Forestry Commission

HC Deb 20 July 1994 vol 247 cc492-512

4.7 am

Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire)

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the subject of the Forestry Commission before the House rises for the summer recess. It gives me no comfort to drag hard-working Ministers of the Crown, such as the Minister with responsibility for forestry, to the Chamber. I am certain that he would have been up half the night anyway waiting for a telephone call from No. 10 Downing street, which I am sure will come sooner rather than later. It would be well-deserved if it did. As I get older in this place, I become more and more convinced of the need for radical reform of the way that we work so that debates such as this can be taken at more reasonable and social hours.

I am grateful for the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) and the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) who, ever assiduous, is in his place. I know that he takes a great interest in the subject. I had an interesting visit to a forest not far from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch during the European elections. The Forestry Commission workers showed me how they had managed to erect bat boxes in the trees in the forest just north of Bournemouth. I thought that bats lived in cages, but the Forestry Commission looks after bats as well as everything else—very good work it does too.

I am not offering the Minister an apology for bringing him to the Dispatch Box on this subject on this day. I applied for this slot in the Consolidated Fund debate last week, before there was any certainty that the Government would make a statement on this subject before the summer recess. I know that the Minister will say that it was expected. I accept that the statement was very full and I was pleased that it was made.

I was also reasonably well pleased with the result of the Government's review committee. Its conclusion was a victory for common sense, which was welcome. It is a pity that it had to take 15 or 16 months to reach that conclusion because it caused a great deal of uncertainty among the staff and the interest groups which were closely following what was happening and which have a direct interest in forestry.

More than anything else, what strikes me about the 15 or 16 months of consideration by the review committee was the astounding degree of public support enjoyed by the Forestry Commission, as currently constituted. I do not refer only to interest groups such as the Ramblers Association, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the well-respected and well-organised pressure groups which we would expect to be in the vanguard of an argument involving the future of the Forestry Commission and the forestry industry. The general public also took a keen and legitimate interest. That was one of the signal lessons that we should all learn from the 15 months' work of the review committee.

As the House will know, the committee's remit was to examine the effectiveness of current incentives for forestry investment and the options for ownership and management. It was invited by the Government to make proposals for change and to examine ways to improve effectiveness. It was of great interest to me that the Government's eventual conclusion was, as we learned a day or so ago, that Forest Enterprise should stay in the public sector. It would be of even greater interest to know exactly what reasoning led the review committee and the Government to reject the option to privatise.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister to be told that there is still continuing suspicion about the Government's long-term motives. The reasoning of the review committee is an important element in the consideration of what will happen in future and how convinced the Government are of the decision that they have announced. It remains a matter of serious concern that the review committee's report is to remain available only to Ministers. Any work that costs the taxpayer as much as £833,000—which I understand to be the total cost of the inquiry—should be made much more widely available, even if not published because it may be a weighty document containing a great deal of technical information that would make sense only to Ministers. It should certainly be made available in the House of Commons Library, in the Scottish Office and in forestry offices in other parts of the United Kingdom.

If it proves to be impossible to deal with questions raised by hon. Members at this hour of the morning, I hope that the Minister will be kind enough to undertake, where necessary, to write to hon. Members with considered answers.

I should also like to know why the consultation document has been delayed another 14 days. If the review has taken 15 or 16 months, and if the Government's announcement was made public in the past 24 hours, it is incumbent on the Government to explain why it takes another 14 days to publish a document on which the consultation will be based. Printing techniques these days can turn round such documents, even in large volume, within a few short hours, never mind two weeks or more. It heightens my suspicion that the Government are still uncertain about their long-term motives in their future disposals and dispositions for the Forestry Commission.

That in turn leads to the suspicion that the Government were obliged to reject full-blown privatisation by the sustained and massive public opposition that they encountered. The Secretary of State for Scotland's statement, useful and welcome as it was, lacked conviction and had no intellectual coherence. The Government's strategy for the future is still unclear. If that is not true, it is certainly true that many questions remain to be answered. The Minister may say that that is what the consultation period is about. If so, this debate is a useful start to that process.

I welcome the decision to retain Forest Enterprise in the public sector. It would be churlish to quibble about that. But the Government still have much work to do during the consultation process to persuade the public that that is not just a temporary staging post on the way to full privatisation which might be reviewed after the next election.

I know that the Minister has been harassed almost to death on water privatisation in Scottish towns. By the end of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill Standing Committee, he was beginning to persuade me that he meant what he said. The trouble is that, while some of us consider him to be an honest man, we are not prepared to accept that position from other Ministers. However, I detect a scepticism still that this is only a temporary stay of execution. The Government still have a job to do in the consultation process if they are to win their argument.

To be sustainable, and to provide the industry with the kind of stability that it requires, we need 20-year solutions. The crop, as the Minister well knows, takes a long time to mature and planting grants and commercial decisions to plant have to be taken on a long-term basis. Any suggestion that this is a solution that will get the Government by the next few short years would not be good enough and would not meet the needs of the industry.

I was interested to hear the Secretary of State refer in his statement to the need for Forest Enterprise to be put on a more businesslike footing. I could not make a lot of sense of the sentences that followed that statement, which contained much rhetoric and management jargon about priorities, performance measures and cost and benefit programmes. It would be helpful if the Minister could give clear examples of what will be done differently when the new agency is set up from what happens now. That was not clear to me, despite my careful reading and re-reading of the Secretary of State's statement.

There are many kinds of next step agencies. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has identified about 96, so there is a range of steps towards an agency basis. The Government should and could help the discussion by making clear just what kind of agency they are moving towards.

Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton)

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he accept that the obfuscation in the Government's report may be hiding their real intention regarding a next steps agency in that the established criteria are commercial? We and the public fear that there is an accelerated disposal programme for forestry and land. We could obtain tonight, on behalf of the public, an assurance that that is not the case.

Mr. Kirkwood

Absolutely. That is a concise summary of the next paragraph of my speech, which I can now skip. That is the crux of the matter and I hope that the Minister will say something about it.

