Environment Bill

Lord Carrington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches very much support the amendment, and if the noble Baroness decides to divide the House then we shall support her in that vote. Following on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, as I understand it from the Woodland Trust publication, 97.5% of the rest of the land could be developed in order to avoid ancient woodland. For me, this amendment is so important because of the biodiversity of these woodlands and the species under threat in this 2.5% of our precious land.

There are two amendments in this group. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, will be speaking to hers later on, but I want to say that a tree strategy is important in how we move forward in the area of woodland forests and trees. I noted in the Conservative manifesto of 2019—the current government programme—a target to plant 75,000 acres of woodland per year by the end of this Parliament. You cannot do that without a sensible strategy that makes sure there is a balance between climate change and biodiversity, and that these plantings last and tie in with nature recovery strategies; you cannot do it with just a huge, broad target. I welcome the scale of the ambition, but we have to have a strategy to go along with it. We on these Benches very much support Amendment 101 and believe it is an excellent way to move forward.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register and confirm that I am the owner of, and actively manage and love, ancient woodland.

I do not support Amendment 100 as I do not believe in the sacrosanct protection that appears to be its purpose. First, not all woodland designated as ancient is of such high environmental value that it requires such protection—particularly PAWS, which are ancient woodland sites where semi-natural woodland has been replaced with a plantation. Secondly, there is also currently an opportunity to negotiate strong mitigation that will offer bigger and better woodland habitat if development is in or adjacent to ancient woodland. This amendment might preclude this.

The standards proposed are very similar to what already exists in the joint standing advice that the Forestry Commission and Natural England have issued, which is a material consideration for planning authorities, as is the National Planning Policy Framework, as has been mentioned. It states in paragraph 180(c) that, when determining planning applications, planning authorities should apply the following principle:

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats (such as ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees) should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

The framework also covers infrastructure projects, including

“nationally significant infrastructure projects … where the public benefit would clearly outweigh the loss or deterioration of habitat”,

the only difference being the greatly expanded buffer zones.

Definitions are key to preventing well-intentioned legislation constraining legitimate forestry work. For instance, what do the proposers of this amendment mean by, first, “development”? Does it include woodland creation, rides, forest roading, culverting and widening access points on highways? Secondly, does the policy to

“prevent further loss of ancient woodland”

prevent restocking PAWS with conifers and non-native broad-leaves, planting up the edges of ancient woodland sites with non-native species and widening access points? Thirdly, is “ancient woodland” the Forestry Commission category or based on a looser definition of woodland indicators? Fourthly, the amendment mentions “a suitable compensation strategy”—decided by whom and how calibrated?

This amendment should be rejected. I suggest that the best thing the Government can do to help ancient woodland is to fund and unashamedly support the eradication of the grey squirrel and massively reduce deer pressure.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I am as keen on the environment as anyone else, but I suggest that it is incumbent on the proposers of these two amendments to explain what is supposed to happen when a piece of major national infrastructure, such as High Speed 2, comes into conflict with a small area of ancient woodland.

Secondly, as regards new planting and new planting targets, we all have to bear in mind that, at present, there is an acute shortage of plants available to go into the ground. Therefore, the Government should be extremely cautious about just increasing their targets for new planting.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment. I have supported the noble Baroness in her cause of a land-use framework for England for many years. Indeed, if I remember rightly, one of the recommendations of the House of Lords Committee on the Rural Economy was that we needed a land-use framework. That was some years ago and, as the noble Baroness has said, the case is even more pertinent now. The Bill increases the need for one with the conservation covenants. There is no limit to what land these covenants could be on. If they are going to be in perpetuity and they take all the best agricultural land, then we might well be doing ourselves a disservice in the long term when we need that land to grow food for a starving population.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has set out all the points. It is desperately important for the Government to integrate all their policies; at the moment, the pieces of the jigsaw are all over the place. Their strategies, including the new soil strategy, would work so much better if there were a structured plan for them to work under. I just cannot understand why the Minister and Defra are so reluctant to do this when the devolved Administrations have seen the logic of it.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.

I also want to speak about this interesting clause, which I have been scratching my head about for some time. The need for some top-down planning was clearly identified by Henry Dimbleby in the recent national food strategy report. However, top-down planning on its own and on the scale envisaged is not practical, as there is always a need for local factors to be considered at the same time. While there is some merit in the concept of focusing public funding on the right thing in the right place, it is neither realistic nor desirable to micromanage what happens right down to parish level. As food producers and environmental guardians, farmers and land managers should be at the core of any approach to developing a framework. A framework for land use should be about joining up policy on the ground, not dictating what is done on the land in a very prescriptive way. Any land-use framework should be positive and enabling—allowing land managers to deliver more from their land, whether for the environment, food or other economic activity—rather than negative and restrictive.

The most interesting objective of the clause recognises the need to consider agriculture and food production. Farmers and landowners have often asked for a more strategic approach to land use, particularly now that land may be taken out of production for carbon-offsetting purposes, housing or whatever, so a clause along these lines helps to deal with the issue. However, this clause has much wider ambitions that could greatly restrict the progression of farming and the diversification of farm businesses, let alone other rural businesses. Zoning would almost certainly make it harder or more expensive to get planning permission for a new or different enterprise.

A land-use framework can never succeed in circumstances where there are going to be changes in technology, climate conditions, consumer demand and business viability, to name just a few considerations, all of which could happen in very short order. Furthermore, there are also likely to be major, currently unforeseen implications for land values and tax considerations that need much more research. I therefore cannot support the amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I have just tossed out more or less everything that I was going to say. I feel the need to respond to what he has just said, which I think is founded on the idea that each patch of land, each farm, is a discrete entity that has no real relationship to the entities around it. As is most obvious when we think about the climate emergency, the fact is that the carbon emitted from or stored on that land has global implications. That is very obvious in relation to flooding. I will not open up that debate, but certain land uses in this country are associated with large amounts of water runoff, and that has literally life-or-death implications for the communities downstream.

The noble Lord also referred to food production. We have to think about the food security of the UK in a world in which food security will become an increasing issue in the coming decades.

We have to think about systems holistically, and indeed we have signed up to do just that. Like all the nations in the world, we are a signatory to the sustainable development goals—a mix of economic, social and environmental goals—although we are not currently on track to deliver any single one of them. The question is: the Government have signed up to these goals, but how will they deliver them? Making sure that land is used well—not in a way that harms other people—surely has to be a foundational measure.