New Clause 17 - Tree felling and planting

Environment Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:15 pm on 24 November 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

“(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish and execute in conjunction with the devolved administrations a target for the percentage of land in the UK under forest or woodland cover by 2050.

(2) The target shall be at least 19% of UK land under forest or woodland cover by 2050.

(3) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish and execute a target for the percentage of land in England under forest and woodland cover by 2050.

(4) The target shall be at least 14.5% of land in England under woodland or forest cover.

(5) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish interim targets for the increase in hectares of land in England under forest or woodland cover for each five year period up to 2050.

(6) The interim targets shall be not less than an additional 80,000 hectares of land under forest or woodland cover for each five year interim target period up to 2030, and not less than an additional 10,0000 hectares of land for each five year interim target period thereafter.”—

Brought up, and read the First time.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 19—Duty to prepare a Tree Strategy for England—

“(1) The Government must prepare a Tree Strategy for England as set out in subsection (2) and (3).

(2) The strategy must set out the Government’s vision, objectives, priorities and policies for trees in England including individual trees, woodland and forestry, and may set out other matters with respect to the promotion of sustainable management of trees in these contexts.

(3) The Tree Strategy for England must include the Government’s targets and interim targets with respect to—

(a) the percentage of England under tree cover;

(b) hectares of new native woodland creation achieved by tree planting;

(c) hectares of new native woodland creation achieved by natural regeneration;

(d) the percentage of native woodland in favourable ecological condition; and

(e) hectares of Plantation on Ancient Woodland (PAWS) undergoing restoration.

(4) The Government must keep the Tree Strategy for England under review, and may, if they consider it appropriate to do so, revise the strategy.

(5) If the Government has not revised the Tree Strategy for England within the period of 10 years beginning with the day on which the strategy was last published, they must revise the strategy.”

The aim of this new clause is to ensure that the Government prepares a tree strategy for England. It will ensure that the Government has to produce targets for the protection, restoration and expansion of trees and woodland in England.

Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (Energy and Climate Change), Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy)

Hon. Members will recall that we heralded the arrival of this debate on new clauses 17 and 19 a little while ago in our debates, when we drew attention to clause 100, which comes under the strange heading of “Tree felling and planting” because “planting” does not appear in the text of the clause. New clauses 17 and 19 are similar—new clause 17 has more detail in the numbers—and seek to ensure that a proper strategy for tree planting is in place and that that strategy bears some relation to the reality of the numbers that will be required if we are actually to have a real effect on this country’s emissions, particularly our net negative emissions as we go towards our net zero target, which the Minister and I have already mentioned in Committee on several occasions.

We all agreed that we were to move towards a net zero target for emissions by 2050, and trees play an incredibly important part in that net zero target, because they are nature’s almost perfect method of carbon sequestration. Particularly as trees grow from their sapling stage to their mature stage, they have a burst of sequestration. Fortunately for us, that burst of carbon sequestration as the new trees grow exactly coincides with the period ahead of us up to 2050, when we have to get to our net zero target.

Our tree strategy therefore ought to be aligned with that net zero target, and informed by an understanding of not just what we have to do to get to net zero but what happens in terms of sequestration by these trees. That is the biggest net negative weapon in our arsenal, because there will inevitably be substantial carbon overhangs in all sorts of other areas of activity, which we will have to account for in getting to the overall net zero target. The net negative effect of sequestration by a large planting of trees could go a long way to account for the carbon overhang in other areas of our economy.

It is probably a good idea to try to get a handle on the numbers that we are talking about by consulting our old friend the Committee on Climate Change. Its publication “Land use: Reducing emissions and preparing for climate change” of about two years ago looked at the number of new trees that we will need to plant, in the context of the present forest cover in the UK. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that we are one of the worst countries in Europe in terms of forest cover. We inherited a land that was richly forested across almost its length and breadth, and we have reduced it to a land that in England has no more than 10% forest cover overall. It is considerably higher in Scotland, but altogether in the UK there is only about 13% of forest cover. That compares very badly with France, which has 35% and Scandinavia, which has 50% to 60%.

