Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Food prices are driven by a range of factors, most importantly energy prices, developments in weather around the world and exchange rates. Those are the key drivers of our food prices. I have always made clear that while food prices go up and down—they are down 7% over the past two years—they are driven by bigger events than EU membership.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Many farmers and landowners are about to sign higher-level stewardship contracts, but there is a dilemma for Natural England. Many are 10-year contracts and in these uncertain EU times they are being put on hold. Will the Minister give assurances that these precious pieces of environmental biodiversity will not be at risk and that something will happen to protect them?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend puts her finger on an important point, which is that there will be areas and elements where we need continuity. We are having discussions across Government about how to ensure we secure that continuity without prejudicing what a future Prime Minister might want to do.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. According to our projections, Greater Manchester will hit, by being below, the 40 mg target, which is why it has not been included in the mandatory clean air zones. We are shortly about to consult on those, but the legislation is in place for Greater Manchester to put in that clean air zone if it wishes to do so; I believe in devolution, and surely it is a matter for the local council if it wants to take that forward.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

T5. The recent Environmental Audit Committee report on the important subject of soil highlighted that a significant proportion of our agricultural land will be become unproductive within a generation. Will the Minister therefore meet me to discuss the sustainable management of soils, so that emphasis is put on treating them as ecosystems, rather than as growing mediums? A monitoring scheme would really help.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend correctly says that soils are not just for short-term production; they are incredibly important stores of organic matter. There is a lot that we can do, and are doing, on precision farming and shelter belts. Rothamsted Research is also doing work on this issue, but I would be delighted to meet her and to make sure that this is central to our 25-year plan.

Dog Fighting

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I reiterate the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight). I know what a great animal lover and dog lover you are. I thank and praise the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for securing this debate.

There are so many dog lovers out there, and this debate is bound to touch people’s hearts. I was not going to make a speech today, because I have to go and speak on climate change in a few minutes, but I felt I had to because I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for animal welfare. As a television reporter and environment correspondent for a long time, I reported on awful dog-fighting incidents and badger baiting before that, where dogs were also used. This subject is therefore close to my heart.

I applaud all the excellent charities that do such great work to look after rescue dogs. That is partly what prompted me to speak today. I recently visited Battersea dogs home and was deeply moved by the awful stories of dogs that have either been dumped outside it or picked up on the streets. They have been thrown out and are deeply scarred emotionally, because they were either fighting dogs that have had their teeth ground down, as the hon. Lady referred to, or poor bitches that have been used for constant breeding.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for securing this debate. Does the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) agree that all these things—third-party puppy sales, puppy farming and illegal imports—are interlinked, and that something properly has to be done by Government? We need not warm words, but actions.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He makes a very good point—all these things link up, and I will refer to a few of those issues in a minute.

It is horrific that something like dog fighting still exists in our society. It is almost impossible to believe that that is true. I will make a few brief points that I hope might be constructive. One is about sentencing. Magistrates in this country can give a penalty of up to about six months for someone caught dog fighting, but they rarely even do that. There are so few cases where someone is actually caught and penalised, whereas in Europe the sentences are about two to three years. I reiterate the call to review the sentencing guidelines; that is crucial. Much more stringent fines would also perhaps be a disincentive.

I agree that people have an all-encompassing view of these dogs. They are regarded as status dogs and weapon dogs. I have seen such dogs when I have been out canvassing and been quite nervous about some of them. Some get wrongly labelled, but others are used as symbols. Somehow, we have to try to change the public perception that these dogs are a good, macho thing to have. That is all about education. We need to go into our schools and educate our children, teach people about respect for animals and how to care for them and love them—and not to have animals unless they can do those things. I personally do not have a dog—my children have never forgiven me for it—even though I love dogs, because I feel I would not be there enough to look after it, and that it would have psychological problems as a result.

[Christina Rees]

Education is really important, and we must educate people at a very young age to be responsible dog owners. I commend the Llys Nini centre in my constituency and the work that the Dogs Trust has done by going into young offenders units and prisons to teach offenders to be responsible and to develop better personalities, so that they can be caring individuals.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That is a really good point. Evidence shows that those who abuse dogs often go on to abuse humans, including children and the elderly. There is a direct link, so we have to try, as a society, to stop such things happening.

Finally, I want to talk about breeding and call for a reduction in the threshold required for dog licences from five litters to two. These animals are truly being used as breeding machines. Often, the breeding starts far too young, so that the dogs are worn out and on the scrap heap very quickly. I saw some of those dogs at Battersea, and they are in a desperate and terrible state. Battersea dogs home has to not only nurture these dogs physically but also get over the awful psychological problems that those poor creatures have from the way they have been abused. That needs to be looked at.

I think everyone agrees that this is a disgusting and appalling habit that we have allowed to carry on in our society. We have to crack down on it. I know much can be done. Lots of ideas have been mentioned today, and I press that we continue to look at them. I hope the Minister is listening and will give us some answers. I also hope that some of the points raised will be referred to in the current Government’s response to the animal licensing consultation that is under way at the moment, which we are waiting to hear back from. I support the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow on this issue, and would like to be one of the people speaking up for our lovely dogs.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

I will now give some slightly conflicting advice. Members will be aware that every intervention adds a minute to the speaking time of the person who has the floor, and they must bear that in mind. The last two people on the speakers list are Patricia Gibson and Margaret Ferrier. We will do our best to accommodate you, but you might feel it more appropriate to intervene. I will try to accommodate everybody and ensure everybody has a say. We are down to three minutes, I am afraid.

UK Dairy Sector

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Williams]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I refer him and the Minister to the report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The hon. Gentleman has a fine pedigree in championing such issues. He set up the all-party dairy group in the last Parliament, and he initiated many of the 12 debates that I mentioned. I thank him for his contribution.

I mentioned rural communities. I reflect on the words of the farmer whom I spoke to on the streets of Aberystwyth last weekend, who told me that price fluctuations over the past five years have cost his business something like £100,000. That is a huge loss to the local economy, local businesses and the wider agricultural economy.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I must register a slight interest, as my husband runs an agricultural auctioneering business; he runs the Sedgemoor market, which many Welsh farmers come to. He has reported to me that there is a knock-on effect. It is not only the farmers selling milk who are affected; it is the whole industry. The cost of a cow now is less than £1,000. People who rear cows to sell them to dairy farmers can hardly cover the costs of their business. The whole chain is affected, not just the end of it, and we absolutely must do something to address this situation.

[Mr Williams]

The hon. Lady is quite right, and she represents a rural area, as I do. For people who do not live in a rural area, it can sometimes be very hard to understand the extent to which the agricultural community and the agricultural economy are engrained in rural areas and every aspect of life in those areas. We have had a big debate in our area about the closure of village schools. If families working on dairy farms move away, that has a direct impact on the capacity of small schools to function. If young families leave a community, public services dwindle as a consequence, as well as the auctioneers and others involved in the supply chain for the agricultural industry, as she said.

The nature of my remarks so far has been negative, but I do not want this to be a wholly negative debate, because we have some immensely innovative farmers who want to stay in the industry and want the industry to thrive and prosper. However, my farmers tell me that they want us to speak out about the reality on the ground as they experience it.

Of course, not all the problems are home-made. There are serious global challenges for British agriculture that are not under our control. The farmers I have spoken to recognise the significant impact of global supply and demand on their businesses, and the difficulties for Government in changing that. There has been a fall in the global commodity price which, along with other factors such as the Russian ban and the reduced demand for milk from China and the middle east, has played a part in the current difficulties we face in Wales and in the UK as a whole.

For those farmers who have stayed in business and continued producing dairy, production has increased, but so has production around the world and it seems unlikely to slow down in the near future. There have been warnings. I will not dwell on them too much, but the Welsh Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, warned about the impact of the end of quota and the impact of the increase in Irish production, which the Farmers Union of Wales has been talking about since 2009; but we are where we are.

While there are positive signs that the global market for milk will continue to grow, the growth in production is higher than the growth in demand, which has a huge impact on the commodity price of milk. We live in a globalised world and at times that unfortunately means that small changes somewhere else in the world have a huge impact at home. There is action that can and must be taken to improve British dairy producers’ opportunities on the global market, such as having a strong and long-term dairy exports strategy; I emphasise that it should be strong and long-term. However, these global factors cannot always be predicted.

The domestic market remains important. Over half the milk produced in the UK is sold directly as fresh liquid milk through retailers and consumed here in the UK. This milk is mostly sold as skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, with much of the remaining milk being processed into products such as cheese, yoghurt, milk powders and butter. There are some very good companies using that milk. I think of Rachel’s in Aberystwyth in my constituency; its products can be bought in Portcullis House. They are excellent products that are made using local milk.

While many dairy products are in a very competitive global market, there has been huge criticism about the relationship between supermarkets and their suppliers, especially when it comes to the price that supermarkets pay for the milk that goes on their shelves. Milk, as a staple in many people’s shopping baskets, has for too long been at the forefront of the UK retail price war. However, rather than affecting the profits of the supermarkets, it seems that much of this cost-cutting has instead affected the price paid to dairy suppliers. Much of the milk that is produced was bought at a price lower than it cost to produce. That situation is simply not sustainable for my constituents who are farmers— or for any constituents in the farming communities represented in Westminster Hall today. The FUW said in 2015:

“It is not, and never has been, the job of the producer to fund supermarket price cuts or to enhance a retailer’s market share. Sacrificing producers to a retailer price war can only function to further break an already fractured supply chain”.

