The Forestry Industry

HL Deb 18 April 1990 vol 518 cc44-81

5.29 p.m.

The Earl of Radnor rose to call attention to the forestry industry in the United Kingdom; and to move for Papers.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, in moving the Motion I must say how humble I feel. I shall be followed by not only one maiden speaker —the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, whose speech I look forward to with great interest—but no fewer than three chairmen of the Forestry Commission and a recent chairman of Timber Growers United Kingdom Ltd. As a mere son of a past chairman of the Forestry Commission it may seem that I have the wrong position in the debate. However, I shall not let that deter me in any way. I am sure that those distinguished noble Lords will pick up any mistakes that I may make.

At the same time I must declare an interest. I have been planting and felling trees—mostly planting—all my working life. It is with some pride that I have passed my 1,000 acres of planting, among them some beech, some oak and some ash. I shall not divulge the other species in case I put the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, off her form before she stands up to speak.

The forestry industry in this country should first be considered in the world context. On the whole, wood is a diminishing resource. That is a recognised fact with regard to virtually whatever part of the world one considers. Let us take the extreme example to start with. In Brazil, for political reasons and reasons of greed, the rain forest is being demolished and burnt and the land then sold. The wonderful timber there is not even being used. I am sure that the same applies to the great hardwood areas in the Pacific Basin. One has only to be in Bangkok and watch the timber coming down the great river which flows through the city to appreciate that. Canada—another enormous area of woodland, particularly towards the west, containing quality woods such as the Douglas Fir—boasts that it is on a perpetual yield basis. However, any noble Lords who have been there recently or, perhaps more importantly, have visited over a period of years, will begin to disbelieve that claim as I do.

One should then cast one's mind closer home to Europe and this country. It will be discovered, without quoting any figures, that in comparison with the rest of Europe we are ill served with regard to the forestry industry. We grow a small proportion of trees over our land and we import almost all our impor:ant wood for manufacture. There is therefore a great deal of leeway to be made up. I wish to speak about that aspect, particularly in view of the fact that farming is perhaps not as good or will not be as good as it has been.

I should like to start by talking about the Forestry Commission. When I was a much younger man, I felt that it was a competitor, something to be feared with its relatively large acreage of woodland. As all noble Lords will realise, it is nothing of the kind. It was of enormous importance for me and other private foresters. It was created in 1919 to replenish the forests and the timber that was felled during the First World War. Woodlands were planted up very efficiently until the next world war and then again after the 1939 war. Noble Lords will have seen those forests.

The important point for me and for the country is that the Forestry Commission was able to fund that planting and therefore to attract industry. We are talcing about the forestry industry, not just the planting of trees. I am sure that without the Forestry Commission industry of that kind and size—large sawmills, proper pulp mills and chipboard mills—would never have come into existence. There would not have been the continuity of production from the private forests.

As I have become, like other noble Lords, a little more worried about the so-called peripheral sales of Forestry Commission land, I should like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether that is to continue and, if so, how far it will go. I should like to ask him whether he shares my admiration for the Forestry Commission and my belief that it is of enormous importance to the country. I hope that he will reassure me that little more land will be sold off. Some people would consider that to be a form of back-door privatisation, as I have heard mentioned in this Chamber.

I should also like to mention the Forestry Commission in relation to the report on forestry which the Select Committee on Agriculture in another place has just produced. As noble Lords probably know, the report contains many recommendations. I am not tremendously in agreement with it simply because I think that there are too many recommendations, that it would be hard tc follow them all up and that the whole thing might become a nightmarish muddle.

If I understood it rightly, one of the recommendations is that the Forestry Commission would be divided into three regions, presumably Wales, England and Scotland. I am not sure about Northern Ireland. If that is one of its recommendations, I would be against it because the strength of the commission and the way in which it has been able to help the industry and private foresters in this country is due to the fact that it has been large and flexible. I hope that my noble friend can assure me that that split will not take place.

I am aware that my noble friend Lord Crickhowell is sitting below me. The other suggested split was the poacher-gamekeeper split; namely, that the regulatory side of the Forestry Commission should be divided from the wood-producing side. Although such a split was excellent in the case of the National Rivers Authority, I am much more doubtful that it would be of any use to the forestry industry.

We are dealing here with a completely different matter. It would be best if the Forestry Commission was left precisely as it is, without disturbance, to do its dual job of producing wood, which I put first, and then its important job of providing access and amenity for the general public—a job which came lately to it after the Second World War and which it does extremely well. It provides endless pursuits for many people.