We are a tree-bare country as far as carbon sequestration is concerned. It seems to me not only a good idea to get our skates on to plant a lot more trees, but an imperative to restore the forest cover substantially, not just for climate reasons but to enhance biodiversity, and to join up the various isolated pockets of species’ existence in the country to create continuous corridors of species runs. We could immensely enhance, particularly in rural areas, the forest industries, which are very remunerative for the country, and make the country a much better place overall as a result of our efforts.

The Committee on Climate Change estimated that in order to produce the sort of sequestration that would make a real net negative contribution and save between eight and 18 megatons of carbon dioxide we would need to plant something like 1.5 million hectares of land, which would take the forest cover of the UK up from the present 13% to 19% by 2050. Looking at creating forest cover lets us understand the extent of the task ahead of us and what we need to do. By reasonable extrapolation, it gives us a handle on the numbers that have been bandied around recently about who is planting what trees, how many they are planting and what good that will do.

If we take the rough number of trees that can reasonably be planted per hectare—there are different amounts, depending on species and the purposes for which they are being used—it comes to about 1,600. If we multiply the 1.5 million new hectares of planting that the Committee on Climate Change suggests we should undertake by the number of trees per hectare, it equates to not millions, but billions of new trees: 2.4 billion to be precise. That puts in context some of the recent chatter about who is planting how many trees. For example, the 25 year environment plan includes an impressive figure. It states:

“We will increase tree planting by creating new forests and incentivising extra planting on private and the least productive agricultural land, where appropriate. This will support our ambition to plant 11m trees.”

That sounds a lot, but when you put it into the context of the data I described, it comes to about 6,000-odd hectares.

Photo of Robbie Moore Robbie Moore Conservative, Keighley 3:30, 24 November 2020

Across the whole UK, there are about 17.6 million hectares of productive agricultural land. Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that it is about striking the correct balance? With the Prime Minister announcing 30,000 hectares for tree planting annually, does he agree that that will contribute towards reaching the target? It is about striking a balance.

Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (Energy and Climate Change), Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy)

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and may well have anticipated my next comments. He referred to his miniature oracle—the mobile phone—to look up the number of hectares in productive use in the UK. In a tree strategy, it is important not to substitute productive land for tree cover if that can be avoided. We must ensure that marginal land, or land that is not in particularly productive use, can be afforested, and that land that is in productive use or has a high yield can continue to operate on that basis. We should not try to sequester land that could be used for other purposes to put trees on.

On the overall target, we must ask ourselves—indeed, the Committee on Climate Change has asked itself—whether it is possible to get that number of trees on the land in the UK, bearing in mind the constraints that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The answer is yes, absolutely, it is possible. The Forestry Commission and Forest Research have done a lot of research on the amount of marginal land in the UK that could have forest cover without impinging on grade 1 agricultural land, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and so on. The answer is that roughly 5 million hectares are available in England for that sort of activity. There is land available.

A tree strategy would have to take account of the point that the hon. Member for Keighley made about what land was available and how it might be afforested, as well as the incentives that might be needed to do that because a lot of that land is in private ownership and some might be purchased for forestation and made available to the public. Other land could be made available through covenants, which the Minister mentioned. But overall, the purpose would be to ensure forestation that increases overall forest cover while making room for the various things that need to be done on the land up to 2050.

I want to come to the 30,000 hectares, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned and which we have recently heard about in the press. One is not entirely clear what that figure means. A blog from the DEFRA press office on 12 June was headed—I am not sure about the grammar here—“Tree planting on the up in England”. Actually, it talked about tree planting not being particularly on the up in England, because not only have present targets been missed by up to 70% in recent years, but although total new planting in 2019-20 was indeed up, it was only up to 2,330 hectares, which is a tiny proportion of what is required annually to get anywhere near that figure by 2050.

