SECOND LAND UTILISATION SURVEY

HL Deb 21 March 1979 vol 399 cc1201-34

5.32 p.m.

The Earl of ONSLOW rose to call attention to the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and in particular to the creation of extra waste land both urban and rural; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, perhaps it is slightly unlucky that we are having two debates on much the same subject in one day. However, we cannot but be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collison, for his debate. I think that the Strutt Com- mittee's Report and I have the same interests, which I believe to be those of the country as a whole.

In the lands of Essex and Kent that surround the Thames Estuary waste land has increased from 5 per cent. to nearly 10 per cent. of the total in 10 years: that is 5 per cent. to 10 per cent. of the total area. Commercial office and residential building has increased by only half of one square kilometre. That is a bad bargain for posterity, even if we take into account the small increase in roads, public open space, industry, and mineral extraction. Does this confirm Lord Strabolgi's confidence in the planning procedure?

There is in fact more to come. I became interested in what we did with our land because of what I saw about me in Surrey, through my limited travels about the Kingdom, and through a countryman's feeling of threat from urban and suburban pressures. My great grandfather recognised it a hundred years ago, because when building new tenant farmers' houses he built them big because he said they would make good houses for good middle-class doctors when London spread.

This interest and concern has been confirmed and elucidated by the Second Land Utilisation Survey and, above all, by the passion and missionary zeal of its director, Dr. Alice Coleman. This passion and zeal arose in her as a result of statistical and scientific study revealing the waste and profligacy with which we treat our countryside. The study has shown that agricultural land is being used at a terrifying speed. If the loss was for a good reason perhaps it would be worthwhile, but the majority is just going by default, as I have already illustrated.

Another example, not from the Second Land Utilisation Survey but from my own observation: Corby in Northamptonshire is due to suffer a socially devastating closure of a large part of its steel plant. In the town there are new houses boarded up and uninhabited. Soon there will be large tracts of industrial wasteland. Not eight miles away from Corby I saw last week a hoarding advertising the sale of 99 acres of greenfield site for industrial use. Why? Is that good planning?

I come into London by train to Waterloo. I see round Nine Elms and Battersea large tracts of unused wasteland, part no doubt of the 80 square kilometres of the wasteland in the GLC area. Yet pressure still grows on the Green Belt. Why? Is this good planning? Basildon New Town has been built on agricultural land to the east of Basildon. Yet idle waste scrub has been left idle, wasteful, and scrubby to the west. Why? Is this good planning? The problem of wasteland and its creation, and the consumption of agricultural land, are further complicated by what Dr. Coleman calls "rurban fringe". It was alluded to in the previous debate. This "rurban fringe" is defined as the surrounding, isolating penetration and consequent sterilisation of farmland by urban development. A train ride to Windsor from Waterloo will show it at either its superb best or horrifying worst, whichever way your Lordships would like to look at it. It is the opposite of in-filling.

As a result, farming costs increase from vandalism, trespass, and, in some cases, pests, and thus this can lead to the farmland being abandoned. It very often gets taken up by what is called "horsey-culture", which is rather bad ponies grazing on bad land. Obviously they give great pleasure to the people who own them, and so they should. But it seems to me a waste of land.

Dr. Coleman has produced figures and maps to prove this abandonment of land and this creation of "rurban fringe". What is most unfortunate is that she has made these marvellous coloured maps but only 15 per cent, of them have been printed. It would be of great benefit to councils, planning authorities and, if I may say so, Government, if these could be printed. But a grant would be necessary for that to happen. I believe that it would cost something in the region of £3 million to finish the printing of these maps. The "rurban fringe", she has shown, extends round most urban cities over more than twice the compact townscape area. The problems of waste "rurban fringe" and consumption of agricutural land are so interlocking that they are as a harem of problems where it is impossible to choose one lady for attention because of the offence given to the others.

My Lords, planning arose as a result of Dudley Stamp's First Land Use Survey and the conviction that uncontrolled development created slums and sprawl, squalor and waste. The Second Land Utilisation Survey has shown that the problems identified by Stamp are still with us. Planning has not reduced sprawl. The reverse. Planning has not diminished waste. The reverse. Planning has not abolished squalor. The reverse. There are the slums that have been created in the set of tower blocks in Kirkby, which the local authority are going to have to give away, I believe, because they cannot find a buyer, the problem is so bad. The wasteland would still be recognised by Goering's photo-reconnaissance pilots if they flew over Liverpool. It is still there. The sprawl of Milton Keynes, with its concrete cows set in deodorised fields, is a phenomenon all of which has arisen since the advent of planning. The Isle of Dogs has suffered from urban blight. Renewal and reincarnation were definitely necessary. Houses were to be built on attractive riverside frontages and old industry moved. Unfortunately, industry was easily moved to cheaper new town and thus greenfield sites and no new industry came. Unemployment rose, rates rose, the needs for taxes rose, and the tax income fell. An air of decrepitude was all pervading, driving away private money, and financial constraints were applied to public authorities.

In Tower Hamlets, dockers who had accepted money as a result of decasualisation wanted to buy their houses, but the local authority would not let them and consequently they migrated, to the general impoverishment of the borough. Even though the population density per acre is much lower than it was before the war, I believe the population density per room to be exactly the same.

We now recognise that tower blocks produce vandalism among the young, depression among middle-aged mothers and fear among the aged. We also know they do not have the community spirit of the old terraced slums. Is it not odd that houses originally built from a pattern book for the working classes in Chelsea, Fulham, Kensington and Islington now fetch high prices while others are being pulled down in other boroughs to make way for newer and possibly less satisfying types of housing?

The construction of roads is extravagant in the use of land. Incidentally, the Government do not have the figures of land lost to agriculture in this way. Verges are wide, curbs grandiloquent and bits of field are left between motorways and railways; I have seen this both on the M.1 and M.5 in the last 14 days. Surrey County Council has widened a road which passes through my farm. Why does a carriageway need a wider verge, nearly its own width, when this carriageway is turned from a two-way to a one-way? We cannot afford land extravagance such as that.

The argument that we can always go on producing enough food for all with a reduced acreage, as Robin Best, reader at Wye, asserts, is an illogicality based on a short-sighted, penny-pinching, pound foolishness. In spite of our mountains of butter, lakes of wine and olive oil and occasional surpluses of beef, Europe is a net food importer. We are effectively farming large areas of the United States for animal food protein. When we sort out our mountains and lakes, which is surely within the wit of man, if they can avoid the temptation to make emotional squeaks and huffs in order to try to keep their leprous fingers on the levers of power, then the food situation in Europe will be apparent.