That is why I return to the point about the Groceries Code Adjudicator made by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), and it is why many of us in this House supported the creation of the adjudicator.

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[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) on securing this incredibly important and hugely topical debate on our dairy sector. The dairy sector has a long and proud history in Britain and in Ireland, both north and south. In Northern Ireland, the dairy industry stretches back many generations. Members will agree that dairy products are so much a part of our everyday diet that it is easy to forget the huge skill and effort it takes for farmers to produce such world-class produce. In fact, the all-party group on dairy—I am one of its vice-chairs—recently produced a helpful document on the need for Government, schools and the wider industry to promote dairy as an essential part of our diet.

We have already heard about the challenges faced by the dairy sector in Britain. Unfortunately, the issues are even greater in Northern Ireland, where they are amplified by our reliance on the export market. Northern Ireland’s small population and proportionally larger dairy sector mean that our farmers must seek export markets for their produce, either in the south of Ireland, in Britain or further afield. That means that our farmers are the first to feel the impact of falls in the global dairy price or currency shocks. The situation is made worse by the lower prices Northern Irish farmers tend to get for their produce.

Despite producing dairy products that are as good as or better than products produced here in Britain—forgive me for being slightly parochial—Northern Irish farmers consistently suffer from lower average prices paid by national processors and retailers. In 2014, the average price for milk in Northern Ireland was 4.42p per litre less than the average price in Britain. In 2015, the price difference was even greater, reaching 5.34p per litre. Farmers are having to sell their milk for less than what it costs to produce. Anyone can see that that is unsustainable.

This is not just a matter for us Northern Ireland MPs or the Northern Ireland Executive in Belfast; regional dairy price inequality should concern every MP and Minister in Northern Ireland and Britain. Although we would say that Northern Ireland is the worst affected, there are many areas of England, Scotland and Wales where farmers are paid less than the cost of production. There is no doubt that that has dire implications for the long-term future of the industry. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee produced a very good report on farm-gate prices and made recommendations that I hope the Government will be able to implement.

[Rebecca Pow]

Perhaps a leaf might be taken out of the Northern Irish book, because I believe that the dairy companies of Northern Ireland successfully bid for an EU grant to help to promote the export of dairy products. Northern Ireland is obviously very successful at that, which is perhaps a good reason for remaining in Europe.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that helpful point. She is on the same page as me in terms of retaining membership of the European Union.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I think the hon. Lady will find that we are doing quite a lot of research on marine plastics. Plymouth University has done some work for us on that. I am very clear: we do want action across Europe. That is why we have worked with partners in the OSPAR convention, and why we have pressed to get a voluntary undertaking by the industry to get rid of microbeads. As I said in my initial answer, we have also been very clear that we do not rule out regulatory steps, if necessary.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

8. How many flood defence schemes are planned to (a) begin and (b) complete construction in 2016.

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

Some 246 schemes were begun in 2016-17, and 190 are due for completion.

[Rebecca Pow]

Will the Minister kindly update the House on progress with the legislation that is required to set up the Somerset rivers authority as a separate precepting body, so that we can fund flood protection for the future? Local authority budgets are currently covered by a special caveat, but legislation is required to set up the precept for 2017-18.

[Rory Stewart]

As my hon. Friend is aware, DEFRA committed £1.7 million to the Somerset rivers authority. That authority has now decided that its preferred solution is a precept, and a shadow precept will come into effect from April this year. We look forward to discussing the long-term financial arrangements directly with the authority.

Draft Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2016

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 General Committees

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Will the Minister comment on the proposals for the short areas that farmers, for example, might dredge? If they had been allowed to do that previously and to apply for these permits—I have talked to lots of farmers in Somerset about this issue—might it have helped to reduce the awful flooding that we saw in 2014-15?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question. I think the answer to my hon. Friend is that in an extreme weather event, such as the sort she saw in Somerset, the regular removal of silt from a 1.5 km-ditch is unlikely to have a significant impact on downstream flooding. What it would do in normal cases of winter flooding, is reduce the flooding of agricultural fields which would be good. So it is good for the general operation of farm business in normal winter flooding situations, but in an extreme weather event I am afraid that 1.5 km of silt removal is unlikely to tip the difference.

Flooding

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have been working closely with Scottish authorities during this incident, and we will certainly look at the solidarity fund, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but we must bear it in mind that it would take seven months to receive any funding. We have put in place funding direct to the local authorities that residents and businesses can now claim—up to £5,000 to get a home or business back on its feet. I care about getting that support to those homes and businesses as soon as possible. That is the Government’s priority.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I would like to provide a bit of optimism for our poor flood victims up north. From my own checks over the recess and a report fed in by my mole—perhaps I should say “water vole”—on the Somerset levels today, I can report that the Government’s protection and prevention programme put in place following the devastating floods in Somerset in 2013-14 is working. The dredging is proving effective—we have had masses of rain yet the river levels fell by 2 feet last night—as is the pumping being done by the Environment Agency. May I have an assurance that the Government will continue to support this protection and prevention work, including the important catchment-wide environmental work, so that we do not regress again?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The Somerset Rivers Authority is now established and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has agreed a shadow precept. It is now for local people to decide where and when to dredge and how to maintain their watercourses. I want to see more of that across the country. We are developing the Cumbrian floods partnership so that local people can make decisions about what is best for their area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

First, I pay tribute to the shadow Minister for his visit, which was very much appreciated. It is true that many people feel that the media attention has been on Carlisle and that the number of small villages affected have been ignored. As he says, we can see many communities like that across Cumbria and they will be having a horrifying time. They will have a very difficult winter. We are working to bundle schemes together. One particular example, which I would be very happy to discuss with him, is what is happening at Stockdalewath, where we have an upstream alleviation programme for a small hamlet. We need to extend that to other areas, too.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I send my condolences to those in Cumbria, because in Somerset, where I come from, we, too, experienced terrible flooding in 2013. I applaud the Government’s commitment and all the projects that have been put in place. Will the Minister outline the progress being made on future funding for the wider catchment work on trees, river basins and perhaps even ancient trees?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend is very interested in the role that ancient woodland can play in flood alleviation. We are looking at that as part of the upstream alleviation programme. Three main initiatives are being undertaken: one by Cumbria County Council; one led by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and one, which I am chairing, through the Cumbria partnership.

Climate Change and Flooding

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

As the hon. Gentleman says, the UK has a proud record on tackling climate change, not least due to the leadership shown by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) with the groundbreaking Climate Change Act 2008. However, we are now coasting on that historical record and we need to do much more. We are not on course to meet our targets, so we need to do more.

The chairman of the Committee on Climate Change had no alternative but to conclude last month that the Government’s existing energy policy was clearly failing, and the CBI has said that British businesses need clarity. Businesses need to know that the Government are serious about climate change and will not make superficial claims about being green, only to U-turn on key environmental policies.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

On clarity of Government direction and jobs, I understand we have to work together on renewables, but we are setting such a good example with Hinkley Point, on the border with my constituency, which is a low-carbon energy commitment that will generate 25,000 jobs, which will be terrific for the economy and energy production.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I accept that nuclear is part of the mix—that is our policy—but it is not the only solution to green energy in this country, which seems to be the Government’s point of view.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

That is probably a question for the Environment Secretary to answer when she responds in a few moments.

The Government have announced and re-announced that they will invest £2.3 billion in flood defences over the next six years. As the EFRA Select Committee has today highlighted, that investment relies on £600 million-worth of external contributions, less than half of which have so far been secured. With the private sector providing just £61 million, DEFRA is looking to local authorities for the additional funding. Clearly, the Government do not get just how hard local councils have already been hit by the cuts. At the moment, just one of the 27 flood and infrastructure projects is currently in construction, and there has been no progress in the past year, while schemes in Cumbria have been delayed.

On maintenance, we have been told that the budget will only be protected, so I ask the Environment Secretary whether she believes that that budget is sufficient, especially given the years of neglect? The Government spent £171 million on maintenance last year. The Environment Agency has recommended that £417 million a year should be spent. It is no wonder that experts at Friends of the Earth are warning that there is a £2.5 billion hole in the Government’s flood defence plans.

[Rebecca Pow]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I want to make some progress now so that Back Benchers who want to speak about what happened in their constituencies will be able to do so.

Last week, the Environment Secretary agreed with me about the extreme weather patterns and the link with climate change. The Government have conceded that the risks might have been underestimated, yet it has now emerged that they are not even using the most up-to-date information. I hope that the Environment Secretary will be able to tell us why the Environment Agency’s flood risk guidance, published in 2013, is based on forecasts from 2006—despite new research in 2011 indicating that river flows could be much greater due to climate change. Flood defence plans are modelled on the medium climate scenarios rather than the high climate change pathway.

