Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-07-12
Topic: Public Lands
Rupert Carington (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is a challenge to follow a contribution as knowledgeable as that which we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular as an owner of both ancient and not-so-ancient woodland. I will speak to Amendments 258, 259 and 260, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. While understanding their worthy intention, I oppose them, but I give my full support to Amendment 260A of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, as will become clear My reasons for opposing Amendments 258, 259 and 260 are as follows. With regard to Amendment 258, I agree with almost every word that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. There is much misunderstanding of the words "ancient woodland". A great many woods listed as "ancient woodland" are not ancient at all, although they may occupy the site of a wood that once met that description In England, during the first half of the last century, many of these woods were clear-felled, principally due to the exigencies of war. After the Second World War, many farmers and landowners who were, like others, desperately short of cash, sold or leased their woods to the Forestry Commission, which then planted them according to the norms of the time, which often meant Corsican pine, spruce and similar species, without sufficient regard for their suitability or the location. Much of that woodland has been felled in its turn, and new trees, often native species, have been planted All I am saying is that we should be careful about how we envisage ancient woodlands. They are often anything but ancient and often distinctly commercial, so placing them on the same level as an SSSI is not always appropriate and could be distinctly counter- productive if they are to be managed commercially Amendment 259 is much more worthy of support, with its objective of preventing the importation of diseases, but I cannot accept a situation where native broad-leaved trees and shrubs are sourced only from UK growers and grown within the UK for their entire life. I will give two reasons. First, with our huge tree-planting ambitions—in particular in urban planting, where more mature trees are required—domestically sourced trees are unlikely to be able to fulfil this requirement for many years, as has already been said by the noble Earl, Lord Devon Secondly, surely science and gene editing will steadily improve the safety of imports? With the effects of climate change, we need to look at importing trees grown in more southerly climates, as mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. Obviously, we need to stringently inspect and test such imports, but please do not forget that ash dieback was spread by wind, not soil I was hoping to hear from the proposers of Amendment 260 who would do all the work, and with what resources. Setting out the vision, objectives and policies is pretty simple, but that cannot be said of assembling the underlying information to see what targets are achieved. No doubt it is fine in the case of woodland and forestry owned by the Forestry Commission and other institutional owners such as the Woodland Trust, but think of the burden that this imposes on private owners without access to the generous taxpayer or charitable or institutional funding. Some of the information required may also be of dubious value. I hate to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but there is a problem in proposed new subsection 3(c) on woodland creation achieved from natural regeneration. Where I live, the natural regeneration at present is almost exclusively ash, which is unlikely to survive Chalara.