Indeed, the figure very much squeezes the definition of what has been planted by taking into account the total number planted with Government support over the last three financial years and those hectares that the Department thinks have been planted without support—because people like planting trees. It suggests that total new planting, taking into account everything in the UK—Scotland and England as well—comes to about 13,000 hectares altogether. Therefore, even by squeezing the statistics as hard as we can, we still get a pretty low version of that tree planting figure.

Nor is it clear from that press release whether the 30,000 hectares of trees that we hear mentioned is an annual tree planting target or a target up to 2025. It states that

“tree planting in England increased last year but was below the rate needed to reach the manifesto commitment to plant 30,000 hectares of trees across the UK by 2025.”

That is very different from 30,000 a year. If the target is indeed 30,000 a year, that goes some way towards beginning to meet what the Committee on Climate Change has said is the imperative for planting up to 2050, but only halfway. We would probably need to plant about 50,000 to 60,000 hectares a year if we are to reach Committee on Climate Change target.

That is why the new clause sets out targets with particular percentages, because that is the key point: the percentage of land in the UK under woodland or forest cover, now and up to 2050. That is what the target effectively works around. We also need to understand clearly that the target has to be met between Governments, because half of the UK’s new trees were planted in Scotland last year and a substantial amount of the overall UK forest cover target would have to be met there. Therefore, not only would the target have to relate to English planting; it would have to relate to mutual action and discussions between the UK Government and the Scottish Government—and indeed the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly—about what is to be done on tree planting in the UK as a whole. As a matter of interest, Wales comes somewhere between Scotland and England in terms of its percentage of forest cover. Northern Ireland is very bad in its forest cover, so there are further areas to be made up in that context.

I hope the Minister, when she replies, can provide some information about the thinking in Government about a tree strategy that actually addresses the issues I have raised this afternoon and is not about digging trees in here and there by boy scout groups—I am sure it will be about that, but as a small part of the process. We are talking very large numbers here, and the tree strategy will need to genuinely address those large numbers. Not only that, a tree strategy will need to address all the processes of how to get there and how to make sure that getting there is a sustainable process, because that is the other really important point in any tree strategy. As I have said previously in Committee, it is not just about going around with a bunch of saplings in a truck and putting 1,600 in per hectare: it is about making sure that a few years hence there are still 1,600 trees per hectare, not a couple of hundred, because the rest of them have been chewed up by deer and squirrels, or have died because the wrong species have been planted in the wrong place, or the land was not suitable for planting the trees in the first place. The strategy needs to be quite intricate, to get right where the trees are planted; to ensure the balance between marginal land and productive land, as the hon. Member for Keighley mentioned; and to make sure that the trees are maintained properly. Indeed, the Forest Stewardship grants and the Woodland Trust grants for planting trees are not just for planting trees, but provide for the stewardship of those trees over a period of time once they have been planted, and that is a necessary condition to get the grants in the first place.

All those considerations have to go into a proper tree strategy and what I hope to hear from the Minister—so that we do not have to divide the Committee—is that that is the Government’s thinking. I hope they have a tree strategy on its way that will do all those things to get us to 1.5 million hectares of additional forest cover by 2050 and so that England and Wales will rejoice in about 13% or so forest cover, and the UK as a whole will rejoice in about 19% forest cover, with the active collaboration of all the Governments and nations in the UK. That is what I would regard as a real tree strategy, putting in place something that plants trees as well as felling them, and that is why we have tabled the new clause. I hope the Minister will find it very much to her liking. I know she is a very strong tree person, and I hope her strong tree inclinations will shine out this afternoon through her commitment to making the tree strategy work as well as we think it should.

Photo of Fleur Anderson Fleur Anderson Labour, Putney 3:45, 24 November 2020

I feel as though this is the tree strategy support group part two. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister said, we talked about it in our discussion of clause 100, which was very disappointing. For anyone reading this debate in Hansard, I recommend that they go back and discover the length and breadth of clause 100, which is headed “Tree felling and planting”, but talks only about tree felling.

