Plans to Improve the Natural Environment and Animal Welfare

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, with the indulgence of the House I will speak briefly in the gap. I had not put my name down because I did not think that I would make it to the start of the debate, but as it happens I just made it. I will speak briefly and will confine myself to one point; I promise not to be what my noble friend Lord Framlingham might call a Back-Bench borer.

My point is simply to say that we must not on this issue sound like what Spiro Agnew called the “nattering nabobs of negativism”. We have heard negative things about the environment throughout this afternoon, and all too often this is how we talk about the environment, in terms of things getting worse. While there is a lot wrong with the environmental condition of the planet and the country, some things are going in the right direction, and we should build our policy on the successes there have been.

When I was a child, the River Tyne had no salmon in it or otters or ospreys, but now it has all three. That is a dramatic improvement that I have seen in my lifetime. I now farm my own farm in such a way that tree sparrows have come back. I have planted the largest wildflower meadow in the north of England, which I am proud of; it is absolutely buzzing with bees and other things. We also have hares and curlews breeding again. So you can improve the environment while farming—not profitably, in my case, but at least not with significant losses.

I spent a glorious couple of dawns this spring in Weardale watching the lekking display of the blackcock. If none of your Lordships have seen this, it is our British bird of paradise. These males gather together and do sex and violence for about three hours in the dawn light. The place I went to had five males 10 years ago; it now has over 100. The noise of the curlews calling was continuous—there was literally not a moment during those dawns when you could not hear a curlew in the background. That is largely because of gamekeepers in that area. My noble friend Lord Caithness mentioned Allerton, where the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust is showing that profitable farming can live alongside great conservation and great improvement in soil quality. I was taken there recently by Alastair Leake of the trust in Loddington, who dug his spade into the ground and showed me how deep the worms go there because of low-till or min-till agriculture.

My noble friend mentioned South Georgia; I was lucky enough to go there last year and it is a paradise of wildlife: there are unbelievable numbers of king penguins, fur seals, elephant seals, albatrosses and petrels. But it is not a pristine wilderness—it is a restored masterpiece. A hundred years ago there were no fur seals, almost no elephant seals, hardly any king penguins and no whales—we saw right whales and humpback whales around the coast. Why? Because we used those things as a renewable energy resource. That is what we were doing to that ecosystem. We have now restored it, so it can be done.

We should remember to build our policy on the environment on the success stories of how we have solved these problems rather than simply continue to talk about them as if they were insoluble and as if there was nothing we can do.