Between 1945 and 2000 the world population will probably double. The growth economies of the newly-industrialised countries will demand higher nutritional standards and consequently much more proteins and carbohydrates per head, and above all more meat. The United States eats only 10 per cent. of the grain it consumes, the rest goes to animal food or exports. Incidentally, it also uses 2 million tons of nitrogenous fertiliser on gardens and golf courses, a useless piece of information which I thought might amuse your Lordships.

From where will this food increase come? Europe will have to become self-sufficient, and so will we. This means we must not use land at the rate of 70,000 acres a year; 191.78 acres a day, or 191.25 in a leap year. Those are Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food figures, while Dr. Coleman's are higher. When I started reading up about land loss I did not realise quite how many other things were involved; sociology and economics, conservation and politics, transport and energy, food and mineral extraction—all and many others are mixed up and most clash. Sometimes they meld strangely like the peregrines who have taken to nesting in an office tower in Wales.

A perfect example of this clash, I suggest, is the Vale of Belvoir. The social cost of mining the Vale of Belvoir and the economics appear different to the Coal Board and the people of north-east Leicester. Belvoir is good quality agricultural land, there is no unemployment to speak of and it is a settled and prosperous community with few social stresses. Selby is being mined, some would say unnecessarily, as the Central Electricity Generating Board has forced the Government to subsidise Drax B, which it does not want. United Kingdom energy demand in 1975 was 341 million tons of coal equivalent, and in respect of the year 2000 there are at least three forecasts. The lowest band of the lowest forecast is 11 million tons less of coal equivalent than the present consumption. The highest part of the highest band is 650 million tons; surprise, surprise—that comes from the Coal Board! The Ministry forecasts in the figures I last saw were 450 million to 560 million tons of coal equivalent. Incidentally, during the Windscale inquiry the CEGB altered its electricity needs forecast two or three times.

On the other hand, we know that North Sea oil is due to run out early next century, but we are still finding new oil reserves, admittedly more expensive to extract. However, oil reserves as a multiplier of annual use is much smaller now than it was in 1945. Coal is a great national resource and must be used, but how can it be used without disturbing old communities, how can it be used to revitalise other old ones and how can we extract it without mining the Vale of Belvoir or sinking the Vale 10 feet, thus breaking all the drainage, imposing a large migration of population on others, dumping 2,700,000 tons of waste material a year on the best part of 2,000 acreas of good agricultural land? If we really need the extra energy, I suggest we go for coal gasification, expensive at the moment but environmentally much more attractive. It would allow the exploitation of thinner and deeper seams and seams under the North Sea. It would not involve slag heaps. If man can get oil from the bottom of the sea, he can solve the admitted problem of coal gasification.

How can we balance an increasing and better off world population and a possible increase in energy demands without overrunning agricultural land? Robin Best, reader at Wye College, leaves agricultural land as not in danger faction. Even his figure extrapolated—admittedly, unchecked—uses up all agricultural land in the United Kingdom in 900 years; the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food shows 360 years; and Dr. Coleman gives 200 years. Therefore backwards to the invention of income tax for Dr. Coleman; to the supremacy of common law and the triune parliament by Lord Justice Coke for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; and, ironically, backwards to the Domesday Book for Mr. Best.

In this country we must set an example. No more Green Belt land taken until the 80 or so square kilometeres of derelict land in London has been developed. Let us fill in the worst of the "rurban fringe" and make sure that the road lobby takes into account others' views and realises that we are not building on vast Saharan open spaces but on England's green and pleasant land. Let us build nice modern houses not unlike those of the 18th and early 19th centuries which satisfied the territorial imperative of man. When coal-mining and other mineral extraction is necessary, let us make sure that waste goes to fill other scars of extraction. We must not in any circumstances follow the example of Corby, making waste the town and using 99 acres of agricultural land eight miles away. If man is as stupid as that with this earth, he does not deserve to inherit it. I beg to move for Papers.

5.48 p.m.

Baroness YOUNG

My Lords, I wish at the outset to thank my noble friend Lord Onslow for introducing this debate. It is timely and it is interesting that the House should be debating the Strutt Report on agriculture on the same day as the report which is before us. One might coin a phrase and say that both debates cover much of the same ground. My noble friend has outlined Dr. Alice Coleman's interesting report on the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and in that report she has outlined in sequence five areas of concern. The first must be the depopulation of the towns with jobs and people moving out into the country. That affects the edges of the town and country leading to what she has described as the "rurban" fringe with the population migrating into green field sites. That in its turn leads to a third phase because of course it affects agricultural land and what she has called the "farmscape" with a loss of farming land of up to 40,000 acres annually.

As the farm land is diminished, it leads to a fourth phase in which in turn marginal fringe land is affected as farmers take increasingly the marginal land for development purposes for farming, and the marginal land is upgraded to farmland. That, as I understand it, finally in a fifth phase, affects what she has described as the "wildscape", and so there becomes a diminishing proportion of land as it is in its natural state. I have no doubt at all that when in your Lordships' House we debate the Countryside Bill this will be the kind of area that we shall be discussing.

The report's prosaic title, the Second Land Utilisation Survey, belies its extraordinary and important content, for not only has Dr. Coleman outlined a number of problems, but she has asked a question: Have 30 years of land use planning produced better land use? Such an important question is difficult to answer, first, because it is never possible to do a controlled experiment and to see what would have happened without the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and its successors, and to compare that with what we have today. Secondly, as in all such major questions, it is not possible, I believe, to give a "Yes" or "No" answer. What I think is right is that the question about planning should be asked, for after 30 years of planning legislation it is possible to measure some of its results and to question at least some of the assumptions on which much of it is based.

Perhaps at this stage I ought to declare an interest. When I was in local government I served on a planning committee for 12 years, undertaking work which I found extraordinarily interesting, and perhaps I may be permitted to make two or three general observations about the planning system. I should say that planning has been successful in great measure in relation to development control, and has been effective in avoiding some of the eyesores that might otherwise have emerged. Its weaknesses—and they are very real weaknesses—have been, first, its inability to take account of people's actual needs and wishes. The enormous development of pressure groups and amenity societies of all kinds and descriptions, often, I accept, having entirely contradictory objectives, suggests that many planning assumptions have been wrong. The new development of planning and ecology are I believe attempts by planners to put right the basic mistake that they have made; for the fact is that people do not want to live in tower blocks. They do not want to be cut off from the shops. They do not wish to see the wholesale redevelopment of their area and the break-up of their community. No matter how good, how green, and how pleasant the new town appears, the area which they know and is which they have lived, and the people whom they have lived near, appear to them far more important.