Perhaps the Government want to ignore the high emission scenarios because that would mean spending £300 million more, but the costs associated with ignoring the evidence are potentially so much greater. The national security risk assessment cites flood risk to the UK as a tier 1 priority risk, alongside terrorism and cyberattacks. By focusing on the more optimistic projections, the Government are wilfully neglecting their responsibilities on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

As the rest of the work acknowledged this weekend, simply ignoring climate change will not make it go away, yet for two years the UK was hampered by having a climate change denier as Environment Secretary. It is even rumoured that he sought to replace the words “climate change” with the word “weather” in every single DEFRA document, and that he had to have it explained to him that they were not quite the same thing. What is certainly true is that under his stewardship spending on climate change adaptation halved, even after DEFRA’s climate change staffing had dropped from 38 to six people.

Thankfully, the current Environment Secretary is less hostile on this issue, although perhaps not very interested until now, and she will have our full support if her adaptation policies are guided by the scientific evidence and by expert advice. As such, we look forward to hearing more details on the national flood resilience review. I welcome the confirmation that the Cumbrian floods partnership will be looking at upstream options, and I hope these will be included in the resilience review.

A focus on the role of the natural environment in reducing flood risk is, unfortunately, long overdue. I see in his place the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). His constituency was badly affected, and he did a huge amount of work on the ground in Cumbria over the past few weeks, so I am sure he has very much taken that point on board.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I will be very clear with the right hon. Lady: the Environment Agency is part of the planning process and it does not allow house building on floodplain areas—that is part of the planning process.

[Rebecca Pow]

The Secretary of State will remember not only the floods in Cumbria, but the awful flooding in Somerset. The Government have committed £35 million to Somerset until 2021, but will she comment on the arrangement we are putting in place through the Somerset Rivers Authority, which may become a model for dealing with flooding, funding and the wider catchment area?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is absolutely right to say that Somerset Rivers Authority, which is now established, forms a model that we can use in other parts of the country. It gives local people, who understand the area and the local catchment, the power to make decisions—

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[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I am speaking today, first, because we have to praise the historic agreement that was made in Paris. I commend not only my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but the whole team and Labour Members for all the work they did in the past. We also have to send commiserations to all those poor people suffering from flooding. We are dealing with both those things in today’s motion.

I felt I had to speak, coming as I do from Somerset, like my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey). Taunton Deane was, sadly, at the heart of the terrible flooding of 11,500 hectares of land from December 2012 right up, really, until January 2014. So I really can sympathise with the poor folk of Cumbria.

In Somerset the impact was enormous. The cost for businesses, with all the knock-on effects, was estimated at £147 million, and it affected half of all the businesses in Somerset, even the ones that were not flooded, because of the road closures and things like that.

It was a once-in-a-hundred-year event, so it was not exactly expected, and it was not just a result of not dredging rivers, although that was one of the things that made a difference. The rivers Parrett and Tone had not been dredged during the 1990s—and I am afraid I level that at our friends in the Labour party because it was under their Government that the dredging stopped.

The flooding was also caused by a combination of many other things, including increased run-off from the urban areas around Taunton. But whether this extreme flooding was to do with climate change—that is still debateable—we clearly do have to be prepared for these events. In Somerset I am very pleased at the programme that has been put in place to set up the Somerset Rivers Authority. This has come with general agreement and much debate. A precept is to be set on everyone in Somerset and legislation will be passed to introduce it. That will then deal with the wider programme of tackling flooding in the future.

I commend the Government. They have spent £15.5 million on flood defences in Somerset, protecting thousands of properties, and have made an overall commitment of £35 million until 2021. They are taking flooding extremely seriously.

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

I take my hon. Friend’s point about preparations. Will she join me in welcoming the doubling of investment for innovation in low-carbon technology as one of the less talked about outcomes from Paris?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I know he was at Paris. I was going to mention that at the end of my speech, but I will mention it now. Nobody has so far mentioned one of the crucial aspects of this debate: the investment in science and technology to enable us to meet all these commitments so that we can get to our zero rating. With our brains and our scientists, I am absolutely sure we can do it.

The investment in flooding is money well spent, because every £1 spent on flood defences gives between £4 and £9 of benefit to the economy. So it is well worth doing.

With my environmental-agricultural hat on, and as the new chairman of the all-party group on ancient woodland and veteran trees, I want to highlight a few areas, and here I have some agreement with the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). There are many other things we can do to mitigate the effects of climate change and extreme weather in our environment. There is the wider catchment approach. There is working with farmers and landowners to slow the flow of water into the river basins, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) will agree with me on that. There is more tree planting; I applaud the Government’s commitment to plant 11 million trees—that is one for every five people. Perhaps we could plant a few more. Those trees will also help to slow the flow of water. Re-wilding is another area we could be looking at, as well as silt traps, ponds, and storage areas higher up in the valley to stop the water coming down quite so quickly.

All of those things can be, and ought to be, included, and I will put in my usual call for more grass. Grass and mixed farming economies are the way forward. Grass holds in the water as well, and sequesters the carbon. I hope that the forestry Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), will look more closely at including grass in our policies. [Interruption.] We may laugh at that, but this is a serious way forward and it is great for the management of the countryside.

On climate change, I commend the Government on everything they are doing. We have taken immense steps forward in securing this ambitious global deal, and we are moving in the right direction, but there is much still to do. Zero carbon emissions is a testing ambition.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend from across the hills.

[Neil Parish]

The Opposition are saying that we have not made great progress on renewables, but we only have to see that in Devon and Somerset and across the west country there are huge amounts of solar panels in the fields. That did not happen under the last Government—and in fact many of our constituents complain that there are too many.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely good point and we have seen the roll-out of solar renewables. We have made immense progress. Some 16% of our energy is from renewables and that is because of the steps this Government have taken. People are still buying into renewables and it has got cheaper. The cost of the panels has come down, which is why we need to remove the subsidies and put the subsidies where we can have more energy from other sources that need a bit of a boost. So I am right with the Secretary of State on her policy here.

We need to lead by example. We have been doing it, but we need to continue to do so. I am a great environmentalist, but we have to do this within the constraints of the economy, which is something this Government are dealing with at all costs. We have had a debt to deal with. We are still paying off the legacy left over. We have to be realistic about what we are doing, and we have to provide security of energy at the lowest cost to the taxpayer, so whatever we do, there has got to be a balance.

Big applause for the Government for their big step in getting rid of coal-fired power stations. If there was one single thing we could do for low-carbon energy, it was that. Applause also for Hinkley Point, obviously, which is very near my constituency. It is the biggest commitment to low-carbon energy we could possibly think of.

I shall wind up by saying we can all do our own bit at home as well. We can all buy in, like Quantock Eco, Transition Taunton, Transition Athelney, and the Somerset Wildlife Trust. We can cut our air miles, make fewer car journeys, grow our own food. We can buy into it, and we need to buy into this whole situation. We need to do it through every Government Department. We need to do it across the world. We need to do it in our own homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

Thank you! I have been waiting. I will give way to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) because I always prefer to give way to the Opposition—it is more fun.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

The people of Cumberland are right to want to know that, but the flooding should not be blamed on something that is unproven when the impact of changes that we make will affect people across the UK. Opposition Members were the first to complain about policies that have pushed up energy prices and made it more difficult for manufacturers such as those in the steel industry to make a profit. Some manufacturers, such as those in Redcar, have recently closed, partly because of those high energy costs. With all due respect, I say to the Secretary of State that Opposition Members will not support her policies if they lead to an increase in energy prices. She will be attacked by the Opposition when steel and other manufacturing plants close, and she will be attacked for causing fuel poverty.

[Rebecca Pow]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I cannot at the moment. Aid agencies talk about trying to drive up living standards in the third world, but they are making it harder for African villagers to get access to cheap electricity from coal. Environmentalists talk about the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but they are totally opposed to nuclear power. They talk about wanting more wind power, but they are totally opposed to fracking for gas, which is necessary if we want nuclear energy. There is a great deal of inconsistency and many unanswered questions, and I ask the Secretary of State to respond to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My admiration for the hon. Gentleman has gone up hugely, because I was not going to be able to get in that point. He is right. We were a little frustrated by the lack of announcements on the Swansea Bay lagoon and strike prices in the autumn statement. Let us now see a commitment that will take forward not only the Swansea Bay lagoon, but the Cardiff Bay lagoon and all the ones that come after it. One of my recommendations to the Secretary of State would be this: let us use this as an opportunity to create jobs and to be a world leader so that we can export that technology, that know-how and those jobs. It is there for the taking. When Stern warned us about the challenges of climate change, he told us to make the early investment to save money down the line. That is what we must now do.

[Rebecca Pow]

I have enormous respect for the hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. I wonder whether you might want to comment on this: with the plan you are suggesting, we need much more—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am not suggesting anything. It is “he” or “the hon. Gentlemen”, not “you”.

[Rebecca Pow]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Will the hon. Gentleman comment on whether we need more detailed inspection within Government Departments so that we are all doing our bit? We have a green investment strategy in the Department for Transport, but what about all the other Departments? Should we be working together more?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Lady, who is so committed on these issues, is absolutely right. The approach needs to be cross-departmental and rigorous, and it needs a step change. We have been trying to turn the supertanker around slowly, but Paris says that that is not fast enough. Lord Deben, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change, has said that we need to do more. We heard recently from the head of the National Audit Office, who said that we need joined-up thinking and leadership in government. The hon. Lady is absolutely right.