What kind of agency is the Secretary of State's statement offering? Will it still be directly responsible to the Secretary of State as the responsible departmental Minister? There have been rumours that the Government would create three or four agencies for the. United Kingdom's different constituent nations. The Secretary of State seemed to make it clear that the headquarters will not move from Edinburgh, which is welcome news. Will there be a direct link between Scottish Office Ministers and the Secretary of State once the agency is established?

The Secretary of State also made it clear that a new chief executive will be appointed. It is important to know the terms and conditions of his employment. There have been press reports that demanding but deliverable performance targets will be set for this new chief executive. One great advantage of resisting the Government proposal that could have embraced privatisation is the sustained and unwavering support for the campaign by the existing body's director general, commissioners and senior management staff.

Soon, new commissioners will be appointed or appointed afresh, and the current director general is due for retirement. Significant management personnel changes are almost inevitable. The Minister and the Government will have to give assurances that there is no hidden ministerial strategy to appoint to crucial positions particular persons with a hidden agenda, with the objective of ultimately moving towards privatisation or—as the hon. Member for Dumbarton said—commercialisation in a way that would compromise other roles in the multi-role forest context and framework that we seek.

Will the new chief executive's terms and remit be made public before he is appointed? What thought has been given to what exposure the new agency will have to market testing exercises, which are being visited on many other next steps agencies? It is important to have answers to those questions so that the consultation process may proceed in an orderly and properly informed fashion.

As to the Borders district and south of Scotland region, which the Minister knows well, I am convinced—because I know the work that they do—that the people running that district and region under Mr. Gordon Cowie and his team need no lectures on improving efficiency. The 43,000 acres of Forestry Commission land that they oversee are managed extremely well. They run a tight ship, and it is hard to see how the new trading standards, arrangements or bodies that the Government propose will help those individuals to do their jobs any better in future than they have done them over the past 10 or 15 years. There has been a significant change in the way in which the commission has operated in the Borders forest district. It has been some 15 years since proper, full-time staff were appointed in any numbers. Local experience recently has seen much more insecure seasonal work introduced on a contracted, self-employed basis, with a steady erosion in the number of full-time jobs.

But for all of that, the Borders forest district makes an annual surplus in the region of £500,000 to £600,000. It is coherent in what it does. It has a good rapport with the local community, and management and staff work extremely well together. I cannot for the life of me see any obvious way in which increased efficiencies could be made. It would be a foolish person who said that no improvements could be made. I think that it does a good job and in a dedicated fashion.

The Minister will also know that the industry produces direct and indirect employment for thousands of his constituents as well as mine across the Borders region as a whole. It is a very significant industry in local employment terms. Indeed, I think that it would be safe to say that, short of the north of Scotland forestry region, the Borders and south of Scotland regions must have the most significant input of any forestry industry in any other part of the country in terms of its local economy and the contributions that it makes to the income and expenditure in the south of Scotland.

What procedure will be required to implement the new agency? Again, the Secretary of State's statement left important questions unanswered. Will the consultation document, which we are expecting in a couple of weeks, contain details of the precise steps that are necessary to create the new structure? If primary legislation is not necessary—I understand that that is so—will we have a chance, through statutory instruments or Orders in Council, to scrutinise or sanction what is eventually proposed? That is an important question.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds pointed out that, from previous procedures in creating the agencies, it envisages the whole agency being generated by the publication of a framework document. Will full details of any such document be made available during the consultation so that we can see what procedures are to be used to set it up? Will Parliament get a chance at any stage to look at the remit, objectives and, crucially, the performance targets that the agency will be invited to address?

In all of that procedure, what is there to provide any degree of accountability other than that through occasional requests to visit and give evidence to Select Committees and the like? What transparency will there be, for example, in the hierarchy between Ministers, the chief executive and Parliament?

I press the Minister on the meaning of his desire that Forest Enterprise should have a more commercial attitude. What implications will that have for research? I know that there are worries that some of the research functions—I know that some of them are carried out by the authority, not the enterprise—will go to the Institute for Terrestrial Ecology. There is also concern that the more commercial attitude will have an impact on the valuable interpretation and educational work that is currently done by Forest Enterprise. One thing that I discovered while increasing my education about bat boxes was the very valuable role that is played by Forest Enterprise in holding the ring between conflicting and competing users of forest land. Some of the fragile heath land that the Forestry Commission looks after in areas around Christchurch and Bournemouth was beginning to come under pressure from orienteering. That was in conflict with the conservation interests about some of the species that were under pressure. The Forestry Commission was the only institution capable of resolving in good faith some of the conflicting and competing uses of the areas of fragile heath land in its charge. It is feared that, if Forest Enterprise adopts a more commercial attitude in the future, all the valuable roles that it now plays will be sacrificed.

If the new agency is given genuine flexibility to retain all the surpluses that it would gain from disposal, and the finance that it needs to be able to acquire substantial tracts of land as well as disposing of forestry land and estates, that will be very welcome: it will make the agency much more efficient, and promote multi-purpose forestry. But if increased commercial pressure amounts to nothing more than losing public benefits, stripping out amenity developments, imposing higher charges on the public for services, reducing the percentage of broadleaf planting or more and faster disposals, the new agency will rapidly lose the critical mass that is necessary for it to retain its crucial role as a forestry leader.

The hon. Member for Dumbarton made an important point about commercial objectives. It would be regrettable if they began to override environmental objectives; that would affect staff morale, and the new agency would simply bring about the death of Forest Enterprise by means of a salami technique—death by a thousand cuts.

I am sorry that nothing more definite has yet been said about the disposals policy that is to be handed to the agency for implementation—

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Sir Hector Monro)

It has not changed.

Mr. Kirkwood

That is interesting. We have heard all sorts of rumours, but I think we can all agree that some 180,000 hectares have been sold since the early 1980s. There is a rumour that 100,000 hectares will be required to be disposed of by the year 2000; indeed, either the Ramblers Association or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds mentioned 37,000 hectares annually. If the Minister is really saying that nothing has changed, I think that we should have a discussion. The consultation period should be used as an opportunity to press the Government to clarify their plans.

