National Tree Strategy

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to be called in this really important debate. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who really has championed this cause. Talking of champions, I feel that I must put on the record the tansy beetle, which I have seen and cherish most dearly in York. It is known as the jewel of York.

The more we understand about the environmental emergency, the loss of biodiversity and the change to our climate, the more we understand the centrality of reparation, and that is what we are here to discuss. If we do not take action, we will see more flooding, more soil degradation, more carbon in our atmosphere, temperatures rising and global catastrophe. For that reason, I welcome the Government’s focus on trees. I know that the Minister is committed to that agenda, but she needs to be more ambitious and bolder. Her strategy must be cross-purpose and cross-departmental, and her plan must change minds.

On ambition, Labour committed to planting 300 million trees and investing £2.5 billion in our first term. We would have achieved a total of 1 billion trees by 2030, and 2 billion by 2040, to support the narrative that woodland growth is essential to a biodiversity shift. Labour would have reached 2 million hectares of new woodland by 2040, and 3 million hectares by 2050. That is what we mean by ambition.

Building a carbon-storage landscape in both urban and rural settings means rebuilding lost habitats, creating beautiful environments and, importantly, holding water and restoring soils. The Committee on Climate Change echoes the need for ambition if net zero is to be reached by 2050, although that is far too late. It says that woodland cover needs to rise from the current 13% to at least 17%, but 19% would be better. Friends of the Earth says that it should be 26%—double the current cover.

We have 3 billion trees in the country—I have not counted them, but I have that number on good authority. We must raise our game and plant 120 million trees every single year. However, if the Government had it their way, they would have planted only 900,000 hectares by 2050, and when they first came to power, they wanted to sell off our woodlands by privatising our forests—and they are light on ambition now, despite being armed with all the facts about the impact of tree planting.

How are the Government doing? Let us take last year. Some 13,460 hectares of new woodland was created in the UK. Just 17% of that was in England, and just 90 hectares was created by public bodies; 96.2% of planting in England was by the private sector. This is an abysmal record by the Government. They are committed to planting 30 hectares of new woodland in England; at that rate, we will be lucky to meet the Committee on Climate Change targets by the turn of the next century, and meet less than half of our ambitions. In England, the Government are hardly scratching the surface. Compare that with the coverage in France, where it is at 32%; Germany, where it is at 33%; and Spain, where it is at 37%. We have to pull our weight and look at the mitigation that forestry brings.

I welcome the Northern forest initiative, which will make such a difference to my constituency. It will provide new opportunities for work and a social setting, and is important for our landscape. The Labour group in York and I supported the White Rose forest from its inception, and I am glad that we have convinced our council to take planting seriously. Latterly, it has signed up to this initiative, and has purchased 150 acres to grow York community woodlands.

However, I urge the council to go further, particularly in the light of our flooding situation in York, which the Minister knows all about. We need to plant smartly alongside rivers to absorb the water that comes from those catchments. If we plant there, the water will be drawn deep into the roots and soil, which really will slow the flow. That is why it is so important that we have a proper, cross-purpose, joined-up strategy to ensure we maximise the benefits of planting. Also, the canopy stops water hitting the ground as fast, and can bring a real reduction in run-off. In fact, some predict a reduction of up to 80% compared with hardcore land. It is therefore really important to transform surfaces around rivers into green spaces, and then plant there.

York also suffers from poor air quality. It is in the Vale of York, and the topography means that the air is held there—and therefore pollution is, too. We need to ensure that our urban spaces are well planted. This clashes with the Government’s plan to build on brownfield sites. I urge the Minister to look at land swaps, so that brownfield sites can become greenfield sites again, and perhaps other areas can be used in environmentally sensitive ways for development. This will bring more of those green lungs into the centre of our conurbations. That is much needed, not only for the health benefits, but for the social and mental health benefits. A benefit of not having transport in York city centre is that it reduced nitrogen dioxide levels significantly: they dropped 47%, which is the eighth largest fall in the country. However, while planting can help with mitigation, it cannot be seen as the only measure. I therefore call on the Minister to work cross-departmentally, in particular with the Department for Transport, to construct environments that are robust, and protect our health in cities and conurbations in the future.

I call on the Minister, when looking at tree planting and transport, to consider the Government’s road-building programme. The environmental assessment is poor or non-existent; the impact will be catastrophic for our environment. Likewise, there is High Speed 2. I tried to amend the HS2 Bill to protect the environment. Chris Packham beautifully described the 108 ancient woodlands that will be destroyed under the Bill as “cathedrals of biodiversity” that will be lost. We would not do that to our cathedrals, so we need to look again at what we are doing to our ancient woodlands. Perhaps the need for speed can be reassessed, given the need to secure those ancient woodlands.

Woodlands are also healers of our poor physical and mental health—gymnasiums to mitigate poor health. They cannot be just about rural landscapes; they are about urban landscapes, too. England’s tree strategy must look at urban as well as rural areas, because for the poorest people in our communities, access to our countryside is often limited.

Finally, I want to talk about changing minds. When I talk to children, they get it; they understand the connectivity between nature and their wellbeing, and they know that this is the right thing to do. We have an immense challenge in bringing about behavioural change, and to convincing developers and others of the importance of investment in our future bio-economy. We need to ensure that hardwired into the “Planning for the Future” White Paper, which is under consultation, is a tree plan; it should be at the heart of where we are going, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central said. We need to recognise that hardcore planning is as significant, if not more so, than environmental planning when it comes to trees.

We need to get the balance right. At the moment, it feels as if it is tipped against nature, and we need to pull that back. After today’s debate, as we head towards COP26, I hope that the Government will wake up to the climate challenge, and challenge themselves, now more than ever.