I believe that the reason that planning has got into this difficulty is that what appear as good and sensible assumptions when they are made do not in fact always work out as expected. I should like to give just one example. Let us consider the zoning of land for particular purposes and agree that in principle it is desirable to do this. We find, for example, that the zoning of residential property in a residential area means that the factory next door constitutes a non-conforming use and must be removed. Eventually the factory or the business goes, and then due to the fact that the area is zoned as residential land, no new industry can be set up there, and so whole areas of cities are entirely without employment and people have to commute miles to work or face being unemployed. This cannot have been the intention of the plan when it was drawn up, yet it is certainly one of the ways in which it works in practice.

There is also the enormously long time lag between the concept of a plan and its actual coming into being, and in the long intervening period—which can be five, 10, or even 15 years—attitudes and assumptions change. When what originally seemed an excellent idea actually comes into being, the assumptions on which it was based have altered.

Dr. Alice Coleman's report, and the lecture that she gave following upon it, based upon the Second Land Utilisation Survey, have I believe brought a new dimension to all this discussion. If I may say so without sounding presumptuous, it seems to me that her point that during the 1930s the unplanned sprawl of development ate up thousands of acres of agricultural land represents a problem which has not been fully, or even partly, resolved by planning; and in identifying the problem she has been helpful to us. The fact is that by some estimates the country is still losing 17,000 hectares of agricultural land each year, while other estimates suggest that the figure is rising to 40,000 hectares each year. At the same time as we are losing agricultural land there remains an enormous amount of derelict land in cities and towns as well as in the countryside throughout the whole of Great Britain.

In a reply on 8th February 1978 in another place the right honourable Mr. Shore said that the 1974 survey showed that there were 106,000 acres of derelict and despoiled land in England. That figure does not include land classified as unused, as there is no commonly agreed definition of that term. The Civic Trust report on urban waste makes the same point. The report followed work carried out largely by amenity societies which were trying to identify waste land which they describe as "dormant" land. Most of the land described became dormant in the 1960s and the 1970s, and they suggest that as much as a quarter of a million acres of land in Britain may be dormant.

No one will be satisfied either with this picture or with the fact that our knowledge of what is actually taking place remains, as I believe, so limited; and perhaps that is the greatest criticism of all of our system. Despite all the care taken over planning, we still do not have a completely accurate record of where we are and of what is going on. People will not be satisfied that the planning system is working as it should.

In her report Dr. Alice Coleman does not propose the end of the planning system. She suggests that its procedures could be hurried up, and I feel that anyone who knows about planning would agree that one of its deficiencies lies in the time that procedures take. I am sure that Dr. Coleman is right on this point. Here I should like to ask the noble Baroness, Lady David (who is to reply to the debate), what has happened to the Dobry Report, and what proposals the Government have on planning procedures and the length of time they take.

Dr. Coleman also suggests a much more imaginative use of planning by planners. I have already indicated some of the ways in which I think planning is moving, and judging from debates we have had in your Lordships' House on the environment there is no doubt that there is considerable interest in the new ecology movement, the impact of ecology on planning, and the whole area of environmental impact statements and the risk impact statement which is also a new development. I am sure that we need to look at all these matters.

But in approaching the basic problem with which we are confronted—namely, the using up of good agricultural land, while concurrently a considerable amount of land in cities lies vacant—our solutions do not seem to be as effective as they should be. In your Lordships' House we debated at considerable length the Inner Urban Areas Bill, and one point that emerged from that debate is that, although undoubtedly the Bill will do some good, there is nowhere near enough money to tackle the problems of the inner cities, and what there is has been spread around too many authorities. Furthermore, I believe that far too little emphasis has been placed upon the role of private enterprise and private business in bringing back life to the cities. In this matter planning must have a role to play—and there must be a much more flexible development of planning at that. I should go so far as to say for myself that there may be much to be said for much more piecemeal planning in cities in order to revitalise the centres, rather than waiting always for some grand design which is unlikely ever to emerge. The Civic Trust, for their part, have made a number of useful suggestions, particularly on the temporary use of vacant sites, and they have indicated how important voluntary organisations can be in helping, particularly, in the tidying up and temporary use of vacant or dormant sites.

In all this work, not only are local authorities criticised but so are nationalised industries for holding on to enormous amounts of land which appear to be unused. In discussions—and perhaps I should declare an interest at this point—British Railways have made the point to me that one of the bad effects is the incidence of development land tax, which has prevented them from developing a number of vacant sites as they would like to do. Furthermore, it has had the curious effect that, where they have land which is next to vacant land belonging to a local authority and they would like to carry out joint development, whereas the local authority does not pay development land tax the nationalised industry does. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the two systems running side by side, it seems to me that this is a matter which ought to be looked at if it is holding up development and so encouraging the kind of situation that we have today.

My Lords, this is a Short Debate this afternoon, but it covers an enormously important area of our life. As my noble friend Lord Onslow has said, we look at our very beautiful countryside and our still beautiful cities, and we want to see that we are making the best use of the precious land that we have. Endless debate is not the answer to these problems: a great deal of action is needed to make much better use of the derelict land, to save the good agricultural land on which to grow the food which we all need, and to make our country use to the maximum the valuable resources that it has.

6.2 p.m.

Baroness WHITE

My Lords, in introducing this debate the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, referred to the passion and zeal of Dr. Alice Coleman, whose Second Land Utilisation Survey is the basis for our discussion this afternoon. Of course, he is quite right; she is a superb propagandist, and that is an essential and most valuable ingredient in any democractic society. We could not operate, even moderately successfully, without dedicated and articulate gadflies who prick the body politic from time to time to try to induce further action which they consider to be desirable.

Unfortunately, of course, the Second Land Utilisation Survey itself raises certain doubts in one's mind. Dr. Coleman had an article published in the chartered surveyors' magazine in December last in which she herself quite honestly described the methods by which that survey was compiled, and in which she referred to the help of 2,000 voluntary surveyors. Of course, the trouble was that she did not have the resources to do the kind of survey in depth which one would have ideally desired. A number of these voluntary surveyors were untrained and unsupervised students. They were the best means that she could obtain at the time. But those of us who know something about the way in which some of these exercises were carried out are, I think, a little sceptical as to some of the precise results.

A little later on in this same article she mentioned that, while the Ordnance Survey takes 530 man-years to area-measure England and Wales, her land utilisation survey had to devise inexpensive methods which took only eight man-years; and, naturally, the results are not entirely scientifically reliable. On the other hand, the doubts which I think one must inevitably cast on the validity of many of the conclusions drawn from this survey do not vitiate the fact that it (very graphically, in her hands) points to trends; and with a great many of her social conclusions I would entirely concur.

