I beg to move amendment No. 38, in clause 1, page 1, line 13, at end insert—

‘(4A)The functions of the Forestry Commission for regulation and the provision of advice and incentives, so far as those functions are exercisable in relation to England, are transferred to Natural England.’.

I am pleased to be able to move the first amendment in our consideration of the Bill. It refers to an issue that was debated extensively by the Select Committee and which arose in Lord Haskins’s report, which gave rise to the legislation. The issue is that of forestry.

This is largely a probing amendment. The Select Committee quite clearly believed—as did Lord Haskins—that much of the role of the Forestry Commission relating to England should be transferred to Natural England. We appreciate that, since devolution in Scotland and Wales, the issue of the Forestry Commission has become more complicated. However, the Government are already proposing to shift policy from the Forestry Commission back to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If they shift policy back to DEFRA, what will be left are regulatory matters and the issue of grants and incentives in the forestry sector. Those things differ from country to country in the devolved authorities. The grant and regulatory systems in Scotland are different from those in England. Reading the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s proposals, I came to the view that the Government’s argument for not shifting the remaining function to Natural England was somewhat thin. Their argument seems to rely entirely on the idea that that would lead to even greater complexity in Natural England than exists at the moment.

There are already problems with forestry and the Forestry Commission. The commission is suffering ever-increasing losses and there are costs to the taxpayer year on year. I accept that some of that is to do with the collapse of timber markets in the past few years, but it is also to do with the fact that the commission has developed into activities that it perhaps should not be involved in, such as holiday cabins. There is a serious comparison to be drawn with the support that is going into the private forestry sector, which is of course by far the biggest overall owner of woodland and forestry in this country. About £20 million is being spent on the private sector in England, in terms of grants, compared with a loss of £350-odd million in relation to the Forestry Commission’s activities. That seems a huge imbalance.

The development of Natural England is about land use and conserving the natural environment. A great many of Natural England’s functions, which we will debate later, refer to the relationship between Natural England and land managers. We will discuss management agreements. Natural England will be responsible for implementing the Government’s changes to environmental care schemes. There are the replacements relating to stewardship, including the entry-level scheme and the higher-level scheme. All those schemes will be dealt with by Natural England.

Those of us who take an interest in these things—by which I mean members of this Committee and others—know that there is an ever-increasing trend in the countryside for land use to be more all-embracing. Many more farmers are planting woodlands or forests on their land and the whole interrelationship between forestry and other forms of land use is becoming ever closer. I therefore find it much harder to understand why the Government seem to insist that the implementation of forestry and woodland policy should remain distinct from all the other issues that Natural England will take on board. That is the gist of the amendment.

I am content that the Government are shifting the policy issue back to DEFRA, but that enhances the case for saying that the rest of the work of the Forestry Commission—I am not talking about managing the forestry estate; I am talking about the regulation and incentives side of the commission’s work—should transfer to Natural England. We already know that some 10 per cent. of the English landscape is covered in woodland. Many people would like it to be considerably more. There is ever-increasing interest from landowners and managers in developing that idea.

The concept of biomass is also on the horizon. You can rest assured that I am not going to go very far down that road, Mr. Forth, but there is ever-increasing interest from the Government, and the Opposition and other outside bodies, in the planting of crops or woodlands—in the form of poplar or willow coppice—for biomass production. In such a situation, we really would see an interaction between agriculture and forestry policy. If there is going to be—as many believe is possible—a huge development in the planting of coppice in the next few years for biomass production, it seems an even better argument for dealing with all the issues under one roof. Otherwise, we have a recipe for confusion.

As I said at the outset, I will not pretend to the Committee that I have necessarily chosen the precise words that do the job properly in this amendment, but I wanted to take the opportunity to challenge the Government to explain more clearly their reason for rejecting the Select Committee’s proposals. I note with interest that the hon. Member for Sherwood has absented himself from this debate because it deals with an issue where the Select Committee was at odds with the Government. I hope that the Minister will go a   little deeper into the Government’s reasoning rather than simply referring to the issue of complexity. As I have tried to explain to the Committee, that has been partly resolved anyway by the Government’s decision to shift policy out of the Forestry Commission and by the current devolved set-up within the commission.

We are considering why we cannot integrate that process with the overall purposes of Natural England in order to have a genuine one-stop shop—the phrase used by many organisations—for land managers, farmers, those in rural communities and others who are involved with the landscape and the countryside so that they are not subject to the confusion I referred to; not knowing who may be involved with a particular policy area.

There is no need for me to repeat any of my points, and I hope that I have made my case clearly to the Minister. I ask him to take the opportunity to explain to the Committee in a bit more detail the Government’s reasoning for rejecting the Select Committee’s proposals on this point.