Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend the Duke of Wellington in giving support to his Bill. How appropriate it is that he should introduce it today. Perhaps it is a pity that it was not on 18 June, but one cannot have everything. I also echo the eloquent words of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and wish the right reverend Prelate every possible happiness and success in what I trust will be a long, active and healthy retirement. I am slightly surprised that such a young man should retire.

The most chilling words in this debate were uttered by Lord Krebs: “We have squeezed nature out of its home.” When he spoke those words, my mind flashed back to the mid-1940s, in particular 1947. I had been given a bicycle for Christmas and we had that long, terrible winter. In the summer, my father took me into the Lincolnshire Wolds. It is glorious countryside; if your Lordships do not know it, I warmly commend it to them. One particular day, we counted two things: cars and skylarks. There were more of the latter than the former. What a fall there has been.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, made the entirely correct point that ours is largely a man-made landscape—and it is a wonderful one. When I wrote a book called Heritage in Danger in 1976, I included our landscape as part of the heritage that was in danger. I talked about the thousands of miles of hedgerows that had been torn out. So I warm very much to the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, my noble friend Lord Trenchard and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who was the first to introduce this subject today. I beg my noble friend on the Front Bench to ensure that heritage is indeed included in the Bill before it reaches the statute book.

Great buildings are part of our heritage, and I am particularly concerned in this year, following the pandemic, about the added dangers facing our country churches. The right reverend Prelate will have many in his diocese, and unless he is exceptionally fortunate, some of them may close and not open again. Certainly, in Lincolnshire a number are in real danger. Very often the focal point of the landscape, the centre of the village, is the village church, or its tower or spire. The opportunity offered by a fairly all-embracing environment Bill must include heritage. I declare an interest as founder and president of the All-Party Arts and Heritage Group, which has been on the go since 1974. I am also vice-president of the Lincolnshire Churches Trust and was president of Staffordshire Historic Churches Trust and vice-president of the National Churches Trust, so this is something very close indeed to my heart, but to the hearts of many others as well. Whether they are Christian or not, the village church is very important in their lives. I hope very much that my noble friend ensures that heritage is included.

There is a danger that many of this Bill’s good intentions will be wrecked and sabotaged by the Government’s planning policy. I am deeply unhappy that local people will have little or no say in major developments. We heard of one earlier today: a wilding project in great danger because 3,500 houses are to be built on the border. It is crucial that when we look at planning, we look at distribution—where the new homes are built—and the quality of the homes. I talked about our churches and intrinsically their quality, but there is a very good example from a very high place—the Prince of Wales and Poundbury—where a new development has been planned and executed on a human scale, and the individual dwellings are of some beauty and will be treasured and lived in and loved, one hopes, for centuries. Do not let the good intentions of the Environment Bill be sabotaged by an unthinking planning Bill.