New clause 19 is specifically about a tree strategy, tree planting and tree conservation. As I said last week, putting an English tree strategy on a statutory footing is key to delivering the commitments in the 25-year environment plan alongside which the Bill sits. My hon. Friend has been through the many reasons why we need this strategy. It is therefore hugely disappointing to those who have a stake in our woodlands—and knowing how much the Minister is a tree person—that the Bill fails to deliver one. There have been no new clauses from the Government to set right this gap in the Bill. In the previous sitting, I heard several Conservative Members rightly praising and waxing lyrical about the Woodland Trust’s work, about which they were very appreciative. Despite their admiration, however, they have seemingly ignored exactly what the Woodland Trust has called for, which is contained in new clause 19; the new clause has the Woodland Trust’s full support.

I note and appreciate what the Minister said last week, namely that the long-awaited and much talked-about tree strategy is under production and will be launched in the spring of 2021. Given how long this Bill Committee seems to be going on, that feels very close. The tree strategy contains what the Government believe are ambitious commitments, and we all look forward to it. I welcome that, and I hope that the Government will listen carefully to the submissions made to their consultation. However, by refusing to give an England tree strategy a statutory footing, the Government risk seriously undermining their progress.

We know that there is a long way to go. Without a provision such as new clause 19, there is no formal way in England to set targets for a tree strategy. The new clause offers the opportunity to correct this, and it will ensure that the England tree strategy has the status it needs to protect, restore and expand trees and woodland in England. It is amazing; there were almost 3,000 submissions to the Government’s consultation from Woodland Trust supporters, and many wanted an England tree strategy to be put on a statutory footing. Supporting the new clause would ensure that their voices were heard and make the strategy’s targets meaningful, binding and much more likely to achieve their effect. The Woodland Trust has said:

“The amendment is strongly consistent with the Environment Bill’s aims of restoring and enhancing green spaces. It also complements the existing tree clauses, and reflects recent legislation in Scotland, important given the UK wide focus on increasing tree cover as part of the UK’s global climate and biodiversity commitments.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test has outlined, this really is a no-brainer.

We can learn from other countries that have put tree strategies into legislation and reaped the rewards. I have been careful, in looking at the Bill, to find out which other countries have brought in similar Bills. Have they introduced environmental legislation, and what have they learned from it? What good practice do we want to take from countries that have gone before us, with similar legislative and regulatory bodies, and what has not worked out very well for the environment? We do not have time for second chances when it comes to the environment.

I will take one example from Norway. We might think of Norway as a massively tree-covered country that does not need any help, but its 2005 Forestry Act was brought up to date to promote sustainable forest management, taking into consideration important environmental values, wildlife habitat, the storage of carbon and other essential functions of forests. Norway’s 2009 Nature Diversity Act ensured that forestry regulation complied with the legislation contained in that Act. Norway put forestry regulation on a statutory footing. It was probably littered with “musts”, and had hardly any “mays”—I can picture it now.

The success of Norway’s model and accompanying legislation speaks for itself. In 1920, Norwegian forests consisted of approximately 300 million cubic metres of standing timber. Today, the volume of standing timber is soon expected to exceed 1 billion cubic metres. It was on a downward trajectory, but it has tripled since the second world war, enhanced by the legislation that Norway has put in on a statutory footing.

New clause 19 is a “no regrets” commitment. I urge colleagues to reconsider their opposition to it, to stand up for trees and to stand up for the ambitious scale of tree planting and conservation that we need to meet our carbon targets, that we need for biodiversity and our own mental health, and that the public overwhelmingly want.

Photo of Rebecca Pow Rebecca Pow The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I would like to think that the shadow Minister was going to branch out and not press this new clause to a Division.

