Natural Environment

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on his excellent maiden speech and I am sure we look forward to further contributions from him.

I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for obtaining this debate today which allows me to talk about one of my favourite topics: trees, particularly ones in urban areas in what are currently called hard landscapes. Trees are like the humble bee. They do a massive job in the environment and are taken for granted by most people, yet without them our very survival would be threatened. I remind you what an incredible job trees do. They look attractive. They take in our waste carbon dioxide and give us in return precious oxygen. They provide shelter and are barriers to both pollution and noise. They help to cool the urban environment and manage storm-water run-off. They have been shown to have a positive effect on the nation’s health. In short, they are quite simply indispensible.

Yet the question that I want to pose is: are we making the most of this incredible asset? We use trees to adorn and enhance our finest buildings and to hide and camouflage our ugliest. When applying for planning permission, architects embellish their drawings with pictures of mature trees, yet so often, when the development takes place, for reasons of finance or inadequate aftercare the trees as envisaged never appear.

It must be obvious from what I have said already that what is needed is a nationally co-ordinated approach to the design and management of hard landscapes. This would ensure the maximum and most imaginative use of trees and guarantee both their planting and their aftercare—to decide not just what type of tree to plant but to take into consideration its ultimate size, crown spread, root spread, disease resistance, the soil type in which it will flourish and its proximity to underground utilities, as well as things such as its leaf drop, fruit production and aftercare needs, and 1,001 other issues.

Clearly the Government have a role to play in this, although I am not quite sure which department it currently comes under. However, help is also at hand in the form of an organisation called TDAG, the Trees and Design Action Group. This organisation, now a charity, was formed in 2007 with the ambition to create a very broad network of expertise across the built and natural environment, sharing a common understanding that trees have a major role to play in the health of our cities.

Perhaps I should declare an interest—one that is not in any way financial. Many years ago, I was for some time the president of the Arboricultural Association, which is a member of TDAG. The group contains the widest possible spectrum of organisations concerned with these issues, from local authorities to landscape architects, from civil engineers to nurserymen, and from banks to the Forestry Commission—too many to mention but all with the same aim: to get more healthy trees in our cities and thus improve the health of those who live there.

TDAG has produced two excellent publications: Trees in the Townscape and, last October, Trees in Hard Landscapes: A Guide for Delivery, which I am sure the Minister will be aware of, since his colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, wrote the foreword for it. I urge him, if he is not already doing so, to lend his weight to the distribution of these guides, or more particularly their contents, so as to co-ordinate and encourage the most enlightened and best practice everywhere.

We must use all the experience available to us, together with our imaginations, to break new ground and to break out of our sometimes routine thought processes. Many years ago on a lecture tour in the United States, I found myself in Philadelphia. In those days, Ginkgo biloba, the maidenhair tree, was relatively rare in the United Kingdom. To my astonishment, in Philadelphia it was used as a street tree. It was everywhere. If it was an ideal street tree there, why not here? That is a lesson I have never forgotten. I believe it is now called “thinking outside the box”.

It is not just housing, office or town-centre develop- ments that present challenges and opportunities. What about business parks, industrial sites, motorway and railway embankments, and roundabouts? Opportunities abound not always with big trees but sometimes with small trees, shrubs and low-maintenance ground cover, but always with a mixture of experience and imagination to produce the best possible use of the ground available for the maximum effect.

I should like to deal briefly with two other important topics: tree importation and woodland protection. Following the importation of ash dieback from Europe, there was a call, including one from me, for a reduction in the number of imported trees and for much more reliance on home-grown stock to reduce the ever present and very real danger to our tree population. Sadly, figures that I obtained through a Written Question show that in the last planting season we imported more trees than ever. I acknowledge that this is not a simple matter. It involves long-term planning, with appropriate commitments and contracts. But trees are a long-term business, and getting it wrong again would be disastrous.

Perhaps a quarantine system is the answer, at least in the short term. A company called Barcham Trees, based in East Anglia, has introduced its own quarantine system. It says that it will not import trees and sell to customers for immediate planting, and that,

“All imported trees will be held on the nursery for one full growing season during which time they will be subjected to rigorous inspection for pest and disease. This includes systematic and regular DEFRA visits”.

I do not know whether other companies are doing this, but if it is not already happening, perhaps the Minister could look into the merits of that system. Audit trails for trees are also important, so that trees sold by any particular nursery can be easily traced.

Caring for existing trees is vital, not just in urban areas but in woodlands too, particularly ancient woodlands. Houses can be demolished and rebuilt in a matter of months, but an invaluable ancient woodland, if lost, is lost for ever. The Woodland Trust tells me that it is currently fighting 400 cases where woodlands are under threat. I know the Minister has a great interest in woodland, and I urge him to do all he can to preserve it wherever possible.