All the small parcels of land that can be disposed of easily have already been sold. Any reactivated disposals policy would mean wholesale blocks of established forest being put on the market. As the hon. Member for Dumbarton will probably know better than me, the Kilpatrick Hills area just north of Glasgow has been talked of as a major disposal. Indeed, the whole of Upper Nithsdale, much closer to home in the Minister's patch —he shakes his head—has been mentioned in terms of marketing in the recent past. If the Treasury targets are too strict in future and the new agency is given no flexibility, other forest areas will have to be sold to meet arbitrary financial targets and for no other reason.

I remind the Minister that the sub-committee of his own review team that looked into the question of access for the public concluded: As the disposals programme proceeds it will be necessary for the Forestry Commission to identify for disposal a greater number of woods with higher levels of existing access". That key question will have to be considered during the consultation.

The £4 million extra in grants to be made available to the private sector is, of course, welcome and necessary, but I was interested to note Tilhill's response to the Secretary of State's statement: The Statement wishes an end to the decline in conifer planting. We do not think conifer planting will increase from the present level as a result of this Review. This means that the UK forest output will not be sustained as timber volumes fall after the next twenty years. That is an important reaction, albeit initial, from a serious player in the forestry game. The Government should view it with some interest.

I want to make two short points about grants. The new agency must be set clear targets and be given a clear steer in terms of what it does with the consultation processes that have to be undertaken with local communities before large blocks of monoculture sitka spruce are planted. There is a fear that some of the new grants will provide planting of commercial conifers on sensitive upland ground.

The environmental panels have been working well and the environmental impact statements are addressing many of the concerns that were evident four or five years ago. However, there are remaining fears that in some parts of the Borders at least the forest plantation is obliterating archaeologically important sites and destroying the quality of the border hillside. If the agency is not made aware of that and does not take proper account of it, it will cause concern in areas such as southern Roxburghshire.

The new grant regime does not provide enough scope or incentive for integrated farm forestry schemes. I know that the farm woodland scheme has been quite successful and has made some progress in promoting broadleaf amenity woods, but there is very little commercially viable timber production. I urge the Government, during the consultation period, to consider carefully providing a lead and a proper system of grants that would make it worthwhile for upland farmers—relatively small-scale farmers, not just big estate owners—to plant commercially viable holdings.

Although it is welcome that the short rotational coppice has been given some assistance and recognition under the grant scheme—there was a sentence or two about it in the Secretary of State's statement—I am a little worried about the reduction in planting grants for short rotational coppice on non-set-aside land. It is fair to say that the production of power from biomass, including short rotational coppice, is still an infant industry. It is nearing commercialisation, but it is in need of pump-priming finance to see it through its formative years. The Secretary of State's statement did not persuade me that the Government are doing enough to address the extent of the problems.

I make no apology for leaving the question of access to the end because it is probably the key question motivating most of the public who will take an interest in the consultation process. I detect considerable disappointment at the lack of real progress on access. The Secretary of State said that the Government wanted to strengthen the arrangements which are available to protect existing access".—[Official Report, 19 July 1994; Vol. 247, c. 178.] That is a meaningless statement because the current arrangements are non-existent. The Government's own research by the sub-committee on access concluded: Even with improvements the existing arrangements cannot be made effective in protecting continued public access. That is right and it is important that the Government know that.

Only two days ago I received a letter from Mrs. Ann Fraser. She is a serious person and is the Scottish access officer of the British Horse Society. She lives in Jedburgh and she has helped me enormously with continuing correspondence about the problems of equestrian access to forests. I declare a non-pecuniary interest in this. It was a painful interest at the Hawick common riding because I came off at full tilt in one of the first fields at the Moss Paul ride out. When I get the time, I enjoy access to Forestry Commission forests on horseback.

Mrs. Fraser is at pains to point out in the letter dated 18 July that there is a current argument about Spottiswoode at Westruther in Berwickshire where about 50 horses currently use the area. The forest is owned by the Forestry Commission and on two occasions the wood has been offered to Borders regional council under the continued public access guidelines, giving it the opportunity to get the management procedures in place for continued public access after a sale. Both the offers have been declined by Borders regional council. The Minister may say that that is because of the legal expenses and that that has now been addressed by the Government.

However, the problem is worse than that because, as the Minister knows, public access guidelines do not cover horse riding. Such activities, which take place exclusively and expressly with individual permissions, do not fall within the scope of normal public access agreements. That is a matter of some concern in an area such as the Borders, which has a great interest in equestrian activity. There are about 100 horses in the Spottiswoode forest. Indeed, at Westertoun, Mr. and Mrs. Isles run an excellent trekking and equestrian business for locals and visitors, and that is exactly the type of business that might be prejudiced if we do not sort out the issue of access.

During the consultation process, we have to ask the Government what will happen if local authorities do not or cannot make access agreements when sales are contemplated. The system has not worked until now, so why should it work in the future? What will happen if a local authority does not enter into an agreement concerning woodland that it has been proposed should be sold? Will continued access be at the whim of the new owner, or will the woodland be withdrawn from sale?

Where will the £ 1 million needed to buy the leasehold interest come from? Will it have to come from increased disposals or from the Treasury? Will the money to be spent on the central Scottish woodland, to which the Secretary of State for Scotland referred, come from increased disposals or from the Treasury? These are important questions, and the Minister would do the consultation process a considerable favour if he answered them, if not tonight, by correspondence.

The Government should now produce a national forestry strategy, including wildlife, access and environmental targets, which would map out the positive future which the forestry and woodland industry deserve and which the public demand.

