§ Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Donald Thompson.]
10.26 pm§ Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth)I am sure that the Minister is aware of the great concern about the continuing and expensive destruction of the British landscape. There is widespread resentment that money should continue to be lavished in support of destruction. Although the Minister no longer gives grants for the removal of hedgerows, if the removal is part of a wider scheme of so-called improvement, grant is provided.
Just when more and more people are experiencing enforced leisure, the countryside, which could give them free comfort and enjoyment, is being made less attractive. It is right for the House, on the first day after the long recess, to consider priorities.
The countryside could provide enjoyment and comfort for the unemployed. The Minister should be aware that the countryside is also an important tourist attraction which for economic and aesthetic reasons, should not be lightly destroyed. The destruction is alarming. Thousands of miles of hedgerows have gone in recent years. In most counties the removal has been extensive. In Huntingdonshire three quarters of the hedgerows have gone since the war. In every English county residents can point to the spot where once there an ancient hedgerow. In many parishes only a few hedgerows remain.
Only today we heard of the contemptuous destruction of a hedgerow near Romney Marsh by a farmer who should know better because he is a public representative. I refer to Mr. Boulden of Aldington. Romney:Marsh was once an area rich in hedgerows. Once it was beautiful, but it is now more barren than it should be.
Much publicity was given a few months ago to another Kent farmer named Batchelor who appeared to believe that hedgerows and wildlife should be destroyed, yet, as television series frequently suggest, and one currently about the hedgerows may demonstrate, such features provide shelter and habitat for many species.
The Minister is aware of the position. A catalogue of destruction is available in his Department. The Minister should also be aware that the community believes that the environment should not be ravaged and that the removal of attractive features which make our lowland areas as important in environment and aesthetic terms as our more majestic uplands should be prevented.
Because of the destruction of hedgerows I presented a Bill last year which I believed would be acceptable. The Bill would have guaranteed the survival of many important hedgerows—important in local terms and important in retaining a skeleton of hedgerow conservation throughout England and Wales. I believed then, as I do today, that most farmers would welcome such a measure. I do not believe that the National Farmers Union was opposed to it, but the Government blocked it. Perhaps they believed that we could rely on the voluntary spirit. Many landowners and farmers are responsible people, but a substantial minority are not concerned and care little for the general interest. They care not at all about the environment in which their neighbours and themselves live. That lack of care has been revealed in recent months by the frequent and contemptuous disdain for the National Farmers Union straw burning code. I refer to that in 118 passing as an illustration of irresponsibility. The fatal consequences of that disdain were the destruction of hundreds of miles of hedgerows. We must respond to a situation in which that disdainful irresponsibility can disregard any consideration other than that of personal profit. There are 6 million tonnes of wheat and 1½ million tonnes of barley in surplus in the EC. Therefore, we must be right to begin to question our priorities.
The Government were careless in their blocking of my Bill last year. Their attitude was abysmal—not least because of their reliance upon a voluntary response that has already proved grossly deficient. The Government imagine that ratification of the Berne convention governing the protection of certain species is all that they need to do. But the habitat on which those species depend is also at risk and deserves a measure of protection.
The other day I was shown a photograph of a member of the Yorkshire Wildlife 'Trust deliberately breaking the law by pulling up a protected wild flower. He could be fined severely for that. Yet the day after he deliberately committed that offence, the landowner — perhaps subsidised by taxpayers' funds—destroyed the whole of the area in which the wild flower grew. The landowner could not be prosecuted, but the individual naturalist could be. He took such action to focus attention on the problem —attention that I am seeking to command through this debate tonight.
We must insist that taxpayers' money does not obliterate the attractions of our countryside. During the past 20 years no less than £1,500 million has been given from public funds towards the destruction of our countryside—not for the support of production; not for the subsidy of farmers, but in direct grant towards changing the appearance of our environment. It has gone too far.
Since my Bill was blocked there have been certain developments. I hope that the Minister will comment upon them. Last year many people wrote to me about the Government's blocking of my Bill. Some were from Norfolk, who complained about large areas of featureless earth in their county. Some were from Derbyshire, who felt that hedgerow removal should be governed by planning consent. Children wrote to me from all parts of the country, including a boy from Weymouth who had walked along eight miles in his locality where the hedgerows had been removed. People from the Naturalist Trust in Worcester wrote to me about the removal of 7½ miles of hedgerow on a single farm.
The concern I felt extended from Kent in the south-east to virtually every county north of that. People who express abhorrence of the destruction are sometimes well publicised but, more frequently, the destruction is locally regretted and there is little impact in the media.