One of the biggest commitments the Government could make—the Secretary of State and her team would have my support—is fully to accept what the Committee on Climate Change says about the outcomes of Paris. It said in its June report that we need to go further and faster. We will now need to go faster again and deliver more. There are opportunities with that. I ask the Secretary of State to accept that—I ask her to do it and get on with it, and in fact go beyond it if she can. She should look at how we can do that. What technologies should we invest in? Where will the private sector put its money? What do we do with the green investment bank? How does it play its part?

The Secretary of State should also fill the current gap from the fourth carbon budget. That is to do with leadership. It is great coming back from Paris with excellent commitments—they are better than many people were expecting. The UK played a leadership role there. We now need to take it to a whole other level. Paris means that it is not business as usual for us or for many other nations. Let us keep on leading and let us go further. I look forward to the Secretary of State saying how we will do that.

Protection of Ancient Woodland and Trees

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered protection of ancient woodland and trees.

I thank not only the Chair and the Minister, but the Back Benchers who have turned up today in support of the debate, which struck an enormous chord when I first started talking to people about it. I also thank the Woodland Trust, which has championed the cause not only of trees, but of ancient woodland and veteran trees for so many years.

Mr Turner, I want to begin by taking us on a magical mystery tour, if you would like to come with me. Imagine that we are walking down a track through a dense coniferous and mixed-species forest. After crunching leaves underfoot for some time, we dive off into the denser part of the forest and suddenly come upon a glade with dappled light filtering through the canopy. There is a carpet of mixed plants beneath our feet. Wild flowers are bursting into bloom and birds are singing. All of a sudden, we see these gargantuan sentries, as if guarding time itself. Huge, enormous oak trees rise out of the carpet. They have a sort of mystery about them, an air of knowingness. They are covered in nooks and crannies. They are filled with creatures such as the vulnerable cardinal click beetle, woodpeckers, brown long-eared bats, wood mice, stag beetles, tawny owls and hornets, and multifarious fungi, moss and lichen, all taking advantage of the antiquated bark. It is reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s “The Magic Faraway Tree”—I do not know whether you have ever read it, Mr Turner.

Those were the first ancient trees that I ever encountered. They were 500 years old and part of the ancient forest of Neroche close to where I live in the Blackdown hills. I was filming them for “Saving the Best Bits”, a film about the special habitats of Somerset, and I have never forgotten the experience. Ancient trees, which form only part of today’s debate, are living relics. The age at which a tree becomes ancient varies with the species as some live longer than others, but the oldest ancient tree, the Fortingall yew in Scotland, is said to be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. Veteran trees are also included in today’s debate. They are not quite as old, but they are on their way to becoming ancient trees. More than 120,000 such trees are listed on the ancient tree inventory.

However, we are talking today about not only specimens, but ancient woodland as a whole. Ancient woodland is our richest terrestrial habitat, but the sad situation is that only 2% of it remains. Something is classed as ancient woodland if it has been on the map since 1600 in England. In Scotland, it is slightly later at 1750. The date is when good maps first came into use, so we were obviously slightly ahead in England. I regard ancient woodland as our equivalent of the rainforest. It represents the last fragments of the wildwood that cloaked the land after the ice age. It is a biodiverse and rich habitat that is home to animals and plants that depend on the stable conditions that ancient woodland provides. It is so rare, however, that it contains many threatened species. The loss of ancient woodlands over the past 100 years has meant that 45 species associated with them have disappeared, which is an absolute tragedy. The woods are not just biodiverse; they are living history books, because they contain fascinating historical features such as medieval boundaries, charcoal hearths and old coppice stools, all of which provide a window into past lives. They are irreplaceable parts of our heritage.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will of course give way to my hon. Friend from over the hill.

[Neil Parish]

I very much like the way that my hon. Friend is presenting this debate. We are neighbours and our constituencies share the Blackdown hills. There is ancient woodland there and all across Devon. We need to protect it, and when we need to do something such as dual the A303 or A30, we must find ways of ensuring that we go around ancient woodland rather than through it. We need infrastructure, but we need to maintain our ancient woodland.

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. I have to say that that was a pretty generous intervention, so let us not be quite as generous in future.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because I entirely agree. I will be referring to his point later in respect of the reference to green infrastructure in our manifesto. I know the roads he mentions well and know the debates that have gone on for years about dualling the A30, but it has to fit in with the environment. All things are possible, so we have to get round these things.

To be clear, we are discussing not only the trees themselves, but the soils underneath them, too. The soils have built up over centuries and, just like the woods, cannot be recreated. The soils are equivalent to those in the rainforest and are just as precious. They contain genetic material and biodiversity that could be the key to life-saving treatments or combating pests. We remove them at our peril.

Turning to the detail, there are two types of ancient woodland. The first is ancient semi-natural woods, which are composed predominantly of trees and shrubs native to the site that do not obviously originate from planting and have grown up from the beginning. Often, such woods have been managed through coppicing or pollarding, but they still count as ancient woodland. The second type is plantations on ancient woodland sites, which are where former native tree cover has been felled and replaced by planted trees predominantly of species not native to the site. Such sites can include pine, so coniferous forests can be classed as ancient, or sweet chestnut, forests of which I believe exist in Scotland. The soil under such trees is also significant.

People might ask, “Why worry about these small areas? Woods that are planted today will become ancient woodlands in 400 years’ time,” but it does not work that way. The way we are changing land use due to agriculture and industry means that the woods we plant today will never turn into the equivalent of the ancient forests of yesterday.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will give way to my hon. Friend whom I know has many ancient trees and woodland up there in Yorkshire.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend and London neighbour. My constituency has 1,400 ancient trees, but we have also had one of the UK’s first applications for shale gas fracking. Will she join me in pressing for a change to include ancient woodland in the protected areas specified by the new Government regulations?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend’s point is pertinent and one that I hope the Minister will take on board. Fracking in such areas would seriously disturb the glorious biodiversity and we should think seriously about protecting them. He makes an important point.

We might assume that something as precious as ancient woodland would already be protected, but that is not the case—although I am delighted that the Government have stated on many occasions their support for and appreciation of the value of ancient woodland and the need to protect it. Sites of special scientific interest offer protection, but they cover only 17% of ancient woodland. Some ancient woodland comes into areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, which give extra recognition, but they do not guarantee that the protection cannot be removed for other reasons. The planned High Speed 2 route, for example, threatens many areas of ancient woodland in the Chilterns AONB.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would love to give way to my hon. Friend from Padstow.

[Scott Mann]

I thank my hon. Friend. A balance definitely needs to be struck between protecting our environment and the building necessary to get our economy moving. Does she agree that the balance we have at the moment seems to be skewed? Protections to ancient woodland in the national planning policy framework could do with being bolstered.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my shrewd hon. Friend for his intervention, although I think he must have been looking over my shoulder, because I am coming to that point—he has hit the nail absolutely on the head. Unlike many other precious habitats, ancient woodland is not a statutory designation and therefore suffers from a lack of protection.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are going to build large infrastructure projects it is essential that we observe the national designations given to areas of land that include ancient woodland, such as the AONB in the Chilterns to which she referred? It makes a mockery of any environmental credentials or policy if we do not protect the nationally designated areas while going ahead with the project.

[Rebecca Pow]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid point, which I will address in a moment. She is right; if we cannot stand by the designations, we might ask what the point of having them is. I put that to the Minister.

I thought that the Minister responsible for forestry would reply to the debate, but I am pleased to see the Minister of State with responsibility for farming in his place. The whole of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is especially committed to trees and woodland, but the Forestry Minister admitted in the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—I was at the inquiry meeting at which he said this—that

“ancient woodland, as a category, is not a protected category”.

I am now coming on to what many of my hon. Friends are referring to—everything is about paragraph 118 of the national planning policy framework, which allows for the destruction or loss of

“ancient woodland and…aged or veteran trees”

if

“the need for, and benefits of, the development in that location clearly outweigh the loss”.

As a result of that loophole, as I would describe it, hundreds of ancient woodlands and trees are being lost or threatened in the planning system every single year. Since the national planning policy framework was introduced in March 2012, more than 40 ancient woods have suffered from loss or damage.

[Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems in planning assessments is that much reliance is placed on professional reports and assessments of one kind or another that are challengeable, although they seem to persist from development to development with a life of their own? We need decision makers who will actually challenge such things and not allow them to take on a life of their own.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I will come on to later with reference to the idea of natural capital and how much value we put on the natural world versus development. The Woodland Trust is dealing with an incredible 560 threats to ancient woods; November saw the biggest escalation ever of the number of threats being registered—14 in one month, which is shocking. Threats can come from mineral extraction, installation of electricity or gas pipelines, housing, leisure proposals, roads, golf courses or even sites for war-gaming and paintballing.

Other ancient woodland areas are under threat from local area plans, which are falling through the net and we hardly know anything about. I have one such near me at Ash Priors, where houses were built on ancient woodland because the local plan could not really stand up for it. We do not know exactly how many ancient woods there are, let alone how many are threatened, because we rely on the dear old Woodland Trust to gather such data. I ask the Minister for a proper database to collate all such information, because then we would be on stronger ground.