4.46 am

Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) on securing this debate, but I must say that I was not flushed with excitement when I was told that it was to take place at 4 am. However, the debate is pertinent for a number of reasons, not least because the Government have this week issued a statement on forestry. I shall concentrate on a few matters: first, the history of the interdepartmental group; secondly, the disposal programme; and, thirdly, access agreements, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

A number of points arose from the statement made the other day by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is deplorable that the consultation document was not issued at the same time as the statement. I was informed on Tuesday morning that the statement was not in its final form but was being hastily rearranged—that is perhaps proof of the lack of clarity in the Government's approach to the whole issue.

Will the Minister tell us how long the consultation period will be? Will he answer the query from the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire about the interdepartmental review group document? Why, after £860,000, I think, was spent on it, is the document not to be published? How transparent are the aims and objectives of the next steps agency?

I said that I would deal with history, so let us go back to the previous general election. On 3 April 1992—six days before the election—the Prime Minister sent a letter to the forestry unions' action group. He wrote that there was no intention to privatise the Forestry Commission. On 11 May 1992, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), told the House: We have given a firm commitment not to privatise the Forestry Commission."—[Official Report, 11 May 1992; Vol. 207, c. 470.] However, on 5 July of the same year the then Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), wrote a confidential letter—I have it here—to the Secretary of State for Scotland in which he revealed that privatisation was being actively considered. He wrote: I am inclined to favour option two in the Forestry Commission paper, despite the difficulties to which you"— that is, the Secretary of State for Scotland— referred in your February letter. Although there would be hurdles to overcome, the key benefits are that it would raise money and get the forest estate out of the public sector … I would also like to suggest that if we decided to look into the option further we should go on to consider the possibility of abolishing the Forestry Commission in due course, and absorbing the forestry authority's policy functions into the Agriculture Departments". It transpires that, at that stage, apart from the ideological reasons, there was a purely financial reason for the sale, and there was also a bit of empire building for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which is not universally known as a guardian of the wider public interest.

As a postscript to the Prime Minister's letter to the forestry unions, on 27 August the Prime Minister's office sent another letter, correcting the April letter and explaining that the commitment given by the Prime Minister on this matter was drafted incorrectly during the frenzied activity of the general election campaign. That shows that whatever the Conservatives say in their manifesto they can change a few months later. My goodness, how many times have we seen the Government do that over the past few years?

All that led to the setting up of the interdepartmental review group of officials on March 30, to review options for the ownership and management of Forestry Commission woodlands and to make proposals for changes". When I mentioned the desire to dispose of the Forestry Commission and take it out of public hands, I think that I heard a Conservative Member murmur, "Hear, hear." But in Scotland as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom there was a massive outcry against the Government's proposals. I see the campaign that has forced the Government to back down from their naked objective of securing privatisation as a victory for public campaigning across all parties and all interest groups. That is most important.

I shall quote just one individual on that subject—Mr. Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington, a friend of the Minister and other Members of Parliament, who is chairman of the Red Deer Commission. He had the interests of the land in mind when he said: This may be public suicide. I may be sacked to-morrow"— that is, from his chairmanship of the Red Deer Commission— But the Government is talking rubbish about privatising the commission. What is going on is ridiculous, a struggle for power, political dogma … We have to say loud and clear that we don't like this dogma, that we won't have it pushed down our throat and that our political administrators need a psychiatrist … Selling off assets is a funny way to run a country". Those words were true then, and they- are still true now. Selling assets is indeed a funny way to run a country—and we are still faced with the same problem.

I hope that I shall not do the Minister any political injury when I congratulate him on his stewardship of the Forestry Commission over the past year. I know that he realises the benefits of retaining the Forestry Commission in public hands and I know that a rearguard action has had to be undertaken by the Scottish Office on the issue.

After the statement by the Secretary of State for Scotland on Tuesday, there was considerable relief that the Government have had second thoughts about the wholesale privatisation for a number of reasons. However, the Scottish public and the United Kingdom public still have many pertinent questions to ask about the present situation. There is still suspicion that forest management will be based solely on narrow commercial principles and that that may yet lead to the planting of more blanket swathes of conifers. There is also concern about the private ownership that has become an increasing feature of forestry over the past 11 or 12 years, as the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire said. Land disposal has taken place and more than 25,000 acres have now been sold in Scotland.

From experience, we know that private ownership frequently leads to a denial of access. The Forestry Commission has previously been criticised, but during my visits to, and discussions with, conservation groups, recreational groups and local authorities, they have pointed to the fact that, especially in the past decade, the Forestry Commission has proved much more astute. It has learnt to serve the needs of industry without alienating the public interest. It has adopted a proper and responsible attitude to community, recreational and environmental interests. Tree planting is nowadays undertaken in sympathy with the lie of the land and broadleaved trees, such as oak, ash, rowan and birch, which are traditional species in the Scottish forests, are introduced to soften the geometrical patterns of the land. A lot of good work has taken place, but we must remember that 250,000 acres of forestry land could be sold off by the end of the century.

The Secretary of State for Scotland could be described as Britain's head forester because he is in charge of the forest portfolio throughout the United Kingdom. The Scottish Office has an extremely important role to play. There is still a robust role for it in fighting against the disposal of land. There must be resistance to the Treasury's wish for a quick profit from the sale of valuable estates over the coming years.

Although this is, I imagine, the first time that the Government have backed down over privatisation in 15 years, we still have to strike a note of caution because, although the statement by the Secretary of State on Tuesday was welcome, a number of issues are still of great concern to us. Let us consider his comment that Our conclusion is that, at this stage of their development, the Forestry Commission woodlands should remain in the public sector. Why in the name of goodness was the phrase at this stage of their development put into the statement? One can only surmise.

Sir Hector Monro

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State answered that point yesterday.

Mr. McFall

The Secretary of State did not answer satisfactorily. That is the whole point.

Sir Hector Monro

That is a matter of opinion.

Mr. McFall

I agree that it is a matter of opinion, but I point out to the Minister that no Opposition Member believed that the point was answered. It is clear from the newspapers today that few members of the press believe that the point was answered. When the Secretary of State said: at this stage of their development"— [Official Report, 19 July 1994; Vol 247, c. 177] did he mean that, two or three years down the line, the Forestry Commission will be reviewed again?