Mr. Seymour of Methley in West Yorkshire wrote to me about the Methley Enclosure Act of 1786, which required that hedgerows should be maintained. I recall that the Wath upon Dearne Enclosure Act—I live and was born there—has the same requirement. I studied other such Acts and discovered that the vast majority required the perpetual maintenance of hedgerows. I studied Enclosure Acts in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Durham. They all confirmed the requirement for fencing by quickset. I contacted my local authorities— South Yorkshire county and Rotherham borough councils. The Rotherham borough council, an efficient authority, was immediately helpful and drew my attention to the case 119 of Garnet v. Pratt in June 1926. The plaintiff succeeded in his case against a neighbour who had removed a boundary required by enclosure legislation in Hawes in North Yorkshire. That case is relevant. It is clear that, as a result of the case, the law still stands.
When I raised the matter in the House shortly afterwards, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, said that the perpetual requirement no longer applies, but even Ministers cannot make laws off-the-cuff at the Dispatch Box. The law still applies. It applies in Chester-le-Street, in Durham, and in a number of parishes that I have examined in Lincolnshire. It is interesting that in the barley areas of South Hykeham, Tetney and Kirton in Lindsey, the requirement is tighter than it is in most other parts of the country. In Kirton in Lindsey 4,600 acres were enclosed in 1793. The Act laid down that there should be kept in perpetuity good thriving fences planted with quicksets of white thorns and guarded for ever on both sides with good posts.
Those Acts have never been repealed. The whole basis of the Government's approach has been to suggest that the Acts can be ignored. I do not believe that we can make fish and fowl of legislation. After the Minister suggested that the legislation no longer applied, I looked at the Enclosure Act for Dalton in my constituency, passed in 1797. That Act required fences to be composed of quicksets and for ever to be maintained, as it did for my own township of Wath upon Dearne. Those requirements are usual and so I was rather surprised at the Parliamentary Secretary's response. I continued to correspond with Ministers, and Lord Ferrers wrote to me to say that:
It is the responsibility of the applicant for grant to ensure that work on which he wishes to claim grant complies with all the relevant statutory requirements.He added that claimants apparently sign to the effect that they have met this responsibility. Lord Ferrers went on to say that if a declaration had been wrongly signed, if a hedgerow or wall required by the Enclosure Act had, for example, been cleared—and cleared with the assistance of grant as many of them have been—the Minister would have to consider whether to withhold the grant in the case of an application or, if the grant had been already paid, to recover it. I do not suggest that the Minister can go around recovering hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money which has been spent illegally. I accept that that would be difficult and that the National Farmers Union would be cross and the Conservative party might suffer accordingly. I suggest that the Minister cannot allow such an unsatisfactory position to be maintained. Some farmers may pale at the prospect of local environmentalists doing their homework and bringing forward prosecutions. There are those who would welcome such an upheaval. I would welcome a more sensible approach than the present one. We should try to avoid bringing thousands of farmers to litigation. It could come to that if the Government maintain their negligent approach.The Government should reconsider their attitude to the perfectly reasonable Bill that I presented last year. They should take the opportunity of giving that Bill, which was generally wanted, a fair wind and rectify the ridiculous anomaly of the Enclosure Acts, which could bring considerable headaches to farmers and to the Government. The Government should take another look at that Bill. The environmentalists, those who are concerned with our 120 countryside and landscape, and hon. Members on both sides of the House, would welcome the Bill. The Government should be prepared to accept an opportunity to correct this enclosure anomaly.
If the Minister is not prepared to take suitable steps he should understand that the law is there and that the case of Garnet v. Pratt of 1926, which is the most recent case available, is relevant and points the way for the conservationists of Britain to take some action to protect our landscape, a protection that the Government have inadequately considered.
There is another question that I should like to ask. I am advised by reputable lawyers that existing legislation does not prevent local authorities from deciding that a hedgerow can be protected by a tree preservation order—perhaps the protection of a series of hawthorn trees; whether they are interlaced or not makes no difference. If local authorities have a particularly attractive hedgerow in mind, they should be able to protect it. The Department has never been keen and has never suggested that local authorities should make such orders, but the Minister should make it clear to the House that they have the opportunity to do so. If the law allows protection, the Minister should confirm that local authorities may have the capacity to provide it.
The Minister is certainly aware that lots of money has been spent to ensure the vast destruction of our landscape, and he should certainly be aware that lots of the money has not been spent lawfully. I hope that he will now be made increasingly aware that the destruction that has taken place in the past few years is regarded as shameful. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country are beginning to resent it and to say that something should be done about it.
I believe that we have got our priorities all wrong. In my area, only 521 of nearly 3,500 school leavers this summer have jobs. Our industries are devastated and our employment opportunities are weakened, yet the Government can continue to lavish grants for the destruction of that which may be the only cause of comfort and consolation for the young people in my and other industrial areas of this country.