Interestingly, the motion we are debating has not been far from the thoughts and considerations of others in this place. Only one year ago, in December 2014, the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government called for ancient woodland to be awarded the same level of protection as designated heritage assets in the built environment, which include scheduled monuments, wreck sites, battlefields, and grade I and II listed buildings—my own house is grade II and, small and humble as it is, I cannot knock it down to build a road. Do my hon. Friends agree that the CLG Committee proposal seems eminently sensible?

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on how she is presenting her powerful case. Ancient woodland exists not only in rural constituencies, but in urban areas such as Cheltenham and, as such, can be particularly precious to local communities. Does she agree that there is a powerful case for providing strong and explicit planning protection for ancient woodland, particularly in towns?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend makes another excellent point. Some trees have preservation orders on them, but by no means all do. Trees in the urban environment, as I am sure the Minister will say, are important for things such as controlling rainwater and flooding, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and the feelgood factor of seeing a lovely tree as we walk past.

According to the Communities and Local Government Committee, the national planning policy framework ought to be amended. The Select Committee stated that any loss of ancient woodland should be termed as “wholly exceptional”—that is, it cannot be got rid of unless that is absolutely and utterly essential. I will be grateful to hear the Minister’s view of such a change, because ancient woods are national treasures. Scotland has a similar planning framework, but a slightly softer approach to trees and development. I will be pleased to hear about that later from the Scottish Members present.

The CLG Committee also called for an increase in the number of SSSIs covering ancient woodland, because that would surely help. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that proposal as well. In addition, we must not forget that we ought to thank many landowners for managing the SSSIs and to ensure that they have adequate funding to keep the woodland as it should be kept for the nation. The success of such woodland depends on that management. There is also real concern about the march of awful diseases such as chalara, or ash dieback, in ancient woods, which could present us with another threat to them in future.

I do not want to sound too much like a stick-in-the-mud, because I understand that we need a balance. On the one hand, we want to protect the environment and on the other we want a thriving economy, which the Government are pursuing positively and with great effect. However, I remind the Minister of the green infrastructure commitment in our manifesto in which we said that we would try to make our roads and developments more environmentally friendly. We need to start doing that somehow.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) wanted to raise the issue of planning in particular, but she cannot be here. If we have to steamroller through a piece of ancient woodland because it is unavoidable, often the suggestion is to ameliorate the situation by planting trees elsewhere. She says that that is fine, but we need to take real care about how that is done. At Mixbury, HS2 will plough through some woodland, so it has been recommended that new trees are planted. However, guess where that will be? On a patch of ancient pasture! It is ridiculous that more thought was not put into that decision. I call for a much more sensible approach and for caution.

The spin-off of woods’ biodiversity value is their glorious, natural benefits, which we call natural capital. Should we put a value on our woods? We need to start thinking about that. They reward us in spades through making us feel good—by raising our spirits and inspiring us, as well as through their biodiversity. I know that the Government are thinking about that and that the Natural Capital Committee, which will report back shortly, is looking at setting an economic value on nature. That is tricky—no one says that is easy—but should we not apply that concept right now to ancient and veteran tree cover? That is a prime example of where it could be applied.

Natural capital is not an idea that Rebecca Pow has come up with; it is really being talked about. In January the Natural Capital Committee said that ancient trees are “priceless”. That is there in writing and that is the root of my debate.

The all-party group on ancient woodland was formed recently and I am pleased to be its chairman. Since its formation, I have been contacted by so many people who are at their wits’ end and want to know what to do about an area of threatened woodland near them. They are usually really passionate about these places. Whole communities will be campaigning to try to keep them, but they do not have the teeth to do it. These places are threatened by quarrying, roads and other such things, but as my hon. Friends the Members for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) asked, can we not try to work such thoughts into our development plans so that somehow we can have both?

I will give a few examples of threatened areas. Just last month, a proposal to destroy part of the beautiful and ancient Bluebell wood near Maidstone went through, with permission granted for housing without any recognition of the loss to nature, despite a huge local campaign. I have mentioned HS2 already and I think we might hear more examples about that. In the south-west, a pipeline in Torridge in Devon will go right through the Buck’s Valley wood. Mineral extraction in Dorset is going though Honeycomb and Downshay woods and ancient woodland between junctions 5 and 6 of the M42 near Solihull in the west midlands is threatened by an application for an extension to a service station—the list goes on and on.

I have raised a number of issues that I would like the Minister to consider. In particular, it would be great to get a database going. Will he also look at updating the standing advice for ancient woodland? Developers need to look at that advice to see whether what they are doing tallies up with Natural England’s instructions, but that barely covers matters. It needs to be updated for English planning authorities to include veteran trees and historic wood pasture, because sadly many developers are exploiting the advice.

I cannot stress strongly enough that once this glorious natural wonder is gone, it is gone—we cannot recreate it. Trees, as we all know, cannot speak for themselves—unless they are Ents in “The Lord of the Rings”, which I love—so I am speaking for them. At the rate we are going, soon none of this precious woodland will be left. Only 2% is left, which is so minuscule. How quickly could all that be whittled away?

I urge the Minister to consider my suggestions for ensuring that we do not get rid of all this woodland. We must give it some chance of surviving for hundreds more years. We need to deal with this root and branch. I urge him to give more consideration to the protection of our glorious, awe-inspiring ancient woodlands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Turner, for the opportunity to contribute briefly to the debate. I, as one of the last of the Back-Bench contributors, have the great pleasure of congratulating all those who have spoken before me, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), who has done a wonderful job not only of securing the debate, but of alerting other right hon. and hon. Members to the fact that it was going to take place. It has certainly been very well attended so far.

I note that until very recently the Scottish National party was well represented in this debate. I understand that the party is not fully represented at the moment, for good reasons, and I know that it is the long-term aim of its Members to cease to be represented entirely at Westminster. All I can say is that, while they are here, their contributions to our debates are greatly appreciated.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) managed to marry with the topic of this debate the relentless and gallant campaign that she has been waging to preserve so much of our precious rural heritage against the depredations of HS2. I am sure that this phase of her parliamentary career will be well remembered by future generations who benefit from the restrictions and reductions in the devastation that building HS2 along its original planned route would otherwise have inflicted. Those reductions are greatly to be welcomed, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend has many more in mind before she desists.

My hon. Friends the Members for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) embodied something that I have noticed about the whole debate. We are all used to having fraught debates and arguments in this Chamber and in the main Chamber of the House, but something seemed to come over every contributor to this debate as soon as they became involved and engrossed in the topic: a quality of content and delivery that was almost poetic. That speaks to the vital importance not only physically, but psychologically, of our valued, treasured and wonderful ancient woodlands to the people who have the privilege of enjoying them.

I understand that the definition that woodlands must meet to qualify as ancient is that the site must have existed since at least 1600 AD. Given that the New Forest dates from 1079, it clearly qualifies very easily, although it must be borne in mind that it is called the New Forest precisely because it was a creation by man to supply fresh meat to William the Conqueror and his entourage. Hence, the term “new” in our history means approaching merely 1,000 years old, which I suppose is new on some basis of terminology.

The networks of woodland in and around the New Forest collectively form one of the largest extents of lowland forest remaining in western Europe. I am indebted to the New Forest National Park Authority for providing me with a briefing on some of the main aspects of what I am about to say. There are 4,800 hectares of the ancient and ornamental woodlands in the Open Forest alone and there are many privately owned fragments within the New Forest national park boundary. While their communities of plants and animals, many now rare, are an echo of the prehistoric wildwoods that covered much of Britain, they have since been uniquely shaped by farmers, commoners, local people, livestock and wild animals, resulting in the complex landscape and ecological patterns that we see today.

About 1,500 ancient or veteran trees have been recorded so far in the New Forest, most within the ancient and ornamental woodlands in the heart of the New Forest, but many on private land. Those trees have a feeling of great age and character, with gnarled and twisted trunks, crevices and hollows and a large girth, some more than 8 metres around—hon. Members can tell that I did not draft those words myself, as I would have been most unlikely to have used metres rather than more traditional measures. Oaks and ash trees will be at least 400 years old, while yews can live for over 1,000 years.

The character of the New Forest has been well summed up by Mr Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, who is not only the current chairman of the New Forest National Park Authority, but a distinguished former official verderer of the New Forest. In connection with the topic we are debating, he said to me:

“The New Forest is believed to have one of the largest extents of Ancient Woodland in Western Europe. Immensely old, and full of character, some of the ancient trees within these woodlands are especially rare. Our Ancient Woodlands have been sculpted by man, revered by generations of local people and survived through remarkable changes in the world around them. They are unique and cannot be replaced. In the New Forest we are working together to protect, enhance and manage our Ancient Woodlands; they are such an important part of our living, working landscape and we want them to remain so for future generations.”

For people in the modern age, ancient woodlands are a retreat from hustle and bustle—somewhere it is possible to find peace and inspiration, and to get closer to nature. There is strong evidence supporting the idea that the use and enjoyment of woodlands improves people’s overall health and wellbeing. Indeed, they have been described as a natural health service.