It is, I think, disturbing—it must be disturbing—to all of us, to realise that the planning procedures in which many of us have placed very great faith and confidence have not worked out as satisfactorily as we might have hoped; and one would like to have, I think, a much more dispassionate and thorough examination of just why. It is quite true that there have been difficulties in interpreting what the public, the consumers of the end products of the planning process, really want; and I think Dr. Coleman most graphically describes many of the weaknesses and failures of our current practices.

Nevertheless, I do not think that these difficulties should always be laid at the doors of the planners. For example, to take high-rise flats, with which I had a very early acquaintance (in company, as it happens, with the right honourable lady the Leader of the Opposition in another place), we had a committee in the very early 1960s examining this problem of high-rise flats, which we had identified quite firmly as being socially extremely undesirable. But I believe it was not the planning committees so much as the housing committees of the local authorities who were pressing ahead with the high-rise flats and making demands for their construction.

I believe it would be extremely valuable if we could have an examination of some of the difficulties outlined by Dr. Coleman in her various publications—and a number of them have been touched on by the noble Earl this afternoon. But I do not think we should delude ourselves into supposing that that analysis will necessarily lead to easy solutions. It is extremely irritating to all of us, I am sure, to see in our inner cities areas which one believes ought to be developed, and certainly ought to be developed before one encroaches still further on agricultural land. But the problem is not merely one of lack of will on the part of the local planning authorities.

I have to declare some interest here. As the House knows, I am chairman of the Land Authority for Wales, in which we administer the Community Land Act on a somewhat different pattern from that which obtains in England or Scotland. We are very much aware of the conflicts of interest which arise in dealing with both urban and rural land. We have the responsibility under the Community Land Act for endeavouring to promote what is known as positive planning, and to do so, of course, in such a way as also to be economically viable. We have naturally come across a number of situations in which one wishes to develop an urban site but where one finds that there are a great many obstacles in one's way; and it sometimes takes a quite lamentable period of time in which to achieve one's objectives.

But, my Lords, within the last few months we have agreed to fund a survey in the Principality through the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology in Cardiff, under the head of their planning department, Professor Bruton. It is a survey of what the Civic Trust calls dormant sites, as well as of derelict land. In Wales, at least, derelict land is in some ways less of a problem, in so far as we have a very active dereliectland unit now under the Welsh Development Agency, whose sole objective is to encourage local authorities to undertake, or itself undertake, the restoration of land which is physically derelict. That, although, it is a difficult problem, particularly when one continues to have dereliction following coal mining and other industrial processes, is one of which one can take the measure. It is the unused land, the dormant land, which causes one particular concern.

The Earl of ONSLOW

My Lords, may I make one point? Is it not possible to call dormant land something more pejorative? "Dormant land" gives the impression of nice, sleepy land. I think that land is too important a commodity to give it this euphemism, when it is basically unused.

Baroness WHITE

My Lords, with great respect, I think it is as good a term as any. If the noble Earl can provide a better word I should be interested to hear it. It indicates that the land is not incapable of use, that it is almost certain that it will be used but that for the time being it is not being used. Therefore, I should have thought that "dormant" was not an inappropriate term.

But we are proposing, not merely with the help of the local authorities to catalogue such sites in the urban areas, but also to undertake—or, the units will undertake on our behalf—to analyse a selection of these sites so as to show why they have been unused for a period of years. There may be legal difficulties; there may be problems of ownership which may be difficult to deal with and, perhaps, marketing factors. There must be some demand for a development of these sites before anybody, public or private, is likely to undertake it. There are problems which were discussed on the Inner Urban Areas Bill, of historic values which no longer pertain. No one has found an adequate way of dealing with those. There are considerable complexities of the market in a mixed economy, and we are going to try to analyse as far as possible, on a selection of sites, the reasons why sites which are apparently useful or should be available for development have not been developed over a significantly long period of years. This, I hope, will be helpful.

We also publish annually (as we are required to do by statute) what is called a land policy statement, which is really a land acquisition policy statement; because the planning aspects rest exclusively with the local planning authorities and ultimately, in certain circumstances, with the Welsh Office. Nevertheless, such statements, which are published each year, again give the clue to some of the difficulties and problems which one has to face in land use.

My Lords, when I heard that this debate was to take place, I asked my officials to give me a brief analysis of the type of land that we have bought under the Community Land Act in the 2½ years or so in which we have been active. I was interested to find that in the period from September 1976 to February of this year we had bought (as I knew, of course) 1,230 acres of land. Of this only 2 per cent. I am assured, is land which was in fully productive agricultural use; that is to say, for something more than short-term grazing. That, your Lordships will agree, is a small proportion. That land has been purchased at the request of the farming interests in order to provide working capital for the farms.

In an area which has been zoned for future development—although, as the structure plans are still unconfirmed in every county but one of Wales, these are subject to change—2 per cent. only was fully productive arable land. Some 50 per cent. was land which in our view one might have regarded as being virtually lost to agriculture already; in other words, it was subject to short-term grazing tenancies and almost all of it already had planning consent for development. Some 12 per cent. was very low-grade common land which had not been cultivated at all; and 36 per cent. was land which one might regard at the moment as waste or derelict land, or land which had been developed but needed renewal—town centre areas which had become squalid and well below the standards required. The remainder of this was made up by land already under-developed, for housing particularly, but where developers for one reason or another had abandoned their efforts and where we took over unfinished sites to carry them on.

I mention these facts because it has been suggested by Dr. Coleman herself at one point that the Community Land Act was partly responsible for encroaching upon agricultural land. I think that I have shown that this is not so to any significant degree. On the contrary, because of the way in which our responsibilities are laid upon us, we are in a better position than most to balance the social needs with the economic incentives. The private market normally goes almost entirely for the economic profitability of site development; the public sector, on the other hand, considers land mostly from the functional point of view. We endeavour to make the Community Land Act do what it is intended to do—which is to try to reconcile the two interests.

I would hope very much that the sort of work we are endeavouring to do in the Principality will be extended more thoroughly to other parts of the country, because I am sure that in order to study these matters properly we need a very firm basis of information. This in no way derogates from the admirable efforts of voluntary organisations like the Civic Trust who have done us very great service; but they cannot be expected to do as comprehensive and reliable a job as, I believe, should be undertaken by public authorities. If this short debate stimulated by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, should encourage the Government or local authorities further to undertake this kind of work, I think it will be to general advantage.

6.20 p.m.