Perhaps at this time, more than at any other since the war, we need to try to provide some people with that which may be free. I accept that the spirit of Conservative Members may disregard and have contempt for that view, because the god that they serve is profit. Perhaps they prefer to see irresponsible individual farmers serving the gods of excess production and excess profit, even though it may diminish the quality of life for the rest of the country. But that quality has to be conserved and the Government must have some concern for it. I trust that the Under-Secretary will be able to give us an assurance that the Government—perhaps untypically—are prepared to change their approach and to afford a higher priority to the retention of a decent environment in our once beautiful country.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Neil Macfarlane)I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) for giving us the opportunity to debate the important subject of hedgerow protection and conservation. Many people outside the House are interested in the subject.
121 A previous Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) said in the House several years ago that he was a hedge enthusiast. The hon. Member for Wentworth is obviously one also. His record on the subject is well known.
I, too, fully recognise the value of hedgerows and I am keen to see them retained as an essential feature of the rural landscape. But the question that we need to consider is how best that desirable object can be achieved. The hon. Gentleman has given me some interesting facts and pointers. He has obviously done his research and has had access to information. I note what he has said and will try to reply to all his points in the fullness of time, but time may prevent a detailed scrutiny of some of them tonight.
Two years ago, during the Committee stage of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, several of the hon. Member's colleagues sponsored amendments intended to bring hedgerows within the statutory control system. The hon. Member, who was a member of that Committee, urged an element of statutory protection for important hedgerows. The explanations were developed in some detail on 18 June 1981 and time forbids a close scrutiny of the reasons.
Later, some 18 months ago, the hon. Member for Wentworth presented his Hedgerows Bill, the purpose of which was to provide statutory protection for all hedgerows on agricultural land which followed parish boundaries, farm boundaries, footpaths, bridleways, byways and public roads, thus affecting many hundreds of miles of hedges. I explained to the hon. Member in my letter of 14 May 1982 why the Government could not support that Bill, and why we favoured instead the positive approach of voluntary co-operation with and encouragement to the farming community.
The encouragement I have referred to takes a number of forms. First, there is the valuable work of the Countryside Commission in promoting conservation by the farming community. The 10 farms in their demonstration farms project provide practical demonstrations to farmers and others of how profitable farming can be carried out with due regard to conservation of essential landscape features, including hedgerows.
This message is also put across to farmers and landowners by means of advice in the Countryside Commission handbook, published by the Countryside Commission jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Nature Conservancy Council, the Country Landowners Association and the National Farmers Union. There are about half a million miles of hedges in Britain, and the hedge management leaf explains their importance to agriculture, wildlife and the visual quality of the countryside.
It also sets out the many useful purposes that hedged serve—
providing a stock-proof barrier, shelter for stock, land[...] character, wildlife habitat, a deterrent to trespass and screening for eyesores.It explains in detail the best management techniques.Much advice to farmers is given through the services of the agricultural development advisory service and I have been interested to read the colourful booklet it published last year on "Farming and the Countryside That booklet emphasises the need to retain in particular
thick old hedges especially those with 4 or more woody species per 30 metres",122 and points out that, even in arable areas, there is litle economic advantage to be gained from field sizes in excess of 20 hectares.MAFF grants for the removal of hedgerows were, of course, stopped in 1974, and MAFF grants are available for hedge-laying to encourage better management.
§ Mr. HardyI am glad to have the Minister's agreement, but he does not seem fully to agree with me that grants in respect of hedgerow destruction alone are not provided but that grants in respect of hedgerow destruction as part of a wider scheme of so called improvement are still available.
§ Mr. MacfarlaneBut surely the most important feature is that grants for the removal of hedgerows were stopped almost 10 years ago and that grants are available for hedge laying to encourage better management. That seems to me to be an important dimension.
The Countryside Commission has recently introduced a new grants structure which is intended to make support for landscape conservation work more widely available. The new landscape conservation grants will be available for the restoration of hedgerows, hedge banks and stone walls. In particular the Commission has said that the grants will be available for restoration or rejuvenation of ancient hedgerows visually important in the landscape, and priority will be given to hedge banks which form such an important part of the traditional countryside scene, especially in western Britain.