Although the UK was covered in woodland 10,000 years ago, after the last ice age, woodland now covers only about 2% of the land area of the UK. That is why it is so vital that it must be protected for future generations. There is not only the question of the physical destruction of ancient woodland, but a risk of tree pests and diseases entering the country from abroad, as well as non-native invasive plants that spread within woodlands and put native wildlife at risk. Natural England estimates that 15% of ancient woodland is located within national parks and 30% is located within areas of outstanding natural beauty. In national parks, 29% of the woodland has site of special scientific interest status, as does 13% of woodland in areas of outstanding natural beauty.

One thing I have found, as a city boy who was fortunate enough to be selected to represent a wonderful rural constituency, is that for all the peace, tranquillity and beauty of the gorgeous New Forest, it is not without controversy. There are many organisations and people with a long history of interest and participation in the activities of the New Forest. I think I am right in saying that, of all the national parks, the New Forest is the most densely populated.

Among the commentators with long experience and great reputation on matters concerning the New Forest is Mr Anthony Pasmore, who regularly writes an expert column in the local press on current affairs affecting the welfare of the forest environment. He has drawn to my attention the danger of trying to be what could almost be described as “too naturalistic” in the conservation of the forest. For example, when we have storms—as inevitably occur from time to time—that cause windfall destruction of parts of the forest, ancient and not so ancient, there is now a tendency to leave all the fallen trees where they lie. I understand that, traditionally, it has always been understood that some 20% of windfall trees should be left behind to create beneficial habitats for beetles and other wildlife. There is always a slight tension between trying to interfere to the minimum amount necessary and remembering that the New Forest is a living, working forest. He raised with me the fact that there is an almost blanket ban on the withdrawing and removal of tree debris following such destruction, which is actually making the forest less habitable and less accessible to human beings by overdoing the environment that one wishes to preserve for the beetles and other wildlife.

[Rebecca Pow]

My right hon. Friend is waxing so lyrical and making such a good point that I cannot resist joining in. Many of these ancient woods are not just old relics with rotting wood; they are managed landscapes, many of which have been coppiced over time so that man can use the wood for other purposes. These ancient woodlands are still valuable, and I am sure that large tracts of the New Forest are included in that.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

[Dr Lewis]

That is precisely the point that I was endeavouring to make, and my hon. Friend makes it with far greater fluency than my poor efforts.

Anthony Pasmore draws attention to the fact that the New Forest is just that: it is ancient, but it is also new. It is what it is because, as he puts it, there is a “question of balance”. There has to be a question of balance between letting nature take its course and managing the forest in such ways as go with the grain of beauty and accessibility, rather than always trying to take too rigid a stance, which might inhibit the ability of the community that lives and works there to enjoy the New Forest. Those are secondary issues; the most important fact is that we have this wonderful asset.

I shall conclude with a rather modern controversy, namely, the possibility of hydraulic fracturing taking place underneath a national park at some stage. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham about how it is possible to preserve and save woodlands by driving tunnels deep beneath them, and therefore, in principle, it might well be possible to extract valuable energy assets from a long way below the surface even of sensitive areas. We know that hydraulic fracturing may well yield great dividends for our country’s economy, but there are plenty of parts of the United Kingdom where we can master the technology long before we need to bring it anywhere near those particularly precious areas that have been designated as national parks. This is my appeal: the Government should by all means explore fracking technology, but they should make sure that they know what they are doing, by practice and by developing a successful industry based on hydraulic fracturing in less sensitive areas of the country, before approaching anywhere near our ancient woodlands and national parks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Calum Kerr]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent, long and valuable contribution. In fairness, he has earned the right to a long intervention, considering that the five-a-side football team belonging to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane left early. I congratulate my hon. Friend on that excellent addition to the debate. He is correct, of course, that in Scotland there is no statutory protection. However, Scottish planning policy does identify woodlands as an important and irreplaceable national resource that should be protected and enhanced.

Scottish Natural Heritage also seeks to use the planning system to protect those assets, and the Scottish Government operate a strong presumption against removing ancient semi-natural woodland or plantations on ancient woodland sites. In addition, the Scottish Government have produced a biodiversity route map, which has been presented to the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee. It is an ambitious programme that aims to increase the amount of native woodland in good condition from the 46% notified by the native woodland survey of Scotland. It also plans to restore some 10,000 hectares of native woodland to satisfactory condition in partnership with private woodland owners through deer management planning, as well as improving the condition of designated sites. A good proportion of those locations and native woodlands will be ancient woodlands. The will is there, and much good has been done.

[Rebecca Pow]

I am fascinated by the biodiversity route map. Can the hon. Gentleman expand a tiny bit on that? Is it voluntary, or is it put upon the good people of Scotland, who must come up with it?

[Calum Kerr]

The hon. Lady raises a good question. In the tradition of a Minister, if she will indulge me, I will get back to her on that, because I cannot tell her. I will happily confer with the Scottish Government and get back to her. It is a good question.

It is important to remain vigilant and consider, as the Woodland Trust has urged, stronger and explicit protections for these precious areas of land that we value so dearly. That should include, as ConFor suggests, greater protection through the planning system.

As Arthur Mee reminded us 80 years ago, a number of our trees might have watched a millennium pass. Some, he told us, might have seen the men counting the acres for the Conqueror’s Domesday Book. In Scotland, as we have heard, they could have reached their branches over William Wallace’s betrayal, the Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight from Culloden. Across these islands, they make our landscapes and cleave us to our history. Their forms and shadows are beautiful still, their value beyond price or measure. Let us cherish them and guard their futures, for in protecting them, we protect who we are too.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) on securing the debate. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), said, this is the third time I have faced him in this role in Westminster Hall—but it is my fourth time if I include another debate when a colleague of his stepped in.

I should begin by apologising for the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), cannot respond to the debate. He has responsibility for the relevant part of the portfolio, but he has been drawn back to Cumbria because of the flooding there, for reasons that I am sure hon. Members will understand. I have had to step into his place at quite short notice, but no one should think that he has no passion for the subject of the debate. I was shown a draft of his speech a little earlier today, and there were some characteristically poetic passages about trees and the passion that he feels for them.

I, too, am passionate about trees. I studied horticulture, and my thesis was on the physiology of deciduous trees in the temperate zone—particularly the issue of how they regulate dormancy. That is an important point: trees define our seasons. They have a remarkable ability accurately to measure day length so that at the same time of the year—every year, whether it is cold or hot—they decide to drop their leaves. They also have a remarkable ability to measure the length of the winter and know when it is safe to burst bud again and start spring. Trees do not get tricked by false springs. No warm snap in January will cause a tree to break dormancy early. They have a remarkable ability to measure the seasons accurately, and they define them.

As we have heard today, our ancient woodlands are highly valued and cherished. We have heard heartfelt contributions from, among others, my hon. Friends the Members for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) about ancient woodlands and habitats in their areas. Those woodlands are a resource rich in life, providing homes and food for animals, birds and insects. They store carbon, produce oxygen and filter out pollution. Of course, they also provide some of the most fantastic places for us to enjoy.

England’s woodland coverage is as high as it has been since the 14th century, totalling a little more than 1.3 million hectares, which equates to 41% of the UK total or 10% of England’s land area. Of course, we must not forget the position we were left with after the second world war, when, sadly, much of our ancient woodland was felled and replaced with non-native conifers.

That conifer planting was carried out on a large scale by the public and private sectors as a result of a policy drive to replenish the national timber reserve and to improve the economics of ancient woodlands. Since then we have made huge strides, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s we established the concept of ancient woodland, rich in plant diversity and managed through traditional practices. We now know, of course, that ancient woodlands are an irreplaceable habitat, which is why we recognise their special status in the national planning policy framework, which was last updated in 2012.



Since the last war, great efforts have been made to restore and actively manage our ancient woodlands. Estimates of ancient woodland coverage vary, but the ancient woodland inventory identifies approximately 340,000 hectares of woodland in England that is ancient. Nearly 200,000 hectares of that is semi-natural and 140,000 hectares is in plantations on ancient woodland sites. Subsequent estimates suggest that there are about 210,000 hectares of native woodland not on ancient woodland sites. Taken together, those three categories of woodland comprise just over half of England’s woodlands, at about 550,000 hectares.

We continue to work to restore our native and ancient woodlands on the public forest estate and many private woodland owners are motivated and incentivised to do likewise. We are committed to ensuring that our ancient woodlands are adequately protected and sustainably managed to provide a wide range of social, environmental and economic benefits to society. An example is the Government’s contribution to Grown in Britain, which includes helping owners of small woodland businesses who develop products such as high-end wood furniture from woodlands managed to the UK forestry standard. The value to society of the 40 million recreational visits to forests and woodlands is put at about £484 million per year; 65% of the population visited English woodland in 2013.

We are all aware, however, that there are many competing demands on our resources. We are a small island, more densely populated than India, and there are competing pressures on how we use the land that is our most precious resource. We have ambitions to increase woodland cover and improve the quality of our woodland management, but we must be mindful that those ambitions sit alongside a need to increase food production, create renewable energy and capture carbon, while also maintaining the mosaic of habitats that our wildlife depends on, such as our ancient woodlands. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane pointed out, we recognise that to compete globally we need to update and upgrade our ageing infrastructure, and foster development that enables our economic growth to be sustained.