Lord VERNON

My Lords, I do not share the scepticism of the noble Baroness who preceded me about the value of Dr. Alice Coleman's conclusions. I believe there is a great deal of evidence to support her. My noble friend Lord Onslow has, in my view, performed a signal service by putting down this Motion this afternoon. I am glad he was more successful than I was in the ballot when I put down my name on a similar Motion about two years ago. My noble friend has demonstrated effectively, I think, that we shall face a very serious situation in this country if the present Rake's Progress in the squandering of agricultural land continues. It is a relentless process; it goes on year in year out, and it is irreversible. Once land has gone down to concrete it will never again grow crops. That is the difference between land taken for urban development and land taken for forestry.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, is not here to take part in our debate. I remember vividly in a previous debate the eloquence with which he described our agricultural land as our most valuable physical asset. We rely on it at present to feed 50 per cent. of our people. By the end of the century, when the population of the world will have doubled—that is, doubled in 25 years —we may have to rely on our land to feed all of us. What utter folly to misuse it in the way we do! It is not just a question of a few individuals with bees in their bonnets who are worried about what is happening; there is now a large amount of authoritative evidence to support this concern. There was the 1976 Report of the Centre for Agricultural Strategy and the Strutt Report which we debated earlier this afternoon. Both reports express grave concern at the present trends. These reports entirely endorse the views of Dr. Alice Coleman, who has made such an exhaustive examination of the problem, even if it was not quite so scientific as the noble Baroness, Lady White, would have liked. We shall ignore these alarm bells at our peril.

I should now like to say something about the position in my native Derbyshire. With a total area in agriculture of 190,000 hectares, the average land loss during the years 1971 to 1976 was between 500 and 550 hectares per year. This does not take account of the land on the urban fringe which, as we know, is largely sterilised for agricultural purposes because of vandalism and trespass. At this rate of 500 hectares a year, it would take a little under 400 years before all the agricultural land in the county was exhausted. The figures I have quoted are those which I have obtained from the Derbyshire County Council. However, when it is remembered that a large part of Derbyshire is taken up by the Peak National Park and by the uplands, and that development is confined to the higher quality land which provides most of our food, it is obvious that Dr. Coleman's estimate of 200 years before all the agricultural land is exhausted is very close to the mark.

Then there is the question of the rape of grade 2 land. I note that in the Derbyshire structure plan 22 hectares of grade 2 land is to be allocated for housing up to 1996. That may not seem a large amount but Derbyshire has very little grade 2 land—much less than the national average—and, when one reproduces what is happening in Derbyshire over the country at large, it would appear that a substantial amount of grade 2 land will be lost in the future as it has been lost in the past 20 years. To my certain knowledge the best grade 2 land in the East Midlands has been taken for urban sprawl on the outskirts of Lichfield, Nottingham and Grantham. I cannot see why Grade 1 or Grade 2 land should ever be taken for housing, and certainly not without a public inquiry.

I turn now to the question of grading. The vast majority of agricultural land is graded as 3. One might suppose it is third rate land and it is regarded as easy game for the planners. Yet this same land can grow high yielding arable crops and excellent grass for dairy herds. Some more realistic grading system is urgently required. I raised this in a debate early in 1977 and the noble Lord the Leader of the House was kind enough to write to tell me that discussions on this aspect of the report by the Centre for Agricultural Strategy were then taking place. That was two years ago. May we now please be told what progress has been made? If the noble Baroness cannot answer that tonight, perhaps she will write to me about it.

What is so deplorable about the present state of affairs is that the land loss seems to be largely unnecessary. We know from the report that I have quoted—the report from the centre at Reading—that 80 per cent. of the nation's housing needs up to the year 2000 can be met from derelict land. At the same time, we are informed by Dr. Alice Coleman that in London alone 80 square kilometres has been put out of use and is lying idle. My noble friend Lord Onslow has referred to this. I presume that the land is derelict land and what is known as dormant land. If the figures she gives for Tower Hamlets are representative of other London boroughs, the wastage is nothing short of a national disgrace. We all know why urban derelict land is not taken for new development. It is because a nice virgin cornfield is much more convenient and cheaper. Meanwhile, the inner cities with their large open spaces, often created with the best of intentions, lie neglected and vandalised.

Only the Government can alter this state of affairs. They can alter it by giving the necessary incentives to build in urban areas—my noble friend Lady Young mentioned the importance of the inner cities—and they can alter it by changing the existing planning procedure. The burden of proof should be on the Department of the Environment to show why urban and derelict land should not be taken in preference to agricultural land. I was very glad to note that in the previous debate the Government gave an assurance that the Ministry of Agriculture would now be consulted in cases of areas up to five acres, where as previously it was 10 acres. That at least is a big advance and I congratulate the Government on that.

Finally, I should like to say a word in support of Dr. Coleman's plea that consideration be given to building more houses with small gardens. The amount of food which can be grown in a few square metres of well tilled land is astonishing. I am sure it is true that many people want their own plot of land, however small. It satisfies a basic instinct and provides an interest which unkempt, open spaces can never do. I do not think any other densely populated country in the world would be as profligate in its attitude to the use or abuse of agricultural land as we are. That so few of your Lordships are taking part in this debate may perhaps be due to the fact that the previous debate was on a very similar subject, but I think it is also due in part to lack of interest. There is a lack of interest in Parliament; there is a lack of interest in the Government; there is a lack of interest in the media; and it is hardly surprising that the public should not be too concerned. I think it is up to all of us who really believe that something should be done about this matter, and I think we owe it to the generations who are to come after us, to give higher priority to our agricultural land in the future than we have in the past.

6.31 p.m.

Lord ENERGLYN

My Lords, I have been asked by the noble Earl to intervene at this point and to say something about the impact of coal mining on agriculture; but before doing so I should like to say that I have listened intently to the speeches. I do not wish to be impertinent or rude, but I must say that I have heard it all before. I was involved in the Dudley Stamp exercise, and really I must say that there was no need for any more surveys. I remember how Dudley used to be frustrated by the "talking shops" that were set up, and what we have seen since is an epidemic of planners and their talking shops. They are still at it and they will still go on, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, and not listen to his plea. The noble Lord is quite right: they are not really interested in doing anything, but they are more interested in talking about it.

As an example, have we seen any attempt to subsidise some of the new ventures in soil formation that were invented in this country? Off the cuff—because I have not prepared a speech—I quote Krylium, which was a new synthetic substance that would break down clay into a soil "crumb", which is the beginning of soil fertility. Where did it go?— it went to America. If we think in terms of land utilisation, is it not about time that we used our ingenuity and great scientific expertise in accelerating what our forefathers have done? For example, it took the Dutch some 50 years to desalinate the soils they recovered from the Wash. We can do that now in a matter of two or three years by using a simple technique of electro-endo-osmosis.

