Public Access to Nature

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

This is a rare debate, is it not, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is becoming an ode to nature; a long series of prose poems of colleagues’ enjoyment of nature and what it brings to us and our constituents.

I very much enjoyed listening to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) describe her upcoming walk with her father, now in his 80s, and the joy that will bring them both. My father is now 94. Sadly, his walking days are very much behind him, but they are strong in his memory. He can still vividly describe landscape, nature and birds from throughout his long life. I am sure that is true for everyone here and across the country. I welcome this debate, opened in style by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), with strong support for things that she and so many of us believe in.

My starting observation would be that my sense of nature and public access to it is slightly less central and less driven by Government fiat; it is more about the joys of volunteers, charities and individuals incrementally improving the landscape around us, to hand it on to our children and grandchildren in slightly better shape than we inherited it. It is more a conservative vision of what human involvement with nature is all about. That is what I want to touch on today.

In many ways, one would expect the representative of the city of Gloucester to talk about access to the great nature all around our city. We are so close to the Cotswolds escarpment, Crickley hill, and all of the lands that Laurie Lee and Ivor Gurney described so beautifully. Whether up in the hills or looking the other way to the Forest of Dean, May hill and even to the Malvern hills —which we can see clearly from quite a lot of Gloucester, and where I vividly remember as a small boy tobogganing from school through the snow—we are part of a wider landscape around us. That includes the River Wye, which, despite everything that one might read, is still a wonderful place to go swimming, whether from Lydbrook or Symonds Yat. It has some of the most spectacular country for walking, swimming and canoeing, arguably. That is a free advert for my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).

It is about recognition that in each part of the country that we represent, we have very special nature all around us. As a couple of Members have already said, that came to the fore during the pandemic, when at one stage we were able to go five or six miles for our daily exercise. Five or six miles from Gloucester leads to spectacular places, including Haresfield Beacon, close to where Beatrix Potter used to draw. Aren’t we lucky?

I want to focus on what is happening within my own urban environment in Gloucester. There are lessons and opportunities for the whole country from what is happening in the small city, which the Minister knows so well—she was there not long ago. We could not find a better champion for nature and everything that it can bring to us than the Minister and her colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

What is Gloucester all about? It is 5.5 square miles of urban environment, which happens to include the Robinswood hill, and water in the shape of both the River Severn and the Sharpness to Gloucester canal, as well as other things that I will come to. It has many parks, most of them enhanced considerably over the past dozen years, often with playgrounds—the city council has doubled the number playgrounds in Gloucester over the past 12 years. Playgrounds are often the entry point for small children to first visit and be around nature with their parents and grandparents.

In the same sense, we are lucky to have the headquarters of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust on Robinswood, which has understood that amazing asset and now taken over its management from the city council. That is a really good example, if the House will tolerate this, of what some people would call privatisation but I would call simply a more imaginative management of important resources, better done by a specialist charity. In the same way, the Canal and River Trust has done such a good job of looking after our major canals all around the country, although there are one or two things about that I will come to. It was handed over from British Waterways by a very good Minister in DEFRA at that time, Richard Benyon, who is now in the other place and still doing great work on the environment for his country. We are lucky, geographically, to have those amazing assets. We are also lucky to have good partnerships that make the most of them.

Thematically, I am looking at ways in which we can preserve, enhance and create. Preservation almost speaks for itself, but preserving and enhancing together is a theme that every wildlife trust in the country should—and no doubt is—looking at. The Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, under the leadership of its recently moved on chief executive Roger Matlock, who is now taking over the Council for the Protection of Rural England, led some important steps forward to use Robinswood as a place for education and enjoyment. Sustainable wooden playgrounds and enhanced car parks have been used as a way of bringing families in from all backgrounds.

Colleagues have made points about people from ethnic minority communities who live further from nature than others. That is true in some parts of the country, no doubt, but in a city our size of only 5.5 square miles, where we have a primary school that has more than 50 nationalities, we are all very close to the extraordinary combination of the canal, the hill, the river and the lakes. The question is, does everyone have equal inspiration and drive to go and find, use and draw pleasure from those great natural assets? That is where schools play a major part.