Earlier, I quoted the Minister saying that the Government had no intention of privatising the Forestry Commission, yet they set up an interdepartmental review because of the pressure from other Departments. There was pressure from the Department of the Environment and from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, among others. The Minister cannot sit there, even at 4 o'clock in the morning, and deny that. I congratulate him on resisting the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Department of the Environment and the Treasury. What concerns the Opposition and other people is that that resistance will have to be maintained.

In the statement, the Secretary of State also mentioned that a trading body would be established as a next steps agency and would deal at arm's length with other parts of the Commission. We know the situation with regard to other bodies which have been established as next steps agencies to "deal at arm's length". What that means in parliamentary terms is that when a Member of Parliament writes a letter, instead of a direct answer from a Minister, there is a response from a chief executive. All we have to go on is that simple answer from the chief executive; we cannot probe or clarify the aims and objectives of the agency and the criteria on which it is operating. That gives us no element of succour in terms of the Secretary of State's statement.

The Secretary of State also referred to the Forestry Commission meeting legal costs incurred by local authorities in making access agreements. That is a totally inadequate response to the issue of access agreements. It is still the case that if land is sold and put into public hands, access agreements are not established. If I understand the Select Committee's report on forestry correctly, it mentions one access agreement in England and Wales but no agreement in Scotland, so effectively no access agreements have yet been established. It is a bit simple and superficial for the Secretary of State to say that giving the Forestry Commission some resources to meet legal costs will overcome the issue of access agreements because the problem is much greater than that. We need much more information on that issue.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire mentioned the disposal of land. It is a fact that land has been disposed of since 1981. Over the past decade, there has been a campaign to stop the sale of forest land. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned that more than 8,000 acres of land in Upper Nithsdale near Sanquhar in Dumfries— the Minister's area—have been disposed of. Further disposal was stopped only after successful intervention by the Ramblers Association working in co-operation with local community interests. The land would have been sold but for the fact that the local community got together and campaigned against it.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned Kilpatrick Hills, which I know extremely well because most of the 4,000 acres which are about to be disposed of are in my constituency. Much of the land encompasses the Loch Lomond area. Although the Government established a working party to examine the issue of the conservation of Loch Lomond and planning for its future, and although the report of Sir Peter Hutchison's working party stated that its understanding from the Scottish Office was that there would be no disposal of land in that area until the Secretary of State had come back with a statement as to the future of Loch Lomond, the Government have allowed the Forestry Commission to go ahead with the sale of 4,000 acres of that precious land.

In another area, delay in doing something about Loch Lomond is doing little for the environment or for public safety. The Government have an obligation to come out with a definitive statement on the issue. The sale of the Kilpatrick land involved 4,000 acres of precious Forestry Commission woodland. Again, a local campaign was taken up when it was discovered that Cluttons of Edinburgh was selling that land. I shall quote from a memorandum from Dawn McNiven of the Forestry Commission in Edinburgh to Bill Wright of the Ramblers Association in Scotland. It says: You asked for a written note on the above"— Kilpatrick Hills— Owing to the failure of four of the five lots to achieve a satisfactory offer, we have decided to temporarily withdraw all five lots of woodlands from the market. The sale aroused considerable public comment, and this may have had an effect on potential purchasers. We intend to bring the woods back to the market once conditions have changed. I assure the Minister that if that happens, public opposition will be maintained so that we keep that land in public ownership.

In the past couple of years, the Minister has engaged in double-speak on access agreements. On 29 January 1994, the Minister was interviewed on Radio Scotland about Forestry Commission woods—at a far more civilised time between 7 am and 8 am—and he stated: I think the point you are really making is that those that have been sold to individuals or to private companies with a binding agreement on access, I think in truth the law cannot be continued to a second purchaser. The interviewer went on to ask: So the first purchaser at the moment can make a very quick profit by selling it on to a chum somewhere down the line? The Minister replied: That would be possible, yes.

Sir Hector Monro

But very improbable.

Mr. McFall

The Minister said: That would be possible, yes. For the past 15 years, I have kept a close eye on the Government and such a reply is as good as them accepting that that could happen. The Minister has therefore acknowledged that if a second purchaser takes over woods, access agreements cannot be guaranteed.

Sir Hector Monro

The hon. Gentleman is being rather unfair. He should quote from the rest of that interview, in which I explained carefully that the whole purpose of management agreements with local authorities is that they last in perpetuity. It is important to reach such agreements to ensure that the legal problem of access is not encountered on the second sale.

Mr. McFall

I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification, but if the individual who purchased the land wished to sell after six months, no one could stop that person. The Minister has now told us that no public access agreement can be guaranteed. At the moment, the Forestry Commission operates a right-to-roam policy and the public make 50 million visits a year to its land. If the piecemeal disposal programme continues, the issue of public access will become an issue of ever-greater importance to the public, because they will understand that, progressively, they may be denied access to the hills.

The Minister has offered us no comfort, particularly when we consider that no access agreements have been signed between a local authority and a private landlord. On Tuesday, the Secretary of State failed to respond to that issue, which is still to the fore in Scotland.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire has already referred to multi-purpose forestry. In August, when the opposition to the Forestry Commission sell-off was at its height, I was invited to visit the Caledonian Paper Mill Company's plant at Irvine. That company has made a £250 million investment in Scotland and employs 430 people at the plant. It was concerned about long-term stability in the forestry and wood processing industry. That company and other industrialists told me that the Forestry Commission should stay in public hands because no long-term guarantee of supply could be offered if woods were in private hands. Whether one is talking to recreational, environmental or industrial groups, the message is the same: it is important to the keep the Forestry Commission in public hands.