These are realistic methods which engineers are using and which we could use to desalinate, for example, if the noble Baroness, Lady White, will permit me to say so, effectively places like the Cromlyn Bog in Swansea. Desalinate that area, and you would have about 10,000 acres which would be as rich as the soils of Norfolk within four or five years, and would at the same time create employment and revive the old dream of Lloyd-George to try to get people back to the land. Wherever I now roam in the world and talk to leaders, their great desire is to get their people back to the land—because the one thing the world acknowledges that it needs is food, and food in the right places. So I really am impressed by the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, to put the Government on the hook. I would say: "Do something, please; show an interest, please; but do not talk about it any more".

I come now to the point which the noble Earl asked me to talk about, and that is the effect of mining on land utilisation. You have two potentials: you can open-cast a bed of iron ore or a seam of coal and you can restore the land progressively. In the case of iron ore, in Lincolnshire, you can create soils which are thicker and richer than they were orginally. This has been done, and praise should be given to the open-cast engineers who have done it. On the other hand, you can open-cast coal and create utter devastation, unless it is properly planned. By "planning", I mean engineering planning and not social planning.

When it comes to underground mining, there the big problem is roof control. If you undermine the roof beyond its bearing strength the ground begins to subside. If that is done in an uncontrolled way it will affect the surface drainage—I do not mean land drains, but the water table—quite effectively. But we now know so much about hydro-geology that there will be no danger, I can assure your Lordships, in the mining of coal in the Vale of Belvoir to the water table in the Vale of Belvoir.

The noble Earl mentioned a figure of some 2 million tons of coal refuse which has to be dumped somewhere. He visualises a great coal tip developing in that lovely part of the world—incidentally, I produced the first geological maps of the area, so let me declare my responsibility if not my interest. These tips need not occur at all, because the new method of mining on this kind of scale will be to take the waste material back underground to restore the supports to the seams. Therefore you will have subsidence but you will not have coal tips.

That brings me to something that I hope your Lordships will regard as being constructive. We believe that coal is simply a substance that we burn, that we boil water with and we use to create electricity: that is the be-all and end-all of coal. We romantically think of converting coal into oil. We can do that; eventually it will be done. But I must now declare an interest in that, in collaboration with the Hungarians, we have now enough evidence to show that coal can be converted back into the humus from which the coal was geologically formed: this means the humus soils of those geological times—in the case of Hungary some 90 million years old, and in the case of Britain some 250 million to 300 million years old. These humus compounds contain all the balanced trace elements that caused the verdance of leaf production which created the coal seams of those distant geological times.

Here you have a deposit, a substance, which is almost unique in its distribution of trace elements. What it lacks is nitrogen; and so I can prophesy that we shall see the use of coal as a fertiliser. It will work in a very subtle way: it will work just like Krylium, in that when it is ploughed into clay it will break down the clay into crumbs and there will begin to form the soil. It will also release into the soil substances which we have been able to show control the micro-organisms that will begin to develop in the crumb structure of the soil. From this, your Lordships will obviously have gathered that we have here a unique use for coal which will bring it into agriculture, and bring it into a position in this country that it has never occupied before.

Finally, coming back to the subject of planning, I wish to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, has said. Please let us take some active interest. Let us do something about recovering this land. Let us sweep away these stupid planning committees and these silly laws, which prevent people from restoring this piece of land or refuse permission to build on that piece of land. Let us have some sensible pragmatism put into this picture, and then we shall see all the wastelands of Britain disappear. What is more, we shall have solved one of our biggest environmental problems, because in developing these ideas and in getting rid of the talking shops, we shall no longer have any problem of getting rid of our waste products, since these would become embodied in the solid wastes of mining and engineering and they would be put into the sea, methodically, to recover land from the sea, as the Dutch over the last 400 to 500 years have so brilliantly exhibited is possible. My plea to the Minister is this: please urge upon your Government to do something.

6.42 p.m.

Baroness DAVID

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, in raising this debate has given us a welcome opportunity to take stock of how we are using the land resources of this country. The debate has, I think, reflected the challenge which this subject sets. The Government are very well aware of the challenge, and I shall hope to show in the course of my speech what action they are taking. It is not long since your Lordships were concerned with rural deprivation. This debate, and the one earlier this afternoon, have brought us back to rural questions and reminded us that the majority of our land area is still used for agriculture, for forestry and for the recreation we seek away from our cities.

Undeveloped rural land is a precious thing in our small island: but it must be remembered, too, that most of us spend most of our time elsewhere, usually in the developed areas: that it is the urban land which carries most of our housing, schools, industry and services, and that we as a country draw most of our economic wellbeing from the fabric of our cities and towns—in which most of the population live and work. In a crowded island, land will inevitably be required for many different purposes and there will be conflicting interests to resolve. We have a responsibility to future generations to exercise our judgment not only for our own wellbeing, but prudently for them. My strong impression is that this debate may serve as a reminder of the need for constant vigilance and I am grateful to your Lordships for your contributions.

I am sure that we should be grateful also for the contribution of the Second Land Utilisation Survey, and the untiring efforts of its Director, Dr. Alice Coleman. The idea of the survey is no less than the recording of the use of every parcel of land. The size of the effort involved, and the application required to put that idea into practice over many years, are impressive. If the results of the survey could be fully codified and presented in statistical form, they would provide an important record of how the land of this country was used in the 1960s and a valuable source for everyone concerned with this issue in the future. Such a report would undoubtedly help to improve our understanding not only of how the use of land in this country has been changing, but of how it might change in the future.

Dr. Coleman's way of doing this is by the recognition of broad patterns in the way in which land is used. This is as much an art as a science and requires careful interpretation and judgment. The same material can suggest different patterns to different people, each of whom will be looking for different meanings. Dr. Coleman has taken a step along this road by her pattern of "stapes" and "fringes". Until the final report is available, it is not possible to assess how big a step this is. In her system, townscape and farmscape are in conflict. They represent the competing and conflicting claims of urban development and agriculture for land resources. Townscape encroaches upon farmscape through the creation of what she calls "rurban fringe". She argues that when development and agricultural land become intermixed, farmland becomes fragmented and degenerates —and, indeed, most of your Lordships will have seen examples of that disease.

Certainly we have to strike a balance between the competing claims for land of urban and agricultural uses. The Government have reiterated the priority they attach to the protection of agricultural land, particularly land of better quality, in their recent White Paper, Farming and the Nation. Indeed, the Government have not been short of advice on this subject over the last two years. It was of concern to the Agriculture Economic Development Committee in their report on Agriculture into the 80s: Resources and Strategy in 1977. The Advisory Committee on Agriculture and Horticulture also looked at this issue in Agriculture and the Countryside, published in 1978. The Countryside Review Committee, in their Topic Paper No. 3, Food Production in the Countryside, again in 1978, examined this question closely. It is encouraging that all these advisers seemed to agree that the existing planning machinery did provide the means for balancing these competing claims. Improvements were suggested. There were calls for better inventories of the use of land and of how it is changing, and, in particular, information on what is happening to better-quality farmland.

