Hedgerows: Legal Protection

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Trudy Harrison

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow]

That is a good point. First, let us look at what is happening in our other schemes; this is not just about SFI. We have seen a huge appetite for our country- side stewardship schemes. There are now 49,000 miles of hedgerow that have one or both sides managed under the countryside stewardship or environmental stewardship options; and famers have already signed up for 2,300 agreements, including 5,474 hedgerow actions.

Lots of farmers have opted to do a number of actions through the SFI. Remember that this is a new scheme; farmers are rolling off their countryside stewardship schemes on to the new scheme, which is expanding every day. The best thing to do is to be positive and encouraging, rather than negative and damning. I think the former nature Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland, would agree that we need to be positive about what is going on. This is a new, positive scheme. Please encourage farmers to apply for it, because the money and the options are there. We want our farmers and land managers to make the most of their hedgerows, and we support them in taking actions such as assessing and recording hedgerow condition, rotational cutting, and even leaving some hedgerows uncut altogether, which is obviously great for our nature and wildlife, and for those frothing, burgeoning hedgerows full of blackthorn and hawthorn. As I have said, farmers and land managers created or restored 8,450 miles of hedgerow through countryside stewardship capital grants, which is a great addition to our reaching our targets.

I have a few minutes left to cover some other points. The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) made a good point about skills. We obviously need skills; we are aware of that and have a green jobs taskforce, with which I am involved. Through a lot of our tree strategy and action plan to plant trees, we have a big focus on skills, training and apprenticeships, including Forestry Commission apprenticeships; new funding of £4.5 million from the nature for climate fund was put towards this issue. Last year, 1,000 people undertook training in skills connected with trees, which inevitably includes skills connected with hedgerows. That is really ramping up. Those people will be out there, working together, and able to help and advise on schemes.

[Trudy Harrison]

There has been an awful lot of good discussion about the importance of farming, but could I draw the Minister’s attention to the importance of encouraging gardeners? There are 30 million or so gardens and gardeners in the country already bringing benefits, but they could do even more to plant and protect hedgerows in those gardens. She recently visited RHS Wisley, which I have also visited. I was blown away by the knowledge of Professor Alistair Griffiths there, who talked about the physical and mental benefits of horticulture. I would also like to draw attention to the work of the Horticultural Trades Association and the all-party parliamentary group on gardening and horticulture in this area.

[Rebecca Pow]

That gives me a great opportunity to talk about gardening; I used to be a gardening presenter and journalist. In my garden, I garden for wildlife. My hon. Friend makes such a good point. Our gardens in this country equate to a million hectares of land. Think how important that is as a wildlife habitat. I urge everyone to look after nature in their gardens and plant those trees. They should also take part in the big garden birdwatch, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.

The shadow Minister was somewhat damning about nature, but we have a plan for nature. I cannot work out what Labour’s plan for nature would be. It is all very well to keep saying that Labour will integrate its approach, but we do not know where its £28 billion, which keeps being bandied about, is coming from. We have a plan, which started with the Environment Act 2021 and the targets set in it, and includes the environmental improvement plan, which has been so well referenced by colleagues. That is a plan with a framework and targets. Without targets, there is nothing to aim at. The targets inform the policies.

Intense work continues at DEFRA on the biodiversity targets. We have to gather all the evidence on insects, birds and plants. That is an ongoing enormous task that is ever-changing, but we are doing that, day in, day out, to inform our policies. Where we need to tweak polices—for example, if we need to up the SFI payments for a certain sector that is not delivering enough for nature while also producing food—we will be able to do so. That is the beauty of this system. Nobody else has a system like this; it is globally leading. It is very complicated, because it involves nature and is ever-changing. It is not as easy as, for example, dealing with emissions from industry. A bit of credit for that would be welcomed. People out there need to understand that we are on the side of nature, and we genuinely think we could hit the target of halting the decline of species, if we got everything lined up in the right place, and had the positivity of parliamentarians behind us.

There was a quick reference to Dame Glenys Stacey’s report. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon that since that review, our work on regulation has responded to many challenges. There has been a huge amount of work on how we make farming regulation clearer, fairer and more effective—issues to which she referred. The Government have not published a formal response to Dame Glenys’s report. However, in both the agricultural transition plan published in 2020 and the recent update published this month, we outline our vision for a regulatory system that helps the vast majority of farmers who want to and try to do the right thing, and supports them when things go wrong.

We have already made a lot of improvements to the regulatory system—improvements that farmers genuinely wanted. We have had a lot of engagement with farmers, stakeholders and the National Farmers Union in particular. The improvements include: reducing unfair penalties for farmers’ minor errors, which is something that annoyed them about the CAP system—I am sure that the shadow Minister would agree; removing duplication of standards to make the system clearer for farmers; reducing administrative burdens and paperwork; and implementing a more preventive approach to monitoring and enforcement.

There is a huge amount of synergy in the room on the issue of hedgerows, which I think we all agree are very important. The Government are committed to introducing protections for hedgerows when parliamentary time permits. For me, they are a priority. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon, who is a great champion for hedgerows and will remain so.