We have, however, always made a special case for our ancient woodlands—and rightly so. That is why, as I said earlier, they are protected in the NPPF. The passage that deals with them states clearly and unambiguously that

“planning permission should be refused for development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats, including ancient woodland and…veteran trees…unless the need for, and benefits of, the development in that location clearly outweigh the loss”.

The position is very clear—there is protection—and I am not certain what more could be done; the Government certainly have no plans to undermine or change that position. However, I am aware that a number of hon. Members have made some suggestions about how things could be improved and I will return to those suggestions later.

We do not believe that we should simply look to protect our woodlands; we also want to invest in them. Sensitive management of our ancient woodlands can contribute to the challenges I have just mentioned—both capturing carbon and, through wood fuel, biomass-based renewable energy. Effective management can ensure protection against more subtle threats, such as shading of ancient woodland ground flora resulting from lack of management, in order to build resilience to climate change.

Our management continues to promote greater biological and structural diversity in England’s woodlands. In total, 75% of the public forest estate was identified in the Lawton review in 2010 as being critical to supporting the wildlife network and biodiversity in England. That is why the Government have invested more than £60 million in forestry during the past five years.

Private woodland owners continue to be motivated to bring unmanaged and under-managed woodlands back into management, reacting to demand-side initiatives such as Grown in Britain and the renewable heat incentive. Now, 58% of England’s woodlands are in active management, and to support our manifesto commitment we will continue to invest £31 million per annum during the new rural development programme for England, which will see a further 11 million trees planted during this Parliament.

As part of that commitment, we are working with the Woodland Trust to provide more opportunities for schoolchildren to plant, care for and learn about trees. That will give young children the chance to understand and connect with nature, and play a role in making their school grounds and local communities cleaner and greener, helping them to grow the ancient woodlands of the future.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend makes that point about education extremely eloquently, and it is important. Will these children be educated about the immense benefits of ancient woodlands in particular, because, as we have heard today, there is so much involved in them that children could learn from?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I certainly hope that schoolchildren learn about ancient woodlands because, as a number of hon. Members have said, those trees have seen major chapters of our history during their lifetime.

I will also point out that when it comes to the rural development programme, we are doing some direct work on ancient woodlands. More than 4,200 hectares of planted ancient woodland sites owned by the private sector were restored on ancient semi-natural woodlands between 2011 and 2014, and more than 6,500 hectares of plantations on ancient woodland sites have been worked on since April 2011 on the public forest estate.

I turn now to some of the points made by hon. Members in their contributions. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane talked about the importance of urban trees, and I agree. They are very important, and the Natural Capital Committee has noted that in its own report. It is also important to recognise that the NPPF covers both urban and rural areas, so the same protections apply whether trees are in rural or urban areas.

My hon. Friend and a number of other hon. Members talked about databases. We are interested in databases, so I would be interested to see the evidence about how one defines a “threat”, if one is identifying trees that might be under threat. We also recognise that local planning authorities, which ultimately take these decisions, do not report or collate data on ancient woodlands. As far as we are aware, there is no reporting or collating of information, and the shadow Minister raised that issue, too. We are certainly happy to look at it.

Of course, we have the ancient woodland inventory, which was developed in the 1980s. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase pointed out, we also have the Tree Register, a registered charity that updates a register on notable trees. That is very important, providing information on the size and growth of trees, as well as details of historical, rare or unusually significant trees. It, too, makes an important contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane and others also mentioned sites of special scientific interest and asked whether there could be designations of ancient woodlands as “triple SIs”. As a number of Members have already noted, many of our ancient woodlands are already designated as SSSIs, and Natural England is constantly looking for additional areas that should be so designated. Its work at the moment includes looking at additional ancient woodlands to be designated as SSSIs.

One point to note is that although designating an area as an SSSI is a stronger form of protection, in that there is a statutory role for Natural England if there is to be any development on those sites, the test is still quite similar: if the benefits of development outweigh any damage they can be considered. The test itself is broadly the same, but I accept that the level of protection is higher.

My hon. Friend also talked about strengthening the presumption to “wholly exceptional” when development is considered. I know that the Government have considered the issue before; they have taken the view that that change is not necessary because the existing protections are adequate. Nevertheless, I take on board the points she has made today and I am sure my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will read a transcript of this debate. He may want to look further at the arguments that she has so forcefully made about that issue.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane that we should accept that although planting new trees is important, and we will plant 11 million new trees during the course of this Parliament, it does not fully mitigate the loss of trees. In fact, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) pointed out, even though we are doing lots of planting and mitigation work—that work is important, particularly when it comes to High Speed 2—it cannot replace our ancient woodlands, which are irreplaceable. I accept that.

I move on to the comments made by my right hon. Friend. I know that she has been a tireless campaigner on the issue of HS2 and has many deep concerns about its impact on her constituency. I am pleased that some of the woodlands that she mentioned, such as Mantles wood, have been protected as a result of the decision to put a tunnel underneath the woodlands rather than through them. However, she has made a point today about the areas of outstanding natural beauty sites and other sites affected by that tunnel. I will take her concerns back to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and we will raise those concerns with colleagues in other Departments, notably the Department for Transport, which is making these decisions. We will write to her with our feedback on that process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I am sorry you missed it, Mr Walker. There was such eloquence and passion in the room. I had lots of interventions, so it was not just me talking for 28 minutes. I honestly and genuinely thank all the Chairs who have sat through the debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee, to which we had to make representations to secure the debate. When I went there, I had 76 MPs supporting me. Sadly, there is a one-line Whip on a Thursday, and there are floods and all sorts of other reasons why lots of them are not here, but I genuinely had loads of texts and emails from them saying, “I wish I could be there,” and, “Can you say this and can you say that?” I thank them.

I also thank my hon. Friends and other Members who have spoken today. My football team has left, but they did a grand job earlier. What passion and poetry we have had! How lovely! It showed the strength of feeling about the issue. We have had stories and images. We have had my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) in her Dingle and the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) swimming in his glen. We had Red Riding Hood with my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and so much more. We had my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) walking through the woods, and I am so pleased that she got out to the area of outstanding natural beauty to find out what it is really about. We have waxed lyrical, but it has been obvious that we have great cross-party consensus on this issue. My hon. Friends from Wales could not come, but I had a big Welsh contingent who truly support a lot of the ideas.

I thank the Farming Minister in particular. I am not sorry that he was the Minister who responded today. We would have loved to have had the Forestry Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but the Farming Minister has embraced the debate in a masterly fashion. I have learned something new about him. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham said, we learn something new every day: I did not realise that the Minister had studied horticulture. That was interesting.

I am heartened that there are a few chinks of light—possibly they are splinters—that we can work away at. The Minister is not saying no to everything, and I like the fact that he will look at the “wholly exceptional” wording and that he might look at the database and the collection of data, which we all mentioned. I urge him to continue with that work. Let us harness the passion and improve the protection. If we want not only our children, but our children’s children to experience some of the wonderful things that we have all talked about today, we have to save the 2% of ancient woodland that is left.

Exotic Pets Trade

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bellingham]

One of the problems is that the potential buyers’ expectations are often completely unrealistic. They often buy small animals that become very big animals.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

There has been a staggering 24% increase in the number of abandoned pets in the past five years. Does my hon. Friend think that might be related to the buying of exotic pets online, because people subsequently find that they are unsuitable for their homes and do not know how to look after them?

[Mr Bellingham]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. I am going to talk about abandoned pets in a moment, because that is one of the really big problems; I am also going to talk about biodiversity.

Two examples were brought to my attention by Born Free. A badly neglected African pygmy hedgehog was disposed like rubbish in a wet cardboard box somewhere in London and had to be rescued and taken to an animal hospital. There is also the case of the two bearded dragons found abandoned in a London cemetery. What often happens is that the pets—they are perhaps given for Christmas, and the children are very excited—become difficult to manage and are, inexcusably, abandoned. I ask the Minister what more can be done to ensure that officials in local authorities and other organisations are properly trained to deal with abandoned pets.

The welfare concerns need to be examined in more detail. We have to remember that the needs of such pets are challenging. Some of their needs are linked to certain environmental conditions that can be difficult to replicate in a domestic environment. Many animals need larger enclosures, a carefully controlled environment and specific levels of heat, light and ultraviolet light; otherwise, they might become ill. They also need to be allowed to exhibit natural behaviours such as burrowing, climbing and basking. Often, if they are not able to follow those natural instincts, they become aggressive and might even pick up diseases.

[Mr Bellingham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable about primates; I understand that there is a reserve for abandoned primates in her constituency. I agree with her 100%. I will talk about primates, which often have small bodies but large brains, in a moment; they are, by definition, highly intelligent animals.

There has been a big increase in the number of complaints about welfare issues regarding exotic pets.

[Rebecca Pow]

I, too, went to the launch that my hon. Friend attended. We were told that some of the animals can pass on diseases to human beings—it is called zoonosis. That is a real danger, and it has all happened since the legislation was introduced in the 1950s. Everything has changed, and we are not covered for it. The situation presents something of a danger.