We must care for all our trees, old and new. I would say to the Minister, who I am sure loves his trees, “Don’t listen to those who say you never see the results of tree planting in your lifetime”. Trees make their presence felt in a few short years, and what better legacy could a Minister leave than to have significantly increased the nation’s tree cover, particularly in our towns and cities?

Forestry: Independent Panel Report

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords—

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords—

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords—

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am grateful. Will the Minister, with me, step back a little, think about the situation two years ago and consider how different it is now? Two years ago we were talking about the Government wanting to flog off most of the forestry estate. How different it is now. The Minister has congratulated the right reverend Prelate and his independent panel. Will he also congratulate the ministerial team in Defra on the way that they responded to the views of people throughout the country, in particular to the fantastic campaigns that existed? Is it not a win-win situation all round, with my honourable friend David Heath, as the Agriculture Minister, absolutely at the forefront of it?

Trees: British Ash Tree

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Earl on securing this timely debate. Nothing could be more timely. This is a very sad debate; the ash tree is dear to us all. It plays a major part in our landscape, both rural and urban. “Ash Grove” is a beautiful melody. Ash timber made our hockey sticks and, for those who remember them, the framework of Morris Minor estates. As has already been mentioned, it makes the most wonderful firewood in the world. I come to this debate from both an emotional and a professional standpoint: emotional since I am very fond of all trees, particularly ash, and professional because many years ago I ran my own forestry company and later, while a Member of Parliament, I was for a while the president of the Arboricultural Association.

Since “Plant a tree in ’73”, we have as a nation, happily, become obsessed with tree planting. Milton Keynes new town was called the city of the trees and our burgeoning roadside verges, roundabouts and housing schemes are testament to this, not to mention our very ambitious new forests. Demand has hugely outstripped supply; hence the mass importation of trees by landscapers and garden centres. The position is further confused by two factors. First, to protect themselves against last-minute cancellations on a large scale that would leave them with unwanted trees on their hands, many UK nurserymen have used foreign suppliers as a kind of bank to draw on rather than growing the trees themselves. Secondly, UK seed has been grown abroad and then reimported as plants in order to try to preserve the UK provenance. In any event, we have seen importation of trees on a massive scale, with 5.5 million ash trees alone in the past few years and millions and millions of trees of other species. This should have indicated quite clearly to those people responsible the need for constant vigilance, the strictest possible controls and, if necessary, immediate and direct action.

One of our greatest blessings is that we are an island nation. Surrounded by sea, we have been able to control our plant and animal health in a way that other European countries cannot. It appears that we are squandering that precious advantage. This disease was known about in Europe. Either lack of communications or bungling bureaucracy, or both, have in this case had catastrophic consequences. This disease may—I stress may—have been blown into our country. What we know for certain is that it was brought in by lorry when it could have been kept out, and that is unforgivable.

Dutch elm disease came from Canada. We have a disease in oaks that is thought to have come from Italy. There is a disease of plane trees which is currently a serious problem in France, where they are having to fell large numbers. Unless we are to suffer from these kinds of disease in the future, a whole new look at the way in which trees are imported into this country must be instigated and perhaps more consideration given to the increased use of home-grown stock.

To make vigilance really effective, communications with everyone in the industry are essential. The Forestry Commission should have its finger on the pulse—and, as has been said, be properly financed—while the Forest Research centre and Alice Holt do invaluable work. On the ground in this case, though, it was the Horticultural Trades Association that really knew what was going on as far back as 2009. It knew because its members told it. They should have been listened to, and must be in future. In the same way, the Arboricultural Association membership includes tree surgeons operating throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. They are the first to see problems, particularly in established trees. Both those groups must be listened to. It was foresters and tree surgeons who first spotted Dutch elm disease in this country and in that case, too, the Government were too slow to act.

In trying to see the way ahead, it is both too late and too early—too late to prevent the entry of the disease but too early to fully understand the ramifications of its arrival. A ban has been imposed to stop any more diseased ash entering the country, and steps are being taken urgently to establish how far the disease has spread. It ought to be possible to collect and destroy all diseased nursery stock that has not yet been planted out. For the time being, established and mature trees can only be monitored and their survival patterns studied, removing them completely when dead. This raises the question of disease transmission by timber logs, as has been mentioned, although I understand that this is unlikely.

Hygiene precautions, where practicable, may help with controlling leaf spread and so on. That is difficult to enforce, though, and I suspect it would have only a limited effect. Injecting trees is not a practical solution, given the scale of the problem—even if the method were available, which it is not. The cordon sanitaire system would be equally useless, given the distance that spores can blow, and would only be a waste of time, money and healthy trees.