I share everybody’s desire to deliver on a tree-planting commitment. The Government are mindful of that and are not wasting time. We are working to increase planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025—the figure which has been quoted and which is in line with the CCC recommendations. We are taking those recommendations extremely seriously. Forestry is devolved, so we are working closely with the devolved Administrations to meet that commitment. To increase planting in England, we have announced a £640 million nature for climate fund. In our England tree strategy, which will be published in early 2021, we will set out further plans for how a lot of the money will be used to fuel all the tree planting we need.

New clause 17 would set a UK-wide target, but as I just said, forestry is devolved, so the Bill is not the place to establish targets for the UK overall. The shadow Minister quoted some statistics—from a blog, I think—about 2,300 hectares of planting. That was an England-only figure for 2019; it was part of UK-wide planting of 13,400 hectares. Our manifesto commitment is to a UK goal, but the Bill is not the place to establish UK targets.

The new clause also proposes a specific England-only target, but significant woodland cover targets in legislation would have a major impact on land. Ours is a small island and therefore we have a limited resource for planting. It is not helpful to make comparisons with a country such as France, which is five times the size of the UK and has a much smaller population. I applaud what the Norwegians have done, but they have terrain that is much more suited to growing trees and, to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, they have fewer choices to make about prime agricultural land. We must and will strike a careful balance on where we put the trees.

Extending our 2025 commitment to 2050 would result in 17% tree cover, which is an enormous increase, but the new clause proposes 19%, which would require us to think seriously about the possible extent of woodland cover and how it would affect our prime agricultural land and land for housing and so on. I am sure the shadow Minister is completely aware of that. In a policy paper this summer, we set out our intention to explore whether legislative tree-planting targets would be appropriate under the target-setting procedure in the Bill. Before that process is complete, we should not set specific targets in legislation. Setting potentially unachievable targets, as proposed in the new clause, could lead to trees being planted in the wrong places for the wrong reasons, which could harm food production and sensitive habitats, or even increase carbon emissions. There are lots of things to consider.

New clause 19 proposes a duty to prepare a tree strategy for England and sub-sectoral targets. We know that a major increase in planting is needed—nobody denies that, and it is a manifesto commitment. That is why we have launched the consultation on a new England tree strategy. The strategy will be published in 2021; it will set out a clear vision, objectives and policies for trees in England, covering trees, woodlands and forests. There was great involvement in the consultation and some interesting ideas and proposals were advanced.

Photo of Daniel Zeichner Daniel Zeichner Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

I appreciate the Minister’s great enthusiasm for trees. Will she join me in supporting and celebrating tree charter day, which is this Saturday, and congratulate the young plantscapers of Mayfield Primary School in Cambridge, who created a tree hanging especially for me to celebrate it?

Photo of Rebecca Pow Rebecca Pow The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Of course I would like to celebrate that. I commend the school for its work. It is a brilliant thing to engage young people in nature and everything about trees, including ancient trees. That can only bring benefits to people’s lives. Well done to them for engaging.

Going back to the strategy, it will be really important in not just delivering new woodlands, but protecting the woodlands that we already have. I take slight issue with the shadow Minister, because the forestry enforcement measures in the Bill will ensure the replanting of trees that are illegally felled by, for example, developers trying to realise the value of their land. We discussed that at length yesterday, and I think he welcomed those measures. It will deter illegal felling, keeping trees where they are, so it is incorrect to say that the Bill does not cover planting. It is a really important measure that many of those involved in forestry have called for, and it is in the Bill, so we do not need to put a strategy on to a legislative footing.

On top of the measures I have already mentioned, we have heard reports of action from members of this Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden commended his own Solihull Council for planting thousands of trees and having plans to plant thousands more. That came without any statutory requirement, because the council realises just how important trees are to life. Similarly, we have heard about the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, which is spreading across the nation.

