Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

This is the first time that I have had the pleasure to serve under you, Dr Huq, and it is great to see you in the Chair. As ever, it is good to see the shadow Minister and I offer belated happy birthday wishes, which I omitted to say when we debated last week. I hope that it went well.

I thank all those who have inputted behind the scenes and given views on this complicated subject. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the regulations in more detail to clarify some of the points about why we have introduced them, how committed we are to them and how important they are to protect the nation’s peatlands. I hope that I will be able to address some of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Newport West.

The SI, which was laid on 16 February 2021, seeks to ban the burning without a licence of specified vegetation on peat over 40 cm in depth on SSSIs that are also a special area of conservation. Those are critically important areas for peat, which is why they are the focus of the regulations. The purpose of those regulation is to prevent further damage to approximately 142,000 hectares of protected peat by clearly setting out the only circumstances in which the Secretary of State, as the licensing authority, may grant a licence for burning. That would only occur in very limited, clearly defined and evidenced circumstances. Those are the only conditions on which a licence for burning would be granted and without such a licence, burning will be prohibited.

The restoration of England’s peatlands is a priority for the Government and the regulations will help us to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and to protect valuable habitats and the biodiversity within. Blanket bog is a fragile peatland habitat of international importance. The UK has 30% of the world’s blanket bog, so we hold a large proportion of that very important habitat.

England’s peatlands overall store around 580 million tonnes of carbon, but they emit about 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Therefore, restoring our peatlands is a crucial part of addressing climate change and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Blanket bog is a habitat at risk from being further degraded were it not protected from damaging activity. Under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, the Government have responsibility for protecting that priority habitat, maintaining it as an active bog and restoring it to favourable status. Basically, that means that it is wetter, and it will have more species living within it that enjoy that particular habitat.

The Government’s ambition is to have healthy peatlands that will provide us with a wealth of ecosystem services. That includes carbon storage and sequestration, a natural habitat for wildlife, high-quality drinking water and flood mitigation. Blanket bog makes up around 40% of England’s deep peat reserves and is one of our most extensive protected habitats, yet only 12% of it is in a near natural state. The remainder is degraded by practices that impact on the natural functioning state of that habitat. Rotational burning as a moorland management tool is carried out to manage unnaturally dominant heather species in winter months, typically on a 12 to 15 year rotation. Although this activity does not have a significant impact on carbon emissions per se, there is now an established scientific consensus that the burning of vegetation on blanket bog can be damaging to peatland formation and habitat condition, making it difficult—in some cases, impossible—to restore these habitats to their natural state and to restore their hydrology.

Landowners and managers have required consent from Natural England to burn on a protected blanket bog. Since 2017, only 47% of those consents have expired or been removed by Natural England; the majority remain in perpetuity, covering about 52,000 hectares of protected priority habitat. The Government have previously stated that if voluntary measures to cease burning on blanket bog did not work, they would look at the role of legislation. The voluntary approach has not worked, so this instrument aims to allow the Government to meet their obligations to bring about more sustainable practices.

The regulations ban the use of burning as a management practice on protected blanket bog sites apart from in the case of specific exemptions. I will just touch on those. First, the prohibition does not apply on land that could never be accessed by cutting equipment; cutting equipment is a tool that can be used instead of burning. Some areas—exposed rock and scree, for example, or where the land is on a really steep slope, in excess of 35 degrees —can continue to be managed without the need for a licence. Secondly, where land is otherwise inaccessible to cutting equipment, perhaps by virtue of its very remote nature and because other methods of appropriate management are impractical, a licence may be considered to allow burning to take place.

The Government have also included in the regulations explicit reference to the objective of preventing wild fires. Wild fires can be devastating for the environment and that risk has not previously been granted sufficient weight.

The evidence and process by which the Secretary of State will make decisions on licence applications will be set out in accompanying guidance. That guidance will be published by 1 May to allow sufficient time for good-quality applications for licences to be made in advance of the 2021 burning season, which commences on 1 October.

The shadow Minister asked about detail. The detail will be in the guidance, which, as she can tell, is coming out pretty much immediately. An awful lot of work has gone on stakeholder engagement to come up with the guidance so that it is really clear to everybody what these very small exemptions might be and how they might be used. But we want it to be clear to everybody that basically we mean business about the ban. The guidance will emphasise an aspiration that the management of the protected site should be complementary to high quality natural habitat restoration plans. It is hoped that through such plans—and these plans are really crucial—the need to manage the sites by burning will diminish and, ultimately, become unnecessary: the areas will be getting wetter, so burning will not be required. As I said, work to develop and produce the guidance is well under way. Much of the engagement has been with the upland management sector and environmental non-governmental organisations, so that we get this right.

The guidance will also set out with whom the Secretary of State will consult. It will be not just Natural England but other interested stakeholders—including, for example, the local fire and rescue service when a licence for wild fire mitigation purposes is being considered. The input of such services is hugely valued on the issue of controlling wild fires.

The Government are very aware that the management of upland habitats on which the regulations will have an impact is complex and unique, and that the guidance must be capable of being understood by both large land managers and small estate teams. They are also aware of the view, backed up by science, that there is a risk that burning heather to reduce wild fire could itself dry the land out and exacerbate the risk. The Government recognise that the new regulations may place additional burdens on some landowners and managers, but we also recognise that inaction and the continuation of burning of unprotected sites will be unacceptable as it is releasing carbon and therefore it is bad for the climate.

The SI attempts to strike the right balance between protecting our habitats from harm and ensuring that our landowners and managers have the right tools available to protect those habitats and restore them to their natural state. Obviously, we need to work with those landowners and farmers in our future new ELM—environmental land management—system, and our new schemes such as the nature for climate fund to restore those peatlands. It is really important that we have very good working relationships with them.

The regulations are essential as we look to extend protections to some of our most vulnerable habitats. The hon. Lady was quite adamant that all peats had to come under the ban, but the point is that the SI is dealing with the very specific deep peat, which is so precious and such an important habitat. It is absolutely right that we protect that, but I would like to share with the hon. Lady that we have a much wider plan for all peat. The SI will protect 140,123 hectares of deep peat, but obviously all peat is important, which is why we are releasing a package of further measures through our peat action plan, which will be issued shortly. That will deal with peat in other areas, not least lowland peat, which is extremely important. We have a lowland peat taskforce to work mainly with farmers in that lowland to work out how that peat can be restored as well, and how we can also still produce sustainable food from that area. We are also working very closely with the horticultural industry to bring about the ban, and we are moving absolutely at pace on that. Through our new plan, a new three-year project will be undertaken to map the extent of England’s peatlands, so that we have really clear data that can guide and inform us, because the science is so important in all that we do.

I trust that the Committee understands the need for the SI. All peat is really important, and not just that protected by the SI. I hope I have made it clear that we are looking at all peat, but the SI is one of the important tools to drive us in the right direction to protect those crucially vital, precious habitats.

[The Chair]

Because we are in negative SI territory, and the Opposition have prayed against the measure, I call the shadow Minister to respond to the debate.