All these negatives just go to show how crucial it is not to let diseases like this into the country in the first place. However, all is not lost; beware the prophets of doom; hope springs eternal. This is not Dutch elm disease, which was very different in its method of spread and always fatal. Even in Denmark, not all the ash trees are dying. Ash trees are ubiquitous in this country; they seed like weeds, grow through cracks in the pavement, establish themselves quickly and, as any gardener will tell you, are tenacious. I believe and sincerely hope that they will prove resistant to this new fungus in sufficient numbers to ensure their place in our towns and countryside in the years ahead. We must do all that we can to help them and to take steps urgently to ensure that this kind of disastrous European invasion never happens again.

British Waterways Board (Transfer of Functions) Order 2012

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I am not sure whether my remarks relate directly to the transfer functions, but this is an opportunity for me to get rid of the bee that I have had in my bonnet for some time now about the relationship between waterways and youth unemployment. Some months ago I was studying a map of British waterways and it struck me that they wind throughout our country and are never very far away from centres of population. They could well be combined with an imaginative and, I hope, simple scheme to help our young unemployed. Many years ago I worked for British Waterways. This is not such a mad idea; I ran it past the Prime Minister, although admittedly on a social occasion and he did not hang around for long, and he thought, at least initially, that it sounded like a very good idea.

Think about it for a moment. The skills required to renovate and maintain our waterways include everything from pulling out Tesco trolleys to skilled bricklaying, piling and digging—all sorts of skills. I would have thought that it ought to be possible to invent a scheme that allowed young people to use their talents across that whole range of skills and give them something to do. At the end they could be given some kind of certificate or qualification that would benefit both them and the waterways. It would have to be kept simple but I envisage something really quite formal, with jobcentres throughout the country linking the whole thing together. Initially this might perhaps sound a little imaginative, but think about the geographical relationship of the waterways to centres of unemployment and the jobs requirement. A whole variety of jobs could be found for young people, and they could be given different kinds of qualifications, allowing them to start very simply and then build up their portfolio of qualifications as they went. I do not know whether they would need money; I would like to think that young people would work for the benefits that they were already getting, but I appreciate that that is a little controversial. They might well be prepared to do that, though, to get the value out of the schemes that they were being offered.

I put that on record as a suggestion but I will also follow it up in other quarters as best I can. I hope that the Minister might at least log it and give it some thought.

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I apologise for coming late to the Grand Committee, and I apologise if I say something that has been said already. It is especially pleasing to see the Minister back on maritime affairs in some form or another. He will recall that we spent many hours dealing with the Marine and Coastal Access Act some two or three years ago.

I welcome the proposed measures. As the noble Lord who sat down just now has said, as no doubt have many others, they were subject to extensive negotiations. I know full well that the British Marine Federation was very worried when they were first mooted but, as a result of the negotiations and especially of the welcome funding, its fears have been allayed. I certainly wish the new organisation a slightly better start than the Marine Management Organisation had. That was set up by the Marine and Coastal Access Act and the first few months, to put it mildly, were somewhat disturbing. Since then I am glad to say that things have improved enormously. I wish the new organisation well.

Finally, and rather flippantly, the Shropshire Union Canal was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. Most noble Lords will know that I am a boating man, but I am very much a deep-sea boating man. I am afraid that I am a bit of a stranger to canals. However, I did once find myself standing above a bridge on the Shropshire Union Canal during the annual yachting shoot. It was a glorious, frosty, autumn morning, and never have I more wanted to be on a canal boat travelling along that most inviting-looking stretch of water. I might add that the only pheasant I saw all day craftily flew under the bridge beneath me, so the score was pheasant 1: Greenway nil.

Adapting to Climate Change: EU Agriculture and Forestry (EUC Report)

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I am deeply honoured to become a Member of your Lordships’ House, and I am immensely gratefu1 for the warm welcome I have been given by everyone, not least the staff of the House who have been unfailingly helpful and kind throughout. I am deeply indebted to my sponsors for escorting me safely through my introduction: the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, who is an old friend from Suffolk, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, under whom I had the great pleasure of serving as a Deputy Speaker. I am particularly grateful to them as a recent illness has left me temporarily unsteady on my legs. I suspect that they were as anxious as I was throughout the entire ceremony.

As Michael Lord, I was for 27 years the only Lord in the Commons. On my appointment to your Lordships’ House, I would have been a Lord in the Lords. I was advised by the powers that be that this really would be most confusing in so many ways, not least in debates in your Lordships’ House, where I would have been referred to as the noble Lord, Lord Lord. To choose another title was no hardship. On the contrary, taking the name of Framlingham, a delightful ancient and historic market town in my old constituency, where I was originally adopted as a parliamentary candidate in 1983, gave me, and will always give me, enormous pleasure.

