Forestry: Independent Panel Report

Lord Eden of Winton Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eden of Winton]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. I applaud his most interesting speech and the constructive and comprehensive report of the panel over which he presided. I want to highlight one or two aspects that featured in his report. I particularly welcome the emphasis given to education—the need to involve people and to teach them, as he pointed out, the value of trees, woods and forests and the importance that they represent not just for our pleasure but for our survival. However, I hope that education will not be restricted to visits by primary school children; older people need to know about the value of trees just as much as small children do.

The second point that the report emphasises is the need for access to forests for the purposes of leisure, recreation and tourism. Those activities can be damaging to the very environment that we are seeking to protect in our forests and woodlands. Many decades ago I wrote a report for the Council of Europe on sites of national scientific interest and areas of outstanding natural beauty. I remember that in preparing the report it was clear that too many people going into sensitive environments like woodland settings can, as a result of their footprint and their sheer numbers, cause an enormous amount of damage. Damage was also caused by other leisure activities, and I just hope that whoever runs our country’s forestry activities will recognise the need to control them. Noisy activities such as motorcycling should not be allowed because woodlands are places to be enjoyed in quiet and in a degree of silence. People can absorb what the woods can give to them only if they listen. If they have ears to hear, they will hear what the woodland has to teach them.

The third point I want to stress is the value of woodland, of tree planting, as a role in flood prevention. We have had a lot of experience of floods—too much recently in some parts of the country. If trees are planted in the river source, they will not only stabilise the soil, they will control the tendency of those rivers to flood. It is most important that we do not look simply at flood barriers at the end of the river, we look at the flood protection work that tree planting can achieve at the source of the river.

The Government have now declared themselves as intent upon nationalising the public forest estate, or rather, to put it more delicately, keeping it in the public sector. I hope they will stress the need for the public forest estate in the public sector to engage as much as possible in joint venture activity with the private sector. The forest cover of this country should not be retained solely in the hands of a public sector organisation. Too often, a public sector organisation becomes excessively bureaucratic and expensive, and develops its own degree of inertia.

I hope that the Government will press forward vigorously with their own statement of priorities and principles. Among other things, these are to reduce Government involvement; minimise the amount of regulation; encourage local participation and local initiative; and, above all, work in partnership with other interests. Other interests are well represented by private landlords; by estate owners; by organisations such as the Tree Council, the Woodland Trust and the International Tree Foundation; and also by those who are engaged in wood-working enterprises and industries of various kinds. Joint venture, private public partnership, seems to me to be the right way forward.