Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare that I do not have an interest because, sadly, I do not own a grouse moor. It seems to me that the Motion is prompted more by an antipathy towards grouse shooting than by care for biodiversity. Nearly two years ago a university friend of mine, who is a parish priest in a rather challenging part of Bradford, asked me to join him on the Pennine Way. We walked for three days from Marsden Moor to Malham across a lot of peat moorland. We saw golden plover and redshanks and, at some stages, fabulous numbers of curlew and lapwing. Where we saw them, there were no crows, because if there were any crows then there were no curlew or lapwing. That is because where there is predator control, on keepered moors, wildlife flourishes. If noble Lords do not believe me, they should go to see for themselves.

The same applies to heather burning. Controlled heather burning lets invertebrates and, indeed, plants flourish. It was a very dry spring. When we were walking, there had just been the most terrible fire at Marsden; seven square kilometres had been destroyed on Marsden Moor. Ilkley Moor nearby was burning and was being devastated as we walked.

Those severe fires in dry weather, burning into the peat and getting it burning, were very difficult to put out. However, they were not started by cool heather burning: Marsden was started by a discarded barbecue and Ilkley by arson. Wildfires spread especially in dry, old, shrubby heather, which controlled cool burning gets rid of. How many controlled fires have been undertaken by keepers or estates and got out of control in the past 10 years, and how many acres of peat were thereby destroyed? At the same time, how many wildfires on moorland have there been, started either by arson or by accident, and how many acres of peatland were thereby destroyed?

I would like to see what exactly the problem is that the regulations seek to address. If, in reality, arson and wanton carelessness are the causes of the destruction of peat moorland, surely we should be looking at them rather than at controlled cool burning.