Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that proposals under the payment-for-outcomes scheme, on which we are consulting, will make things easier for communities that have traditionally missed out on flood funding, such as those he describes in rural areas, and that funding allocation will be clear. I shall just correct him, however. On a direct comparison of funding, we are spending approximately 8% less than the previous Government over the same period. One year ago, his party announced 50% capital cuts, and if he were sitting on the Government Benches and intending to favour flood funding, he would have to explain where else he was going to make cuts.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

12. What recent representations she has received on the sale of land managed by the Forestry Commission in England.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

Since the beginning of October, we have received 4,200 representations on the sale of the public forest estate, but most of those were in response to press coverage, not to the real consultation document, which was published on 27 January.

[Mr Watts]

Should it not be clear even to this Government that selling off our forests is a bad idea that has no public support? Will the Minister abandon the policy before she is forced to do so because of public pressure?

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman was perhaps not in the House last night, so allow me just to remind him that, in the last few months before the general election, the party of which he is a member published when in government an operational efficiency programme setting out the case for long-term leases of the public forest estate and for getting

“greater commercial benefit from the public forest estate”.