[...] my letter of 14 May 1982, to which I have [...]rred, that both the Ministry of Agriculture and the Countryside Commission believe that the rate of removal [...] declined substantially since the 1960s and early. [...]We recognise that the extent of landscape change, including the rate of hedgerow removal, is a matter of bate, and this has highlighted the inadequacy of the [...]which many of the assertions about country[...] rest. At the outset of his remarks, the hon.[...]uoted some facts, statistics and details. [...]welcome some further information on [...]We have therefore decided, after [...] Departments and bodies, to [...]Countryside Commission research[...]deficiency of statistical evidence.[...]assist in [...] to of the effectiveness of [...] the need for possible[...] changes,[...]rtment has recently invited[...]ers for this [...]bjective of which is to obtain [...]stically reliable[...] on the current distribution and extent of feature[...]landscape importance in the countryside in England and Wales. This will include hedgerows, dry stone) [...]dgerow banks.[...] The hon. Member[...] instance of a farmer in Kent who earlier [...] national notoriety as a result of his destruction [...] hedgerows in an area of outstanding natural be [...] was a disgraceful event and one which was the subject of a court action. In that case the farmer concerned disregarded certain tree-preservation orders for which he was summoned and found guilty. I mention this because it illustrates the shortcomings of a system of statutory controls. Although the Kent farmer paid the penalty, the trees have been removed and there is no way in which they can be replaced except by saplings, which will not mature for several years. A voluntary conservation system, by which farmers 123 are encouraged to consider the voluntary conservation implications before taking action, must stand more chance of success. But I must explain that the in Kent was exceptional and attracted a great deal of publicity for that very reason. The work of the majority of farmers and landowners who pay proper regard to conservation in their farming operations goes largely unreported.
§ Dr. John Marek (Wrexham)Will hon. Gentleman give way?
§ Mr. MacfarlaneMany SSSIs will contain hedgerows of importance in ecological terms, and those are covered by the new SSSI procedures introduced.by the Act.
§ Mr. MacfarlaneI hope to deal with several more of the points that have been raised. If the hon. Gentleman has a detailed point to make, perhaps [...] write to me. I should like to give way, but I feel that I ought to plough on.
The Act also includes provision for management agreements, and many of these could of course cover areas of land which include the most valuable hedgerows. Some old hedges will be associated with green lanes, which by the generally-accepted definition are rights of way bounded on both sides by hedges, walls or other boundary features. Although we did not include in the Act specific provisions covering green lanes we hope, as [...] my Department's circular 32/81, that [...] the legislative changes introduced on the plough[...] rights of way will assist in their preservation[...]
§ Mr. HardyUntil the three-month [...] removed, it will be dangerous to suggest[...] hedgerow should be proposed as an SSSI[...]
§ Mr. MacfarlaneI take note of that
The hon. Member has referred to [...] that some of the straw and stubble burning [...] has had on hedgerows. He will[...]Government are most concerned [...] my right hon. Friend the Minister of [...] and Food is looking into this [...] The hon. Member for [...] made [...] interesting comments. Perhaps [...] ble to take, the, matter further in correspondence [...] mation [...] has gathered and the advice [...]from [...]quarters is always of interest, [...]of course con[...]any point that he wishes [...] he can give [...] detailed information which [...] supports his point of view, I will have the [...] into further.
I referred earlier to the [...] advice available to farmers and the methods [...] is given. I have been interested to read the [...] Commission's first five year programme of [...] the countryside, which it has recently published. The commission fully 124 recognises that its primary concern in the lowlands is the pressure for agricultural change. It goes on to say that its approach hinges on persuading farmers and landowners to take conservation account in their farm plans and everyday management. They also emphasise the availability of grant-aid for conserving important landscape features, for management agreements, and for the employment of countryside advisers by suitable public and voluntary bodies to give advice on conservation to farmers and landowners. Advice on retention of hedges, as part of an integrated approach which takes into account the whole range of landscape features and wildlife habitats, will form an essential part of the voluntary approach which we see to be the best way forward. It is not the only way, and many points have been made this evening that I should like to consider before communicating with the hon. Gentleman in due course.
We certainly have an open mind on many of these issues, and I believe that the debate will have served a very useful purpo[...]e that it will be widely read and understood. The hon. Gentleman's record over the years on this issue is constructive and in many respects quite convincing.
§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish)My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) has pointed out that many farmers have apparently been breaking the enclosure Acts. Will the Minister make it quite clear that he believes in law and order, and that the Government will take action to deal with the matter?
§ Mr. MacfarlaneI cannot give an immediate assurance to the hon. Gentleman. Of course I believe in the concept of law and order, but I want to find out exactly what is the background to the evidence produced this evening. I have given the House an assurance that we shall have the matter looked at further.
The debate has been useful. I am sorry that we cannot go into the matter further. However, the hon. Member for Wentworth has raised many points on which I should like to correspond further with him.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)There is still a minute left in which to speak.
§ Dr. MarekIf the Minister is not prepared to take any statutory action for the retention of hedgerows, will he tighten up the regulations so that grants for the removal of hedgerows are given only when there is a great rather than [...]improvement of land? If this tightening——
§ The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ .Adjourned at four minutes to Eleven o'clock.