra, has to plan, manipulate and flexibly manage—I am not quite sure what the right word is—our land use going into the future. I emphasise to those noble Lords who expressed concern that we on the committee were not proposing that some large commission would take over and command not necessarily the nationalisation of land but the nationalisation of land use. That is definitely not what we were looking for. We were looking for a small panel with data-collecting and analysis ability, taking the long view, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned; definitely no dictatorial powers, either from the bottom or the top. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, you will not achieve your wanted outputs unless you have collaboration. Demanding outputs will never work, and we are very well aware of that. If you want more skylarks, you have to put up the rewards for skylarks. If you want more forestry, you put up the planting grants. You just have to analyse it and work it all out.

On both those subjects, as I mentioned in my introductory remarks, training is so important. You get people involved. I was on the Glover review and I remember visiting the Cranborne Chase AONB, where there was a local scheme to encourage more plovers’ nests. I visited a farmer there and, that night, a fox had killed two of his plovers. He was in tears—he was emotionally involved in what he was trying to achieve. It is not all about the money; it is about involving the farmers. Certainly, I am aware that all the farmers I have spoken to on this subject, both before and since we produced our report, have become emotionally involved. However, they need guidance, and for Defra and the Government to help them.

Probably the most important role of our proposed panel, or commission, will be to advise Defra and other departments as to their role in maximising the numerous outputs from rural land and promulgating best practice to both landowners and local authorities. We must know what we have and know the best way to deliver what we want. Just as under the Agriculture Act the Government are duty-bound to report on our food self-sufficiency every three years, and in the same way the Environment Act requires them to report on the delivery of their environmental improvement plans, so too in my view the Government should be reporting on the state of play of the other interdepartmental outputs that I mentioned in my introduction. It should not be a smorgasbord—if that is the right word—of independent departments delivering their bits in separate silos. At the risk of mixing my metaphors, this is an orchestra and desperately in need of an independent conductor; it is a whole new ball game.

I am still of the impression that the Secretary of State at Defra—noble Lords will note that I am not including the Minister in this category—does not really get that this is not business as usual. Our proposals are to help the people of the countryside, the managers of land, to be incentivised to deliver all the various outputs of land. I admit that we did miss out on salt marshes and wetlands, and indeed on the whole subject of water we could perhaps have done a bit more. We want to see all these outputs of land delivered to the nation, particularly to the 83% who live in our towns and cities. We really want to get these outputs from our wonderful countryside.

This incentivisation needs to be bottom-up and top-down, supported by government. It needs the Government’s expertise, best practice and, above all, data, on a continuous basis. Our countryside is precious, and we must maximise all that it has to offer us. I thank all noble Lords again for their input to this debate.

Motion agreed.