Last year, the Labour party undertook a forestry privatisation survey and contacted every local authority in the United Kingdom. There was a 100 per cent. response from Scottish local authorities. They were unanimous in their belief that privatisation was not the way forward. The Dumfries and Galloway regional council, which has responsibilities in the Minister's constituency, responded as follows: Privatisation would be damaging to the nation's economic interests as well as placing at risk current public rights to access and recreation. Even in the area that the Minister represents, his words on access do not ring true. The council continued: There might also be damage to local processors, mainly saw mills, if they are to rely on future supplies from multinational companies with purely commercial objectives. The present continuity of supply would certainly be threatened. Every local authority in Scotland said that it wished the Forestry Commission to remain in public hands.

The need for a long-term policy for forestry is extremely important. After all, an oak tree that was planted in 1919, when the Forestry Commission was founded, will even now barely have reached middle age. We are one of the least afforested nations in Europe. There is only 10 per cent. woodland cover in Britain, with 7 per cent. in England. Our European partners have an average of 25 per cent. The need to continue to pursue the current long-term strategy is extremely important.

The Royal Scottish Forestry Society, in its submission to the review group and in criticism of possible privatisation, said that sudden change for political or other reasons forced onto an unwilling organisation would cause instability to both private and State forest enterprises. The society set out its concerns about the long-term disruptive effect on the forestry staff—their recruitment and training—and said that a piecemeal 'sell off would be the worst of all worlds, with loss of jobs with a complete disruption of the woodland market, resulting in only the best forests being sold at 'rock-bottom' prices. We ask the Minister to take into account this wise counsel about piecemeal sales. Despite the Secretary of State's statement on Tuesday, the issue has not been addressed. It will result in a severe problem in future.

The Conservative party's 1992 manifesto gave a clear promise to guarantee public access to a forest when the land was sold off. As with all its manifesto commitments, nothing could have been further from the truth. We were told by Ministers at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that further restrictions to Forestry Commission land would be fiercely resisted. In the light of the Under-Secretary's remarks, the only way to resist further restrictions to public access is to bring an immediate end to the Government's policy of back-door forestry privatisation.

I join the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire in pressing the Government on the issue. The Secretary of State's statement on Tuesday was far from reassuring. Pertinent issues remain to be considered. The Government are backing down on the privatisation proposal but they have done little to reassure the public that their long-term intentions are good.

5.14 am

Mrs. Diana Maddock (Christchurch)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for initiating this important debate. Like him, I would welcome reform of the procedures of the House so that we did not have to debate such matters at 5 o'clock in the morning. I must be well and truly sucked into the system to be standing here now.

The Forestry Commission's future is a subject close to my heart and the hearts of many of my constituents. Some 12 per cent. of my constituency of Christchurch, in east Dorset, is Forestry Commission-owned land and the New Forest is on our doorstep. When I was elected last year, I conducted a survey among my constituents and found that a large majority of them regularly walk in our local woodlands. That is not surprising given the wealth of opportunity that we have to do that locally, with Ringwood forest, the Moors Valley country park, Hum commons and part of the Avon valley in the area. All those places are owned by the Forestry Commission, so it is understandable that I feel so strongly about this issue.

Like many other hon. Members, I listened with interest to the Secretary of State for Scotland's statement on Tuesday. The news that the Forestry Commission would not be privatised was hardly Westminster's best kept secret; it had been announced on the television news and in The Times in May, and in The Scotsman in April. Nevertheless, I was relieved to hear the Secretary of State confirm it in the House, and the 4,500 people in my constituency who signed a petition against privatising the Forestry Commission feel likewise.

The decision not to privatise the Forestry Commission is wise. The future of our woodlands does not lie in the private sector. The delicate balance between the commercial use of forestry, the public right of access and environmental protection and conservation can best be kept by a body that is publicly owned and accountable to Parliament and the public through Ministers. In contrast, a Forestry Commission plc would be accountable primarily to its shareholders, whose interest in the land would be overwhelmingly commercial. Without all-encompassing regulation and strict control, which would be impractical and make the commission unattractive to investors, the profit motive would run rampant over the public interest and the delicate balance that now prevails would be lost, possibly irretrievably.

I know from first-hand experience how that delicate balance between the different areas is kept. I visited the Moors Valley area in my constituency and was shown round by two members of the Forestry Commission staff. One who was interested in conservation showed me the work that the commission was doing in bringing back Dorset heath land, which is an important natural habitat. It was also impressive to go round with the employee responsible for the commercial side and see the tremendous pains to which the commission has gone to protect the environment at the same time as selling off our woodlands.

Despite the Secretary of State's announcement, the future of the Forestry Commission and the land that it currently owns is still a matter of great concern to me. The implication of his remarks on Tuesday was that privatisation was by no means ruled out as an option for the future. Indeed, when questioned, the Secretary of State said that there was "no intrinsic reason" for Forestry Commission woodlands to stay in public ownership.

The decision to turn Forest Enterprise into a next steps agency could be regarded as a staging post towards privatisation in the future. Even if it is not, the Secretary of State admitted that the new agency would be "at arm's length" from the rest of the commission. As has already been said, it will become even harder to hold the Forestry Commission's management wing accountable to Parliament.

The Secretary of State also said that there will be demanding but deliverable performance targets. That sounds as though the Government will demand profit and the agency will deliver land to the private sector to get it. Will those performance targets include targets for levels of public access? Will those performance targets include targets for the preservation of animal habitats, and rare species and plants? That is especially important in my constituency, where there are Dorset heath land areas. Will those performance targets include targets for the planting of deciduous trees rather than the block planting of conifers, which are often preferred by the private sector because they are more profitable, but add to acid pollution and often destroy wildlife habitats? I strongly hope that the Minister's answer to all those questions will be yes, and that the Government performance targets are not simply profit targets.

I know that the forestry industry is an important one for much of Britain, and I fully realise that the commission plays an important economic role in many areas. Nevertheless, there is a balance to be kept between that role, and access and conservation, which up to now has been kept fairly successfully. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me and other hon. Members and our constituents that performance for the Forest Enterprise agency will mean very much more than simply how much money can be made out of our woodlands, and that any "targets" that it is set will take those points into account.