[Mr Bellingham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some 70 pet-linked human diseases have been identified by various medical organisations, which is obviously a serious worry that I hope the Minister will comment on in his winding-up speech.

The ease of availability is closely linked to welfare concerns. Those of us who have children know that if someone goes to a pet shop such as Pets At Home—my son, who is now 16, used to go there to buy goldfish, hamsters and other things—they are given a great deal of advice about what to do. On occasion, my son was not allowed to go away with a goldfish or a hamster because the staff were not convinced that we had the right facilities at home. It is concerning that only 5% of the trade in puppies—I know that they are not exotic, but this is an indication of how the trade that goes through pet shops has declined—is now channelled through licensed pet shops.

If someone goes into a pet shop they can get all the advice they could possibly want, but buying on the internet is a very different matter. The Born Free Foundation carried out a survey called “One Click Away”, which looked at nearly 2,000 adverts from six different websites over a number of months. At any one moment, across those six websites, the total number of adverts selling exotic animals was thought to be about 25,000. The majority—about 52%—of the adverts were for reptiles, but 21% were for primates, many of which, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) pointed out, are not suitable for a home environment. And so it goes on.

[Mr Bellingham]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that excellent intervention. He is absolutely right. Rather than commenting myself, I ask the Minister to address those points.

I asked Born Free to look at my home county of Norfolk to see what might be available online, and it discovered an internet advert stating

“bearded dragon no tank needed gone tonight”

with a price of £10. A bearded dragon is quite small, but down the road a female yellow anaconda was for sale with a “final reduction” price of £100. This anaconda is 7 feet long and would require a serious amount of space and care, and yet, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) points out, there is no screening or checking on the internet to see whether the buyer is first time or potentially unsuitable. Again in Norfolk, not very far away, a 6½-foot orange corn snake was for sale “in good health” and priced at £60 with a 4-foot fish tank. I do not know about the Minister, but I find that the idea of a 6½-foot corn snake living in a 4-foot tank is challenging. Perhaps he could comment on that. There are plenty of other examples of pets for sale—vast numbers.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) pointed out, primates can be highly intelligent and have much larger brains than most animals of the same size. They have complex language skills, show advanced learning, numerical ability and planning, and perform tactical social interactions. They are much more likely to suffer severely, both physically and psychologically, if they are not properly looked after. After all, they are used to social groups and having their natural needs attended to in the wild. In captivity, however, unless the owner has an exceptional amount of knowledge of the species, there can be many welfare issues, including, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall pointed out, bone disease, diabetes and psychological problems. I am not saying that we should put more emphasis on primates than other animals, but they must be considered carefully by the Minister, the shadow Minister and other colleagues.

Abandoned pets, as has already been mentioned in an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), are another issue. People often make impulse purchases, particularly given the ease of buying on the internet, and have completely unrealistic expectations about how easy it will be to manage an animal. Animals often get bigger and may develop psychological problems and become more aggressive, and thus more dangerous.

I referred to two cases of animal abandonment a moment ago—the pygmy hedgehog and the two bearded dragons—but abandonment and animal welfare are not the only concerns: there is also the possible impact on the local habitat. Coming from a rural farming background, the Minister will be well aware of several invasive species, ranging from non-native crayfish to muntjac deer to the mandarin duck, that have caused big challenges in this country. According to the British Veterinary Association, there are at least 51 types of released reptiles and amphibians in the London area alone. Those species could easily harbour a whole suite of novel pathogens that could impact on livestock and pet health—or indeed on human health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane mentioned. The BVA has already identified 70 pet-linked human diseases.

We should also consider the impact of such animals being traded and captured on the local wild populations in other countries, some of which may be poor, developing nations that do not have the capacity to control or regulate the trade. There are already several examples of species being depleted, and far more research needs to be done on the origin of exotic pets to find ways of following the supply chain as they leave their countries and are traded into the developed world.

[Rebecca Pow]

On that point, something else has come to light on which it would be interesting to get the Minister’s view. I do not believe that quarantine procedures are in place for many exotic species, so they can be brought in without controls by pet shops or internet providers to distribute here. They do not have to stay anywhere to be checked for diseases and all the rest of it.

[Mr Bellingham]

That neatly leads me on to my next point. Is the law adequate? Let us first look at what the law says now. The overarching legislation is the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which imposes a legal responsibility on all pet owners to provide for their animal’s basic needs. With the vast numbers of animals around, however, how can the Act be policed except through whistleblowing or an inspector’s concerns about a particular family, perhaps based on information from neighbours? It is a good Act, but it needs to be complemented by other legislation. The selling by pet shops of exotic animals is regulated by the Pet Animals Act 1951, and I believe that sufficient controls are in place for how animals are looked after in pet shops. Mortality during transportation is a big issue, however.

Most pet shops, particularly stores such as Pets at Home, really pride themselves on finding out all the details of where pets originate from. For pets traded on the internet, however, there are no such constraints—it is basically a complete free-for-all. The 1951 Act regulates and controls licensed premises, but there are no controls for those who set up online as individuals trading perhaps one or two animals. If they do it on a regular basis, they can be asked to go through the licensing process, but that does not happen often.

[Rebecca Pow]

What my hon. Friend is saying is very interesting and I thank him for giving way again. Many big stores such as Pets at Home have wonderful systems in place for licensing pets and giving advice, but many smaller ones have a different array of licences, so there is no evenness across the table. That needs to be looked at, as I think the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who is also on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, would probably agree.

[Mr Bellingham]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

We have the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, which deal with a small percentage of the total number of animals that we are discussing. There is also the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which gives protection to some native species that might once have been considered for keeping as exotic pets and prohibits the release of exotic species into the wild. The UK is also part of the Bern convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats and other similar EU statutes. A legislative framework is therefore in place, but are the Acts and conventions being properly implemented and adhered to? Will the Minister urgently review and update the Pet Animals Act 1951, which completely predates the large-scale sale of animals over the internet?

I understand that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced a review of all animal licensing to take place next year, so will the Minister consider the 1951 Act and the other legislation as part of that process? This is a big opportunity for the Government to get a grip on the matter, to seize the initiative and to get on the front foot and show that DEFRA, the lead Department, will work with other Departments to try to make a difference, because the law is out of date. I am certainly not part of the nanny-state tendency and do not want excessive regulation, but there is an argument for updating and making the existing legislation fit for purpose. I also ask the Minister to look at the training and capacity of local authority licensing officers to check whether they have the right processes in place.

We will be hearing from the spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), but will the Minister work with the devolved Administrations to ensure an overall look at the issue throughout the UK? If the same review that is to take place under DEFRA also took place in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, that would be helpful.

There is cross-party support for and the momentum to get behind a DEFRA initiative, but it has to be the right initiative. We have seen a steady increase in the trade in exotic pets and a real decline in the standards of welfare in a minority of cases—the vast majority of pet and exotic pet owners look after their pets well and have high standards, but many do not. Given all the problems that flow from poor welfare, pet abandonment and everything to do with biodiversity and the impacts on habitats and human health, the time has come for the Government to act—and they would have the House’s support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

I totally agree, and that is the point I made about the role of fad and fashion. I made the point about meerkats and tried to deal with it light-heartedly, but it is a serious point. Meerkats are not cuddly animals that can be kept easily in a home environment, but we see a growing trend for that kind of pet ownership, which is totally unacceptable. On a personal level—this is not a party political line—I think it is unacceptable that a wide range of exotic animals sold in pet shops should be sold to be kept in domestic environments. I do not understand why anyone would want to keep a pet snake or a pet spider.

[Rebecca Pow]

I want to back up what the hon. Lady is saying. Something like half of all pets sold through pet shops are venomous snakes, alligators and crocodiles. That is frightening, so I urge the Minister to look at the law.

[Angela Smith]

I totally agree. I am pleased that a review of legislation on the licensing of the breeding and sale of animals is on the way, but that aspect of the trade needs to be looked at carefully. Public safety ramifications that go beyond the Animal Welfare Act need to be looked at as well and given a bit of separate attention.

Pets are not a fashion accessory and should not be exposed to the throwaway culture of modern fashion. Some animals should not be kept as pets at all. Blue Cross and Born Free, in their “One Click Away” campaign, want to see a ban on keeping primates as pets. This is a bit of an old chestnut, but does the Minister agree that primates should not be kept as household pets?

Pet shops sell exotic animals to meet a demand and because of the high profits to be had by so doing. There is nothing wrong with making money, but we must be careful and make sure that animal welfare is not compromised in the process of making a living. In many cases, animals may not be dangerous or endangered. It is not illegal to own exotic pets, but even if it is not illegal, in some cases the trade drives habitat destruction and the extinction of animals in the wild. That cannot be right or good for the species involved, nor is it possible to meet the welfare needs of exotic pets in a domestic environment.

I thank Blue Cross and Born Free for their campaigning work, which has been invaluable and should be commended. I for one appreciate all they do in highlighting this and many other animal welfare issues. I know that the Minister is a reasonable man and he is very competent, so I look forward to a full and thorough response to the points raised in the debate.