FORESTRY (Hansard, 16 November 1973)

§ Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

I should like briefly to raise the subject of forestry, because this is the first opportunity we have had to discuss this very important subject since the Minister's statement on 24th October. My right hon. Friend would be the first to agree that the statement has had a mixed reception. Those who grow timber seem to want to keep the annual maintenance grant payments, and yet those who object for one reason or another to an expanded timber policy, such as the Ramblers Association, seem to think that both private and State forestry should be curtailed.

I wish to make clear at the outset that I am a forestry expansionist. Last year 912 our total timber imports amounted to just over £900 million. This year it is estimated that our total timber import bill will be £1,200 million, which is up by a third. Moreover, imports of timber now represent about 8 per cent. of our total import bill of all commodities.

Before last month's trade figures I felt that a forestry expansionist policy was desirable. I regard the latest figures as additional evidence of the need for an expansionist policy for home forestry production as essential in the national interest.

I wish to remind my hon. Friend of the report by Mr. Verney and his working party—a report prepared for the Secretary of State for the Environment in relation to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm last year. The Verney Report contained several pages on forestry. I should like to read the concluding paragraph, since this is an impartial source of information and represents part of the case which the Secretary of State for the Environment put to the Stockholm conference. The paragraph reads: Woodlands are an integral part of our biological natural resources and of our countryside. They afford shelter for agricultural land, houses and gardens, provide cover for the growth of vegetation, habitats for wildlife and regulate the run-off from rainfall. Our consideration of forestry suggests the need for more trees: more hardwoods and mixed woodlands for amenity, more well-sited conifer forests to contain our import bill and absorb the growing demands of leisure and recreation and, in the uplands, a growing forest industry to provide employment. Trees are beautiful as well as useful. They are one of our country's renewable natural resources; too often they are taken for granted. I think that passage is extremely relevant to this debate.

I said earlier that there had been a mixed reception to the Minister's statement of 24th October. One group of people who appear to be rather hostile to the Government's forestry plans are the members of the Ramblers' Association. That association seems to be hostile to any form of extended tree planting. I cannot understand this attitude, because trees help to make Britain more beautiful. To anybody who walks in the countryside—I am sure that the Minister of State will agree—a landscape broken up by trees, either in blocks or scattered 913 here and there, is far more attractive and pleasant than a landscape that is desolate, bleak and treeless.

The Ramblers' Association's objections to plans for forestry expansion probably stem from the existence of large blocks of conifers. Its members probably object to the strict fire rules which perhaps impede ramblers in their walks through the countryside in places where young plantations have been established. There is no doubt that the Ramblers' Association has a valid objection when its members see whole mountainsides clothed in soft woods in one uniform brand, such as Scots pine and spruce trees. They tend to become monotonous and a rather unpleasant sight if repeated too frequently.

This objection could and would be met if the Minister, before making up his mind on this subject, gave consideration to the introduction of a new scheme for the planting of isolated plantations. I am thinking, for example, of a plantation of under 50 acres containing a mixed variety of woods. I suggest that if the Minister were to double the planting grant as well as the maintenance grant for these isolated mixed plantations it would do a great deal to meet many of the objections by some of the bodies which object to the monotony of large coniferous plantations.

I shall be sorry to see the annual maintenance grant go, if that is the Government's decision. This is the view of many influential people who have been in touch with me on forestry matters. We think that the grant places on the shoulders of private forestry owners and woodland owners a certain amount of financial discipline, and is useful for that reason alone.

I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say something today about the Government's policy in what I hope will be a renewed expansion of our forestry industry. Is there any likelihood in the near or distant future of an EEC directive on forestry and timber products, bearing in mind that the enlarged Community is a net importer of timber?

§ The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Anthony Stodart)

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. 914 Farr) for initiating this debate, because, as he said, it is a long time since we discussed forestry in the House. I recognise the strength of his argument about expansion. My hon. Friend quoted the import figures for last year and this year. It is probably glaringly obvious to say that no planting that we do now will help us much in the very near future, but I take on board his point that imports of timber are very substantial.

My hon. Friend asked me about the possibility of an EEC directive having effect in this country. There is no likelihood of this in the immediate future, and the statement which I made in answer to a Question in the House, while recognising the existence of that directive, was not in any way influenced by it.

I wish to go back to the time last year when the Government's consultative document first saw the light of day. Many people had their misgivings about whether it was in fact consultative and was not rather a declaration of Government intent. No one can have any doubts about that now, because consultations have taken place on the widest of scales. I myself have had prolonged discussions with a delegation from the trade unions led by Mr. Jack Jones; with representatives of the private forestry interests; with those who came to see me on behalf of the timber trade; and many others. My hon. Friends with responsibilities for forestry in the Welsh and Scottish Offices have done likewise and there have, of course, been parallel consultations between the environmental Ministers and the local authority and other amenity interests.