To conclude, while I, of course, share the desire to see many more trees planted, we must set credible policies to deliver that with public support. As I have explained, the Bill is not the place to set legislative targets for forestry, first, due to it being a devolved matter and, secondly, because we must ensure that legislative targets are based on a thorough review of what is desirable, achievable and grounded in evidence. I ask the shadow Minister to, as I said, branch out and withdraw the new clause.

Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (Energy and Climate Change), Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) 4:00, 24 November 2020

The Minister, as she has managed to do on several occasions, presents a powerful speech in favour of a proposition from the Opposition, and then says, “Well, it is not necessary and should not be supported.”

We can all agree that the Minister is a powerful advocate of trees; she has been for a long time and I do not doubt for a minute that she will continue to be so. I hope she appreciates that that is how I characterise myself. However, she also said—we are to take this on trust—that the Government are undertaking a review of trees. I hope they are, and that they will in due course produce something that will, among other things, lead to a considerable increase in tree planting in the way that I have described and the way in which she would advocate. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Putney said, none of that is statutory. Now is absolutely the right time to make sure that there is a statutory provision to frame the way forward.

I urge the Government to accept the provisions of new clause 17, which sets out the sort of targets we should adopt. They could be incorporated into a statutory strategy that the Government might produce. I think we are creeping towards agreement not only on how this should be done, but on the imperative to achieve or get close to those sorts of targets—the sort of thing the CCC was talking about—to ensure that we really make a difference as far as trees in the UK are concerned, subject to all the considerations that the Minister mentioned.

We want to ensure that any target is achieved in a sustainable way, without prejudice to other forms of land use in the UK, and in this case in England. Indeed, the Committee on Climate Change discussed in its report what sort of land uses should be maintained in the UK. It was very clear that we should not do something that undermines something else, but should try to move forward with a unified strategy that gives room for crop land, grassland, rough grazing and forestry, and that takes into account the fact that we are an densely populated country—one that, I would add, has succeeded in chopping down pretty much every tree in sight over the past 500 years. We have reflected on the change in land use that has come about as a result.

I recall mentioning a little while ago that the New Forest, which is near me, is a changed landscape. It is called the New Forest, but it is actually a substantially non-tree landscape that has been changed by humans over time, and the habitat has changed as a result. In and around the Minister’s constituency, there was a broad swathe of lowland forest and hilltops without trees on them. That is why a number of the dolmens, menhirs and standing stones are in their positions: they were ways of guiding people across forest areas to get to different places because the country was so heavily forested. We have wiped all that out over successive generations.

I do not think it is a case of trying to fit in a few trees to make enough progress on the margins while the rest of the country remains treeless. We need a wholesale project of restoring the tree heritage that Britain once had, while ensuring that that tree heritage can live alongside the other uses that we have brought about. That is a complicated thing to achieve.

Photo of Rebecca Pow Rebecca Pow The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Given that the hon. Gentleman wants all this tree planting, does he welcome the great Northumberland forest, which is expanding forestry right across the landscape in the north-east, and the fact that we are kickstarting the planting of the new northern forest with a £5.7 million investment? I think he is agreeing with everything that I have said. We have said that we are ramping up tree planting to meet the advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

Perhaps you can answer briefly, Dr Whitehead. It has been quite a long debate so far.

Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (Energy and Climate Change), Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy)

Indeed. Yes, not only do I welcome those forests but I positively embrace the fact that they are being established. When we look at the older midlands forests that have arisen around Sherwood, we can see how more tree plantation can sit in the landscape alongside other uses. That is exactly what is being tried in the northern forest at the moment, so I understand and welcome that.

New clause 19, however, just says, “Get on with a tree strategy. You can put all these targets in it, but it has to be statutory so that we make sure it works properly.” I do not wish to press new clause 17 to a Division, because I accept that it includes targets that, although I think they are very important, the Minister may think might be mediated by other factors. However, it is important that we put on record that there should be a statutory tree target in the Bill and that we should get on with that strategy now. I will therefore put new clause 19 to a Division, to test whether the Committee agrees with that notion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.