Peatlands

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking and congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing and introducing this debate. I declare my interest as a farmer in Cheshire in receipt of EU funding, but the farm has no peat.

The noble Lord has highlighted the importance and significance of peatlands in the UK, covering about 9.5% of the land area, and from which around 70% of all drinking water is derived, and surface water from upland catchments is generally peat dominated. In the Peak District, my area of northern England, there are 55 reservoirs providing water to major conurbations to the east and west. Peatlands are significant natural carbon stores, and in England hold an estimated 140 million tonnes of carbon, worth billions of pounds. Furthermore, nearly 40% of the upland peat areas in England are designated as sites of special scientific interest.

Peatlands’ importance is highlighted by Professor Joseph Holden of the University of Leeds, who called peatlands the “Amazon of the UK”. Yet, as the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, said regarding the horticultural aspects of peat, our peatlands have been degraded to such an extent that, in the words of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, only around 4% of England’s deep peat is in a sufficiently good condition to still be actively forming peat.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, spoke on the effectiveness of restoration, even though the timescales can be significantly long. All speakers have highlighted the benefits to society of restoration, which clearly outweigh the costs. Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, has been quoted as saying:

“The restoration of peatlands is a low hanging fruit, and among the most cost-effective options for mitigating climate change”.

Against this yardstick, the Government have made very little progress. It will be two years next February since the Government published their response to the report of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the UK Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands. Peatland habitats continue to degrade and to reduce water quality regulation services.

Since the recent change in Secretary of State, flooding has needed to be restored as a key priority of Defra, yet iconic species continue to decline and the rate of release of CO₂ stored in England’s upland peat is increasing. The current scale of restoration, although worthwhile and important, has to be improved upon by a strategic step change resulting from clear improvements that the Government need to make.

The Adaptation Sub-Committee has highlighted that two-thirds of upland peat is still without a management plan. While much good work has been undertaken by several NGOs and funds have been leveraged up with contributions from water utilities, the Government have failed to achieve widespread buy-in from private landowners. While some £27 million has been paid to farmers and landowners to take up moorland restoration under the higher level scheme since 2007, will the Minister outline what new measures under the greening proposals the Government will be focusing on? Even now, large areas designated as SSSI continue to burn peat and heather. Surely there needs to be better enforcement of existing protocols. Perhaps this could be improved upon by the wide range of NGOs that the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, spoke of today.

In an earlier debate, my noble friend Lord Knight highlighted the issue of water management in the uplands and asked the Minister what costs could be avoided if the water storage and purification provided by peatlands were to be restored. I hope that the Minister will be able now to give us a clearer answer. This would underline the target and set clear goals through the England biodiversity strategy of restoring 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020 for climate change mitigation. The water companies could benchmark their activities against this figure, and provide data and be informative in the debate on reducing greenhouse gases under the UK’s targets for emissions reduction. Here I welcome the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. Will the Minister update the Committee on the percentage of deep peat that is currently in a degraded condition, and is that figure improving?

How will the newly announced environmental stewardship schemes be used to restore peatlands, address the continuing burning, especially by shoots on private estates, reduce the amount of inappropriate grazing, and encourage the blocking of “grips” and gullies to reduce water run-off? Does the Minister agree that the restoration of peatland ecosystems should now be a more important priority in his department? From this side of the Committee, Labour will ensure that investment by water companies in peatland increases in line with their resilience duty under the newly passed Water Act 2014. Will the Ofwat determinations show any increase in investment in upland restoration?

Recent debates have also highlighted that effective restoration is a key factor in future flood mitigation planning. What progress has been made in developing a national plan for restoration, and when is it likely to be published? What measures is the noble Lord’s department bringing forward to extend the uptake of management plans, especially through improving incentives to landowners?

Labour will follow the example of the successful use of payments for ecosystem services and regulation to improve flood management, such as in the Pumlumon Project in Montgomeryshire. This highlights that co-ordination has to be encouraged across a wider area. The noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, spoke of similar experiences provided by the Moorland Forum in Scotland.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, highlighted the important focus provided by the Peatland Carbon Code. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, spoke of the need to utilise these benefits in carbon accounting. Labour will provide the development of a Peatland Carbon Code to facilitate further private investment in restoration and build on the existing incentives for environmental stewardship schemes and catchment-scale management plans. We see advantages in the long-term aim to have a system in place whereby landowners and managers can offer up for sponsorship the carbon and other benefits of peatland restoration to businesses that are interested in helping to deliver action against climate change and other environmental benefits.

A very important development to capture long-term improvements could come through implementing conservation covenants to future public funding that will be attached to land. While it seems that this introduction may be captured only through new primary legislation—and we all know how difficult it can be to secure that—could the Minister inform the House what plans his department may have considered to capture in large measure the benefits of attaching such conditions of positive action to management behaviour through other measures that the Government could take? That and other measures need to be put in place with utmost urgency.