The Forestry Commission has an admirable record on conservation. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire mentioned his visit to a neighbouring constituency of mine, and he told you about bat boxes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that the Forestry Commission has also been involved with bird boxes. However, my hon. Friend did not tell you about the bumble boxes to be found in Wareham forest, in an effort to save the British bumblebee.

The commission also has a good record on public access, and I make no apologies for making similar points about that. That is the issue about which people are most worried. We know that, when woodlands are sold off, access is almost always lost. In spite of the Government's much-trumpeted initiatives in 1991 to try to protect access, I have been informed that only 19 agreements have been obtained from a total of 544 sales in the two years after that. Public access has been lost to 83,700 acres, and that can be added to the 345,000 acres to which public access had been lost in the previous nine years.

I welcome the fact that the Government have now recognised that that state of affairs cannot continue. I look forward to studying the promised measures when they are at last published. I hope that there will be great encouragement of public access when the commission disposes of its land.

When I read the document that we hope will arrive soon, I shall be especially interested in the proposals on how we shall pay the costs of public access. I say that as someone who came to this place from local government. I know too well the way in which local government may be promised help to pay for things, but cash does not always arrive. Permission may have been given to borrow, rather than money being forthcoming. I welcome, however, the fact that the Government recognise that it is important for local authorities to be involved in that, and I would back them whole-heartedly on that.

The most unfortunate fact is that, while the forestry review group has been sitting, while the Government have been considering its findings, while they have been producing a consultation document that we have yet to see, and while they consult on it and finally implement any changes, new woodlands are being put on the market. In the next 12 months, a further 25 acres are scheduled for disposal.

I ask the Government, why is that being allowed to happen? They are allowing it to happen in the full knowledge that people will lose the right of access to that land. I believe that the Government should halt the sales until new measures are in place, so that we do not lose any more access. I should very much like much more openness to surround sales of Forestry Commission land. It is difficult for ordinary members of the public to find out what land is on the market.

The piecemeal sell-off of much of the Forestry Commission's land is happening at a time when there is an expanding demand for timber world wide that we should be helping to meet. The Government's grant proposals show that they have recognised that, but, as I think we have all said this morning, the need to maintain access is becoming more and more important because the amount of leisure time that the average person now enjoys has greatly increased. We are all aware of the importance of woodland to the global environment, especially in our hydrological cycles and in combating global warming. Our forests are one of our greatest natural assets, and the Forestry Commission is the guardian of many of our most precious woodlands.

Many people will have been encouraged by the Secretary of State's statement, but we now have to see if the detail in the consultation document matches up to some of the expectations that have been raised by that statement. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will be looking hard at the consultation document. I know that my constituents will be looking at it very closely. I hope that the Minister will take a hard look at the submissions that come in during the consultation process.

I shall end with a few words for the Minister from one of my constituents. She speaks on behalf of the Verwood and district rambling club. Verwood is quite a small town in my constituency, but nevertheless the rambling club has 140 members. The letter was sent partly in response to a letter sent to me from the Minister which I sent to my constituent. She was not too happy with the initial letter, and said in her letter: I trust my suspicions are unfounded and that when the statement is issued we will find that common sense prevails. This land belongs to the people. Let's keep it that way.

5.26 am

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Sir Hector Monro)

I am glad to respond to the debate, and am only sorry that Opposition Members have left me so little time to do so.

The House will be aware that the Secretary of State for Scotland made a detailed statement on Tuesday in which he outlined the Government's approach to forestry in the light of their consideration of the forestry review group's report. I think that it received a general welcome from hon. Members on both sides of the House with the exception, surprisingly, of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). He attacked what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland said, but seemed to be totally out of step with almost everybody else in the House. However, I believe that his conscience may have made him realise that there was a great deal of good in what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said.

I appreciate the situation as well as many and probably better than most because my constituency is one of the most afforested areas in the United Kingdom. I have a high regard for the Forestry Commission and its staff, as well as for the private forestry groups that are equally important in providing timber for the long-term future. It is important to realise, particularly when we consider the planting grant increases that we announced on Tuesday, that we are concerned to ensure that there is an adequate supply for the major processing plants that have developed in the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland, in recent years. As the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) said, those plants are anxious to have long-term contracts. I hope that they will be able to achieve that under the plans that we have announced. In Ayrshire, Inverness-shire and Stirlingshire there are processing plants of immense importance, not only because of their products, but because they provide employment, often in areas with relatively sparse opportunities.

This year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the commission, and it is appropriate to begin by considering its achievements. Opposition Members have tried to spread alarm, and despondency tonight. Many of the issues they raised were hypothetical and far from what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said or what is intended.

Planting by the Forestry Commission and its support for private sector planting have resulted in the level of forest cover in Britain being doubled to reach 2.2 million hectares, more than 10 per cent. of the total land area. Wood production from the commission's forests is now more than 4 million tonnes a year, up 60 per cent. since 1980, with a further 50 per cent. increase expected by the year 2005. That wood production now supports many jobs in the wood processing sector. Over the last few years processing has enjoyed new investment of more than £1 billion. Examples of that are Caledonian Paper, Iggesund in north-west England and Shotton Paper company in Wales.

In addition, we should not forget the sawmilling developments. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has some in the Borders and I have some in my constituency. They are often located in small communities and thus provide an important boost to rural employment.

Under the Government's approach of multiple-purpose forestry, the commission's work is not simply restricted to wood production and encouraging investment in timber processing. Its responsibilities also include its important work in recreation and conservation. It is estimated that about 50 million people visit the commission's forests each year. It has developed an impressive range of facilities for visitors, including 671 picnic places, 751 forest walks and nature trails—those of us from Scotland well know the Southern Upland way and the Queen Elizabeth way—and a large number of cycle trails, visitor centres and forest gardens. The commission also operates a successful holiday business renting out forest cabins and providing camping and caravan sites.