Here it may be helpful if I outline some of the main factors in the situation. England has more of its land under urban development than the other parts of the United Kingdom. The Agriculture EDC estimated that in 1976, 76 per cent. of the land in England was in agricultural use, 13 per cent. was used for forestry, woodland and miscellaneous purposes, and 11 per cent. was urban. Aggregate figures of this nature can be misleading. For example, this 11 per cent. in urban use includes the network of roads outside urban areas, and small towns and villages in the countryside which are part of the rural scene. Only about 8 per cent. out of the 11 per cent. in urban use is in towns and cities of 10,000 people or more. In these terms, our larger cities can be said to be more "efficient" in their use of land. Densities—that is, the number of people per hectare—fall rapidly as the size of towns falls, and it is our smaller towns which occupy land at low densities.

When we look to how land use is changing, other features emerge. The 1971 Census showed that the areas of highest density in our larger cities were losing population. It also showed that the areas of lowest density in our rural areas were also showing a loss. These areas losing population are largely the areas of most deprivation. There is another pattern. It is in the northern half of the country that the area occupied by urban development has been growing most rapidly. This stands in direct contrast to population growth, which has been most rapid in the southern half of the country, particularly in East Anglia and the South-West. It seems clear that the urban areas in the southern half of the country have been able to absorb population growth, without equivalent increases in the land area they occupy. In the north, the improvement of the conditions in which people live and work in the older industrial cities has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the urban area.

Estimates of the land taken from agriculture for all forms of urban development are derived from the mid-year returns made by farmers to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Over the post-war period, the land recorded as disposed of to urban development has averaged 16,000 hectares a year. This compares with 25,000 hectares a year before the war. There has usually been accord between these statistics and the differences in the amount of land in agricultural use each year. In recent years, there have been large, unexplained differences between the two. These differences could suggest that the loss of land has been greater than estimated: but they may prove to be statistical in origin and capable of reconciliation. The Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are co-operating on research to explain these anomalies. We have to acknowledge that the record, so far as we know it, is open to different interpretations, and it is right that we should debate it. But we must not forget that the record is most useful in helping us to look forward at what we should do.

What are the prospects for the future? We cannot establish with any exactitude how much land will be required for urban development in the future, and it would be foolish to try. What we can do is to look at the possibilities. We have moved from the era in which our plans were based on the expectation of large increases in the population. In 1974 the population fell for the first time. In 1976 deaths exceeded births. The increase in the birth rate recorded last year has not yet brought it back to the point where the population will replace itself.

We are inheriting the results of the increase in the birth rate which began over 20 years ago. We are experiencing a sustained rise in the number of young adults coming to maturity, seeking jobs and forming families. This will continue for the next decade. It seems unlikely that the pressures for further urban development will slacken during this time, but we may be able to look forward beyond this to a period when the numbers of adults will stabilise, and the need for additional land will be less acute.

The Department of the Environment has been developing its own sources on land use and how it is changing. The National Land Use Classification was published in 1975. Local planning authorities were requested to make returns of land use changes beginning in 1975 for 15 land use categories. Restraints on local government expenditure have so far meant that these returns are voluntary, and the coverage is incomplete.

The analysis of aerial photographs for land use information has been undertaken. The Developed Areas Survey, published last year, sets out the amount of land in each county and district in England and Wales in five broad urban uses for 1969. The use of satellite imagery to provide land use information is being developed. Improvements in the resolution of the imagery and its interpretation should make it possible to measure the area in urban use and where changes are occurring at frequent intervals.

The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has raised the question of the creation of waste land. The term "waste land" is perhaps the most emotive symbol of the prodigality and imprudence of which we, as a nation, may be judged guilty in our use of land resources. We do not know the real extent of waste land, except by approximation. The Civic Trust estimated that dormant land—I understand that the Civic Trust have given it the name "dormant land" and that it is land which is either unused or in merely temporary use—may exceed 100,000 hectares in the whole of Britain. Derelict land—that is, land which is incapable of beneficial use without treatment—in 1974 was estimated at over 40,000 hectares in England and Wales, but some 33,000 hectares of this were considered likely to justify restoration. I should like to say that the Department has in being a research programme on the reclamation of derelict land.

It is clear that some part of our future requirements for urban land will be met from this under-used resource. It is the Government's task to provide the conditions in which this can be achieved, as far as possible. By so doing, the demands on agricultural land can be reduced to the minimum that is practicable.

Unused and waste land is not created deliberately. It comes about for many reasons, not all of which we fully comprehend. For one thing, the process of developing land is not perfect, as it would be if land moved quickly and automatically from one use to another. Plans for future development, by both public and private bodies, may be based on assumptions which prove to be unfounded. Markets may not grow as quickly as expected. Finance may not become available to undertake the work. Land may lie idle until the conditions are right for its development. There is no simple answer which can be applied to all cases. Each will require separate assessment and action, which can only be undertaken locally in full knowledge of the possibilities.

Considerable experience has been built up in the reclamation of derelict land. Since 1966 all local authorities have had the power to acquire and reclaim such land. In Scotland and Wales, these powers are exercised by the respective Development Agencies. In England, the rate of grant to local authorities is 100 per cent. of approved costs in assisted areas and other derelict land clearance areas, and 50 per cent. elsewhere. In the past four years, over 8,000 hectares are estimated to have been reclaimed.

The Community Land Scheme is another means of bringing unused or waste land into development, and experience shows that local authorities are taking advantage of it. During the first two years of the scheme, over 300 hectares of unused land and land surplus to requirements of the nationalised industries and statutory undertakers have been acquired for private development. We do know that unused land, other than that which is derelict, tends to be concentrated in those two types of areas where change in land use is most frequent. One is the older areas of our cities, where much of the building stock is moving towards the end of its useful life. The other is on the edge of our towns, where land is coming into urban use for the first time.

Efforts to bring the land back into use are being encouraged under the partnership arrangements for the inner cities which have been mentioned by several speakers. Local authorities have been asked to review their land holdings and dispose of the surplus at the best price which can be reasonably obtained. The nationalised industries have been asked to survey the vacant land they hold in the inner city areas. Discussions on the results are continuing with the authorities concerned.

Greater priority has been given to assistance by way of grant for the reclamation of derelict land and buildings in inner areas. There has been an increased take-up of the available funds as a result. Last year expenditure was only 13 per cent. below the PESC allocation of £15.5 million, and this year there are hopes that the full allocation of £19.2 million will be spent. Special arrangements have also been introduced for land acquisition in inner areas under the Community Land Scheme. Priority is given to such projects and the normal financial criteria have been relaxed, recognising that projects in these areas will usually take much longer than elsewhere to show a profit. Moreover, where it would be beneficial for the local authority to carry out a certain amount of development (such as an advanced factory) on community land before disposal, this, too, can be funded exceptionally from land scheme resources. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to this in the previous debate.