To all those who have submitted their views, either orally or in writing, I would like to pay grateful thanks on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends. In particular, I want to pay tribute to the work done, the help given and the advice always so generously offered by the Chairman of the Forestry Commission, Lord Taylor of Gryfe.

The result of these consultations is to be found in the reply I gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) on 24th October last, and I think it not unfair to claim that the reaction of those interested in forestry has been one of cautious welcome—my hon. Friend used the phrase "mixed welcome", and I shall not quarrel about 915 that—cautious because only the broad framework of Government policy has been announced. Discussions on the detailed application of it are now going on.

What caused great dismay among private foresters was the suggestion in the consultative document that the dedication scheme should be ended so far as new entrants were concerned. Indeed, despite frequent ministerial assurances to the contrary, it was widely supposed that the ending of dedication applied to those who had entered into covenants already. In fact, as was made clear, it was always a case of suspension, as opposed to finality. The Government wanted to look at the future of the whole of the forestry industry after a gap of some 30 years since the previous review, and dedication was an important feature of the private sector.

Forestry is, I suppose, the use of land with the longest cycle involved. I often think that a six or seven year rotation on a farm is not exactly short term in the planning and management which it calls for; but it is small stuff compared with forestry. Good management is essential to good forestry, and a dedication covenant ensures that management is good. Indeed, in entering into one, owners of private woodlands voluntarily enter into an obligation which deprives them of freedom to manage their own property as they choose—and that is no mean sacrifice to make; but they make it because, like most of those who have any responsibility for the land of this country, they attach an importance upon which it is hard to place a value to what lies within their care. My experience is that those who own and manage woodlands, be they the commission or private individuals, take their responsibilities every bit as seriously as anyone else.

The Government have thus decided to retain dedication, albeit in a rather different form. Until last year one dedicated for all time. We think it makes a more workable proposition to dedicate a forest or plantation for its lifetime. When it is felled, its successor can be considered for dedication in its turn.

In order to qualify for the grants which a dedicated woodland will earn certain new conditions must be fulfilled. To put them in their simplest form—the country 916 must be kept beautiful and the land used well. Hardwoods take a very long time to grow, but so much are they a feature of our countryside—particularly in England and in Wales—that we want to encourage the planting of them. This is why the Government's announcement contained the news that a significantly higher grant would be paid for hardwood planting.

We want too to spread abroad the enlightened approach which both the commission and many private owners are already showing in giving the public access to their woods. This is where the Ramblers' Association comes in. Camping sites and woodland trails in private woods in Westmorland and further north; log cabins put by the Forestry Commission by the side of Loch Lubnaig on the way from Doon to the West of Scotland—all this enables the people of this densely populated island to appreciate forestry and the value it has for the country.

This, I am afraid, takes me on to my hobbyhorse. We are, as I have just said, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Moreover, the population continues to increase, while the motorways and the housing schemes remove land at a rate of between 50,000 and 60,000 acres a year. We cannot therefore afford to see land used other than to really good effect.

Hill farming, on land where many of the trees are likely to be planted, must be in good heart, and if hill farming is in the dumps, as it was not long ago, vast areas of conifers will be planted in a way which does not use land to the best effect.

There are those who always have looked and always will look upon forestry and farming as being in competition with one another. They are, I am afraid, so wrong—and so blind. No one who is interested in this subject and who has passed by that high, high town of Tomintoul in Banffshire can fail to have noticed and be impressed by the way in which the Forestry Commission has planted its forests in Glenlivit, to the enormous benefit to those whose farms are adjacent to them. The same can be said of a private estate near Fort William, where what used to be poor stock-carrying land has been improved, thanks to the shelter given by well-placed woods, 917 many times over. My own farm on the northern slopes of the Lammermuirs, which, like every other farm, is the most difficult farm in the country, would be a hard, windswept place without the 120 acres of plantations which guard its 600 acres from the winds that sweep in from the Bass Rock in the North Sea or storm down across Soutra Hills.

So foresters, farmers and those who have an eye for the landscape must get together. They will do so on the Forestry Commission's regional advisory committees, which are to be reconstituted, so as to bring together forestry, agricultural, amenity and planning interests with a new mandate both to discern the broad area strategy for rural land use and to advise on cases of doubt in the administration of grants to private woodland owners.

918 In this way, for the first time, the Forestry Commission will have at its elbow a network of expert and representative groups which can help to reconcile the demands which agriculture, forestry and amenity are making—and will continue to make—upon our diminishing reservoir of rural land.

It is a long time since many words have been spoken on forestry in the House. I again thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity of putting some of my thoughts on record. I note the points that he made with such clarity about the need for expansion and will certainly draw them to the attention of my right hon. Friend.