I want to highlight Meadowside and Clearwater in Quedgeley, which has its own town council in the city of Gloucester. Those two primary schools—both rather different, one very new—have embraced the opportunities that using the green spaces and exploring outside can offer children. They are joined by many schools in Gloucester—Abbeymead Primary School was the first to take up my offer for every child in our city to plant a tree at the new Hempsted woods on our recycling centre, where we hope to plant 100,000 trees. Almost 8,000 have been planted so far by five schools. We have a long way to go, but the opportunity is huge and some schools are seizing it fast, particularly the local Hempsted primary.

Creation is important, too, and it can be done in lots of different ways. After the terrible floods of 2007, which hit Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Worcestershire and all around the River Severn, the Environment Agency, encouraged by the Government, created a new balancing pond that will become a diversion for the Sud Brook, rather than it flooding the suburbs of Elmbridge and Longlevens, in particular. That balancing pond serves the functional task of protecting humans, but it has also become an incredibly attractive area for birds, ducks and marine life. It now provides a wonderful leisure opportunity for people to walk and picnic with their families and dogs, with some areas protected so that dogs cannot disrupt nesting birds, ducks, moorhens and coots. That is a creative way in which a government agency has prevented the flooding that had badly impacted thousands of people’s lives, as flooding does, and provided a huge new natural resource that everybody can enjoy.

On a more micro level, in Barton and Tredworth ward, which has the least green space and the most ethnic diversity, last year we were able to open a new community garden—the Sudbrook Community Garden—which I have wanted to do for a long time. With the help of several partners, including businesses, the city council and a housing association, we were able to deliver. I know on the Minister’s next visit to Gloucester this little pocket park will inspire her, as it excites me and provides wonderful opportunities for people living nearby. It includes a little brook beside it.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful speech. Last week, I had the pleasure of a walk around Poulshot, in my constituency, with Dave Yearsley and Tim Lewis from the Wiltshire Ramblers. They showed me a series of brilliant interventions to make the countryside accessible, most of which had been done by volunteers. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we empowered local councils, particularly parish councils, and encouraged landowners to do their duty to keep paths open and properly accessible, we could bring in a huge number of volunteers who would also step up and we could open up all those wonderful lanes and paths to a far greater part of the population?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as he so often is on issues to do with communities, volunteering and the big society, which many of us were inspired by when first we came to this House. That is true in practical ways, as well, because the joy of charities being involved is that they have access to funding and foundations that city or parish councils do not necessarily have. When there are partnerships between private landowners, communities, such as the ones he described, and charities, all sorts of good things can happen.

A good example of that is the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Severn treescapes project, a 60-mile walk along the edge of the River Severn that crosses five, if not six, constituencies. It provides a walk along the riverbanks from which people will derive huge pleasure—it is a massive opportunity. The project has been supported by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which funded the trees, but it is also a collaborative, community effort. If we can get one plus one plus one to equal about five and a half, that is definitely the way forward. I am sure we will hear more about that from the Minister in due course.

Let me continue on my brief tour around scenic Gloucester, Mr Deputy Speaker, which I hope will inspire you and others to visit this most spectacular small city. I pay tribute to the Gloucester Urban Greening Project, a collaboration between the county council, a couple of borough councils, the University of Gloucestershire and the Environment Agency. The project has delivered some remarkable and tangible incremental improvements.

For example, in no particular order, in Quedgeley, in the south-west of my constituency, the Quedgeley orchard now has an area left as meadow, with paths cut through it. This is an increasingly fashionable thing for people to do in their gardens, as well as in bigger spaces. Many councils are adopting the No Mow May approach, not in order to save money on mowing, of which some accuse them, but in order to allow for greater biodiversity. Wild flowers can be seen on the edges of roads such as Eastern Avenue and the entrance to Westgate, and there is much greater enjoyment of those areas by humans as well as by bees, damselflies, dragonflies and others. The fruit trees in Quedgeley are available for anyone to harvest and eat, which is always attractive.

We have the Friends of Saintbridge Pond, whose founder and former chairman, Ken, has sadly just died. He leaves the great legacy of a wonderful wildlife space that is rather hidden from many people’s knowledge, but which is right in the middle of Gloucester. It benefits from grants provided by the county council.