In September of last year, "Operation Clean-Up" was launched to improve the visual environment of the 29 inner city districts in which the partnership and programme authorities operate. It consists of small projects which can be done quickly. This operation will include the recovery of vacant and waste land. Clearing of rubbish, provision of top soil, grassing, and planting of trees and shrubs are expected, and the local authorities are being encouraged to draw on the local community, including voluntary bodies.

Efforts are also being made on the urban fringe. Uncertainty about future land use policy in these areas is being reduced through regional strategies and the approval of structure plans. But this in itself is unlikely to be enough. We have to experiment in how to manage these urban fringe areas to make better use of the land there.

The Countryside Commission is pioneering the way. The experiments it has been undertaking in the Bollin Valley, Barnet and Havering have shown that it is possible to reduce the conflict between farming and other land uses, and improve the appearance of these areas. The Commission are drawing on this experience to mount a larger project for the countryside around a major industrial city, which has still to be selected. The project is to start next year and run to 1985, at a cost of over £1 million.

I have said earlier that the interpretation of the data is as much an art as a science, and the same is true of the application of remedies. There are no rigid principles that, once laid down, can infallibly direct those whose job it is to see that we use our land to best effect. Solutions will vary from place to place, and success will depend on the understanding cooperation of many bodies, some of which I have mentioned, and of many individuals in different places. The Department can provide information, advise, co-ordinate, mediate. It cannot direct, nor would it wish to. What we need most, however, as every speaker has emphasised, is to improve our understanding of the factors involved, and to disseminate the knowledge more widely. Dr. Coleman has contributed significantly to the first objective and it may be that this debate has assisted in the second.

I have, my Lords, a number of questions to answer. I do not know whether noble Lords would prefer that I should answer these now or whether I should take them up in writing later. I am in your Lordships' hands.

Baroness YOUNG

My Lords, I am sure it would be the wish of all noble Lords who have spoken that the noble Baroness should be good enough to answer the questions now.

Baroness DAVID

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, asked about the printing of the maps that Dr. Coleman had prepared. I am not inclined to think that meeting the cost of general publication in map form would be a worthwhile expenditure of public funds. The survey was, I understand, carried out in the 1960s and over a fairly wide spread of years, so that it is neither up-to-date nor all-of-a-piece in time. Maps of individual areas may well be found useful for specific purposes—indeed, an example sheet is, I understand, being included in Ordnance Survey educational map packs; but for general purposes the Director of the Survey may like to consider making the land use survey material available in its present shape or, as the case may be, with a final report, forming as it were, an archive available to those who can make use of it for study or for whatever subsequent presentation may best suit their individual needs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the Dobry Report. This had as one of its main proposals to divide planning applications into two types so that simpler applications could be dealt with quickly. This has not yet been taken up and no action is proposed at the moment. There was a question raised on the amount of land lost to roads. We have no accurate and trustworthy measurement for that—nothing that is thought to be accurate enough to be trusted.

The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, spoke about the reclamation of land. I understand that reclamation of land from the sea often conflicts with nature conservation and that conservation interests are always very high in those areas, particularly areas of marshlands.

There have been a number of estimates about how quickly agricultural land is being lost, but it seems that these are not always based on firm and trustworthy statistics and it is not thought that they are totally accurate. The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, said that the total extinction of agricultural land would happen in 200 years. I think those figures are based on a survey of change in the Thames Estuary which was made between 1962 and 1972. That was applied to the whole country and projected into the future and is not thought to be totally accurate.

Lord VERNON

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Baroness, the figure I gave was based entirely on Derbyshire. I said that the figure for Derbyshire bore out what Dr. Coleman said for the nation as a whole, which was 200 years.

Baroness DAVID

My Lords, I am sorry if I did not correctly take the point made by the noble Lord. I think that has answered the points that I have noted, but I will look carefully at the report of the debate and if I have missed any answers I will write to those concerned.

7.5 p.m.

The Earl of ONSLOW

My Lords, one or two things have arisen out of this debate which, if your Lordships will allow me, I should like to comment on. The noble Baroness, Lady White, cast doubts upon the quality of the survey of Dr. Alice Coleman. The surveyors' and geographers' work was checked, land use added up, and the total national area, with Government statistics supposedly collected by trained experts, added up to one and one-third million acres less than the national total. The area measurements were correct to 0.01 per cent., so it seems that they were reasonably accurate. The Ordnance Survey measures every field separately, and the second land utilisation survey has found a method of aggregating which has been widely copied by planning authorities and others for saving time and money without sacrificing accuracy; so perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady White, might like to tell us where the inaccuracies were.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, produced what I thought was one of the most worrying points, namely, that nationalised industries seem to be sitting on vast quantities of land. The noble Baroness, Lady David, acknowledged this, but nothing seems to be done about it. One has the feeling that this has been complained about before but nothing seems to be done.

Baroness DAVID

My Lords, will the noble Earl allow me to intervene? I think I said that quite a lot was being done about it by way of grants, having eased the conditions, getting money under the Community Land Scheme, and so on.

The Earl of ONSLOW

My Lords, the actual amount of land which the noble Baroness said was being redeveloped was, I believe, a very small percentage of what was actually used. Of course one is trying to answer off the cuff and one could be wrong.

There is a point which needs to be agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, about the grading of land and Derbyshire using only 22 hectares of grade 1 land. Berkshire County Council in one of their plans say that one of the objects of the plan is to conserve grade 1 agricultural land. They then proceed to go through the whole plan and do not mention it again, for the simple reason that there is no grade I agricultural land in the whole county of Berkshire. Indeed only 2.8 per cent. of the total land in the United Kingdom is grade 1 agricultural land. So the point made by my noble friend Lord Vernon on land grading is a very important one.

In a way, the most hopeful and at the same time the most depressing speech was that made by the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn. He produced a number of ideas and then said that Dudley Stamp said the same thing 30 years ago. Then the Government are saying that planning is working. It cannot all be right.

Finally, the one point that I wanted to make was about the quality of aerial photographs. I believe that they are not as accurate as proper surveys done by geographers on the ground, on foot. I wrote down what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, which was that the survey would be useful if it could be codified and computerised. Would it not be a good thing if the Government could help this to happen? Finally, is it not possible for the Government to measure how much land they are using? It really is totally unacceptable if they just take land for roads and do not know how much they are using. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.