For my last 13 years in the Commons, I was a Deputy Speaker. That has inevitably made me, among other things, a good listener. How often in the Speaker's Chair I yearned to intervene in a debate, only to realise later how glad I was that I had not.

Fairness and firmness are required of the occupant of the Speaker's Chair. To the extent that I have any of these qualities, I got them in due part from all the sport that I played over the years—particularly, in my younger years, Rugby football. I played for Cambridge against Oxford in the 1960 Varsity match. Our fair and firm, top international referee was a highly respected Welshman called Mr Gwynne Walters. Impeccably dressed, he always refereed in a blazer; he refereed impeccably too. Although the match was ferocious, as all such matches are, not one player spoke a word to him throughout the entire match. How things have changed. Modesty forbids me mentioning the outcome of the match, save to say that further details could be gleaned from the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who played on the opposite side.

A Deputy Speaker in the Commons must have a good memory. He or she must be able to name immediately what was, in my day, any one of 650 honourable Members at the moment that they rise to speak, however unexpectedly. It was not always so. In earlier times, the occupant of the chair simply pointed to whomever he wished to speak next. Then, on 19 May 1685, the House of Commons, in its wisdom, elected as Speaker Sir John Trevor, who appears to have been cross-eyed. The result was that every time he pointed, two people stood up. Ever since then, names have had to be remembered and called.

Before entering the House of Commons, I started and ran my own forestry company. I became increasingly involved in what is sometimes called urban forestry and, finally, in arboriculture. I was privileged for several years to be the president of the Arboricultural Association. Having listened to the debate so far, I am sure that your Lordships will be well aware that arboriculture is about trees for their looks; as opposed to silviculture, which is about trees for their timber.

I worked through the dreadful ravages of Dutch elm disease and on the subsidence problems caused by trees near buildings on shrinkable clay subsoils. When, some years ago, the Clore extension was added to the Tate Gallery, I was retained to ensure the survival of the adjacent London plane trees. Strangely enough, my experience proved useful soon after I arrived in the House of Commons. Someone had advised the felling of the Catalpa trees in New Palace Yard. I was asked what I thought, and I am delighted to say that, 25 years later, they are still there. I have a great interest in our ancient and historic trees as well. Before politics took over entirely, I lectured both in this country and in the United States.

One of the most pleasurable duties of a Deputy Speaker in the House of Commons, when the Speaker is not available, is to greet and entertain visiting Speakers or their deputies. Without exception, they were full of admiration and respect for our Parliament, its systems and traditions, and anxious to learn from us wherever possible. They still truly believe that we are the mother of Parliaments. I trust that we do too.

My great pleasure in being appointed to your Lordships' House was heightened by the fact that I have a huge affection for and belief in our Parliament, the way it works and all it stands for. We take it for granted, in this rapidly changing world, at our peril. I have always believed that one of the principal duties of any generation is to hand on to the next generation that which has been entrusted to its care. In this context, I say that I was deeply saddened that we have agreed to experiment with allowing the use of electronic devices in this Chamber. I believe that that will prove to be harmful and disruptive, and I sincerely hope that it will not become a permanent feature.

Politics is often said to be the art of the possible, but sometimes I think it is the art of having the courage to do the obvious. I also suspect that many great issues are essentially very simple and that we make them complicated when we do not want to face them. In this, the role played by your Lordships’ House in the great issues of the day, free from simplistic party politics, is so very important.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her comprehensive introduction of her report. The term forestry—one of the topics of this debate—means different things in different countries and to different people and organisations. In this country, it originally referred to the hunting domains of kings, thus we have Hatfield Chase and Cannock Chase, and it came to mean, until relatively recently, planting and harvesting trees, principally softwoods, for timber. Currently the word covers everything from the great Kielder Forest to copses on our farms, and from ancient woodlands to urban forestry in Milton Keynes. It includes large tracts of conifer-planted uplands as well as the New Forest, the Forest of Dean and, in my part of the world, Thetford Forest.

In many of these areas now, the amenity value of woodland is considered to be as important as its timber value. In this increasingly hectic world, it seems more and more people are turning to and appreciating the enjoyment provided by trees and the habitat that they create and preserve. Whatever the terminology, however, it is all about trees. Trees really are one of the world’s blessings. They take in our carbon dioxide and give us back their oxygen. They give us their timber and their fruits. They help to stabilise mountainous regions, are crucial in the battle against desertification and, on top of all this, they are a joy to behold. So whether they grow in our country, in tropical rainforests or in the developing world, we must do all we can to increase tree cover. Regardless of the pros and cons of climate change, let us do the obvious and plant trees, protect rainforests and generally treat trees with the respect that they deserve, not for their sake, but for our own.

I thank noble Lords for listening to me so patiently. I look forward to making further contributions to debates in your Lordships’ House in due course and to playing my part in the affairs of this noble House.