I touched on the Sud Brook, where it comes through Barton and Tredworth, but in Barnwood and Abbeydale the re-naturalisation of the Sud Brook has created more wild flower meadows and wetland features, and we have greater numbers of moorhens and coots, as well as bees and dragonflies. In Barnwood Park, the wetland areas beside the balancing pond are much more biodiverse than they were a decade ago, as is the balancing pond at Appleton Way.

The land around the Clock Tower, on which there was a mental health institution years ago, has been spectacularly reinvented as a centre for native tree planting and wild flower meadows, providing great enjoyment for residents.

At the King George V playing fields, which has been a large sports area for almost 100 years, we have added a huge amount of tree planting around the edges. The spoil removed for the swales will be used to create butterfly banks, which will provide habitat for other pollinators. That is good news for primary schools on the edge of the King George V playing fields.

At Matson and Robinswood, towards the great hill, we have done a huge amount. When I say “we”, I mean everybody collectively. Nobody should try to take individual ownership, because we must encourage everybody to create and to take individual and collective community ownership to make these projects sustainable and successful for more generations. Matson Park has improved, as has Haycroft Drive. We can see similar trends across the constituency of allowing more wild flowers and meadows, with paths through them. That greatly increases the amount of insects and birds that we can all see on our walks or cycle rides around the city.

Part of the success of an active wildlife trust is stimulating friends of parks organisations, whether that is the Friends of Gloucester Park, the Friends of Tuffley Park or others. There are more such groups and the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust co-ordinates them. There are sessions where they can share best practice, look at how best to access new seeds, talk about tips on planting, and look at the management of friends’ groups, so that the finances are in good order and the governance is safe and accountable. All those things add to a greater sense of ownership. It is less about, “Why hasn’t the council done this, that or the other?” and more about, “What can we do, as friends of the park close to where we live, to help improve the state of the park, to litter- pick it ourselves and to take much more ownership and joy in what is being done?”

That can include restorative justice. Some 18 months ago, I planted 20 cherry trees—the sakura tree—donated by Japan in Gloucester Park. Just as they came into blossom, in spring last year, sadly all 20 of them were cut down by an individual. That was captured on CCTV and we know who the individual is. I am going to ask him to come and plant another 20 trees, which have again generously been donated by Japan. We will do that this autumn. I hope that the individual involved will come and take ownership and want to protect these trees, rather than to attack them, forever after.

I could talk about lots more, but I want to touch on two things, because not everything is rosy. Opportunities also have challenges. What is great about having water can mean floods or drought. We have work still to do on Alney Island with the Environment Agency, particularly to try to protect the Showmen’s Guild community who have lived there for a very long time and who travel around the country for many of their fairs. We need to do a bit more to protect them. I will be seeing the Environment Agency soon to discuss progress.

Likewise, we have had problems with our canal because of the severe drought in the River Severn. Water lifted and taken into the canal had a heavy amount of silt. Dredging has gone on for longer this year and been less satisfactory than it should have been, which has led to difficulties for narrowboats coming to moor in the basins of the canal in Gloucester, and to some friction from businesses that feel they have lost out as a result. I have had encouraging meetings with the chief executive and others in the Canal & River Trust, and I believe that all the problems should be resolved by 6 June and that lessons have been learnt. However, there is clearly a need for large stakeholder groups to meet regularly and share problems, communicate what is being done and check that everyone is happy, knows what events are coming up and will support them. That is one of the lessons that we have learnt and will act on.

Sometimes, of course, human needs will clash with the needs of nature. There is what I consider to be a sensible plan to develop a sports hub and some playing pitches in the large open field at Blackbridge, in Podsmead. That will be good for children living in the area—they will no longer have to travel several miles for their sports, which will also reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality—but it will slightly reduce the space available for dog walking and so on. We have to manage the different interests in a way that means the green spaces are still there, but human needs are taken into account as well.

I know that the Government will play their part in all this, working with charities and statutory agencies such as the Environment Agency to ensure that those of us who treasure what nature offers in our constituencies—paddleboarding, walking or cycling in Gloucestershire, which I spend so much of my time doing—have opportunities to pass on to our children and grandchildren, providing the best public access to nature that we possibly can.