I would not want to miss out the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) from my remarks. I can confirm that the Forestry Commission is extremely interested in conservation of all sorts. I know Canford Heath, Verwood and the other areas she mentioned Many of them are sites of special scientific interest—especially Canford Heath—and are therefore protected. The commission takes a great interest in habitat, conservation and the encouragement of all sorts of wildlife. Those who last night heard my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins)—the Minister for the Environment and Countryside—talking about our future plans for conservation will know that he highlighted all those points and stressed how important it is to look after our countryside.

Not surprisingly, an estate of more than 1 million hectares is a key national resource for nature conservation. The commission's nature conservation initiatives include 400 sites of special scientific interest, which cover 80,000 hectares. There are also the habitat projects, 250 wildlife rangers and forest design plans to co-ordinate production conservation and recreational uses.

Last but not least, the commission is custodian of some of the great British forests such as the New Forest and the Forest of Dean, which are linked to great events in our history and whose continued maintenance and development provide a tangible link to our past.

I must put on record a response to some of the points raised. It is wrong to say that the Government have done a U-turn. It is difficult to get into the heads of some Opposition Members that a consultation period means just that. We set out all the options and, having listened to all the arguments, we reach a conclusion. I find it incomprehensible that Opposition Members jump to conclusions before they have consulted. They were exactly the same on the issue of water. They said that Scotland's water would be privatised. We are not privatising Scotland's water; it is remaining in the public sector. Nor are we disconnecting supplies to domestic premises.

Mr. Kirkwood

Publish the report.

Sir Hector Monro

The hon. Gentleman shouts from a sedentary position. He knows full well, because he must have heard the reason a thousand and one times, why the Quayle-Monro report is not being published. It is exactly the same with the report of the forestry review group. Hon. Members should understand that papers containing commercial judgments are not and never have been published. The hon. Member for Dumbarton loves dishing out confidential documents, as he did tonight, but I cannot comment on them. The hon. Gentleman should have a greater sense of responsibility than to proceed by leaks.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire made a constructive speech. The details of the agency will be spelt out in the consultative document that will be published shortly. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no accelerated programme of disposals. He should know that we started out with the intention to sell 100,000 hectares and we are almost halfway towards achieving that and expect to do so by the year 2000. There is no intention to increase that figure.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said time and again that now that we have considered the access issue and received the report of the access sub-committee, which I accept was disappointing, we shall be careful about what parcels of forest are put on the market. Sensitive areas and areas that are used frequently by the public will not be in the disposal programme unless we can obtain an access agreement from the local authority. That is why we have put £1 million into the proposals that we announced yesterday—to assist with the legal charges and other aspects and to buy out the leasehold of Forestry Commission woodlands that are subject to leasehold and so not free for access as the rest of its woodlands are.

Mr. Kirkwood

That is a helpful answer. From where does the £1 million that the Minister has just mentioned come? Is it a Treasury grant, or will it come from the Forestry Commission's own resources?

Sir Hector Monro

The hon. Gentleman can work it out however he wishes. It will come from the trees that are sold and less will go to the Treasury. It will go to the operations to help with access and the grants, which is an important issue. Less money will go to the Treasury and more will be put back into the Forestry Commission, either through planting grants to the private sector or towards making access more available.

Mr. McFall

Will the Minister give 'way?

Sir Hector Monro

I have only four or five minutes, so I must hurry on.

I welcome what the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire said—after all, it is his -debate—about the South of Scotland Conservancy Council and Mr. Gordon Cowie, whom I know well and who is doing an excellent job. That is why I am so pleased that the Forestry Commission is staying as it is with the addition of the next steps agency in order to increase the commercial aspect of the enterprise. The authority will carry on looking, as ever, to be more efficient and to include the scientific aspects that have been mentioned.

Interestingly enough, I went recently with Gordon Cowie to south-west Scotland to see the devastation of plantations by fire. That is a serious issue that we must consider. Half a million pounds worth of timber is burnt in a day, some by vandals and some by careless walkers in the woods. We must be careful about that in the spring when there is little green cover and the timber is particularly dry, as it was in May this year.

I have said how proud we are of SSSIs, which are important to the Forestry Commission. There is great co-operation between Scottish Natural Heritage, English Nature, the Countryside Council for Wales and the Forestry Commission. All work well in harmony. It is interesting how they are developing their work together.

The hon. Member for Dumbarton mentioned Loch Lomond and safety. We put into the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill the very issue that we are trying to achieve of speeding up the by-laws for water sport.

Mr. McFall

As to Loch Lomond, I mentioned the possible sale of 4,000 acres of Kilpatrick Hills. Sir Peter Hutchison's report, which I welcomed, referred to the disposal of land in the Loch Lomond area. Perhaps there could be a moratorium until the Secretary of State makes up his mind. Will the Minister consider that issue and write to me?

Sir Hector Monro

Yes. I indicated that careful consideration will be given to putting on the market areas of sensitive planting—and nothing could be more sensitive than the area around Loch Lomond. That is also true of the Kilpatrick Hills, where there is also a significant problem of access to extract the timber if it were sold. That is also on the back burner.

We must maintain a modest disposal programme to generate income to continue the Forestry Commission's overall business. We must not forget that it was established to provide sufficient timber for all sorts of purposes in this country, not for purely environmental reasons. I am glad that has developed because it is important that trees are matured and that we now have fine woodlands throughout the United Kingdom.

The House will have to await publication of the consultative document in a few weeks' time for much of the detail. There will be adequate time—at least until the end of October—for consultation and for people to give their views, if they differ from the document. We will listen adequately and carefully, as we did throughout the progress of the forestry review group. I must have written 1,000 letters to Members of Parliament on access. Of course I was aware how strongly they felt. In the same way that we listened in respect of water in Scotland, we listened carefully in relation to forestry and made the right decision. I was pleased because I think that it is the right way forward. I look forward to the results of the consultation document, so that the commission will know that it has a stable, long-term future—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said when answering questions on his statement last Tuesday—and will not feel concerned about any of the scares—

The allotted time having expired, the debate was concluded in accordance with MADAM SPEAKER'S statement—[Official Report, 14 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 1197.]