Population: United Kingdom

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I cannot say whether what I have said includes such land. With regard to the development of land, we have always protected green belt and looked to see that greenfield land is not used before brownfield land is developed. I hope that that answers my noble friend’s question.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that, as Huckleberry Finn might have put it, land is finite? Should not some council of wise men and women now determine exactly how much land should be set aside for non-cultivation, how much should be dedicated to biofuels and how much for the production of food? If such a body were to adjudicate, what would be the Solomonic principles on which it would allow the situation to be determined?

[Baroness Hanham]

I hope the noble Lord is not expecting a reply to that question in those terms. To some extent, land is divided up just as this country is. There is agricultural land; countryside land, which is not used for housing; and land in cities. It is interesting that at the moment 13 per cent of land—1.6 million hectares—is green belt; 25 per cent of England is in a national park or an area of outstanding national beauty; and the area of England—around 13 million square hectares, just over 50,000 square miles—is divided up into greenfield land, green belt, city development and other uses. Where Solomon comes into this or whether there should be an organisation or group to spread out the land and say what it is used for is not on the radar at the moment.