That is the spine of English forestry. I should now like to look at private forestry. Here there is a considerable problem as there always has been. I hate to think that there always will be, but it is possible. The question is one of cash flow. You plant a tree and, if it is a deciduous tree, it takes 60 years to come to maturity and probably 30 years pass before you gain any profit from it. If you plant a lovely oak, you certainly do not see much benefit from it. Noble Lords will know that in the 1988 Budget the tax incentives were taken away from people who planted trees. You used to be able to plant trees under Schedule D, take the maintenance cost off your tax and finally sell your timber free of tax. That just about kept the pot boiling, with a few grants thrown in as well. Now all that has gone. The whole situation is dealt with by grants.

I myself brought up in your Lordships' House the matter of grants which is broadcast and told to everyone. They sound extremely good. However, a tree grows over a very long span of years and the grants become eroded by inflation. Some noble Lords may remember that debate in which I was able to cite figures to show that over a 10-year period —I cannot remember precisely which one but it was quite recent —the value of the grants went up by 94 per cent. but the expense based on labour (which is the major cost in forestry) rose by 726 per cent. At that time I checked the figures very carefully and I believe that they were right.

At that time the intention was to have a three-yearly review of grants. That was the best that could be wrung from the Government. I understand that that review either is in progress or has now been completed. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us something about that matter.

The next aspect of the forestry industry that I should like to cover is what I call corporate forestry. That was also hit severely by the taxation measures which were withdrawn in 1988. Big firms got together owners who had no particular inclination to plant trees but wished to take the tax advantage. That was, perhaps rightly, considered to be wrong. It was perhaps one of the main reasons why the tax advantage was taken away.

The fact is that corporate forestry was very important to the industry. A massive amount of timber was and is being grown which will be of great use for the gross national product input saving in time. Without reinserting the tax situation, I should like to suggest to my noble friend that the Government look extremely closely at broadening the base of woodland ownership through such corporations. I do not know the details and I think that it would be extremely difficult. It would need some amendment to the Financial Services Act which has only recently been passed. However, I believe that that suggestion should be looked at, simply so that timber will continue to come forward.

I have one minute left in which to talk about amenity and I am determined to do so. When he was my chairman in Sub-Committee D, the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, once sent me out in a snowstorm to look at the biggest planted forest in Europe. There must be some way of organising the situation with so-called blanket forests, so that the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, is not irritated by trees planted in head waters and acidifying the rivers and the noble Baroness is pleased that there are open spaces with wildlife and fringes of considerable dimensions of hardwood trees.

There is nothing much more to be said. I shall sit down and listen with the greatest interest to the distinguished Peers who are to speak. I beg to move for Papers.

5.44 p.m.

Baroness Nicol

My Lords, the noble Earl has chosen a very good time to introduce this debate. When agricultural pressures are changing, it is quite likely that more land will be available, if necessary, for forestry and other purposes. I am sure that the debate this afternoon will be helpful to those who make the decisions.

The value of forests is greater than just the value of the timber produced. It is greater even than the value of jobs provided by the timber industry. The noble Earl has already mentioned the global importance of trees. We have come to learn in the past months how very important they are in cleaning the air of carbon dioxide. I understand too that in terms of carbon dioxide collection young trees are much more valuable than mature trees. That seems to me to be an argument for a dynamic forest industry. We should all think of that when we set out to defend the old forests which so often people do not want to see felled.

Forests also contribute to education and recreation. Suitably managed deciduous woods, as the noble Earl just said, meet all the requirements of conservation. They provide an invaluable wildlife habitat and can enhance the local landscape. So why are conservationists and foresters so often in conflict? The answer must lie in the way in which forestry operations are managed and directed; that is to say, in the shape and application of our forestry policy.

That policy, as presently operated by the Forestry Commission, attracts criticism from many informed sources. On 1st February this year the House of Commons Agriculture Committee published a report, entitled Land Use and Forestry, to which the noble Earl has already referred. It criticises the lack of government policy to deal with agricultural land now surplus to food production requirements. It examines five possible alternative uses for such "surplus" land and concludes that the most significant alternative land use in the next 20 years is likely to be forestry.

The report than examines the present arrangement for forestry direction and management. It finds many flaws in the existing situation and makes a number of positive recommendations for the future. The noble Earl felt that there were too many recommendations but in fact the document as a whole is extremely useful and covers the whole field of land use, not just forestry.

That report and its recommendations met with widespread approval. The Council for the Protection of Rural England supports many of the recommendations. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds welcomed the report as: a breath of fresh air in forestry thinking". The Country Landowners' Association approved of the arguments for a more broadly based system of support. So far the Government have not responded and I hope that when the Minister replies today he will give us some idea of when the formal response to that report can be expected.

The recommendation at paragraph vii on page xlvi is fundamental to the future of United Kingdom forestry. Under the heading "The Forestry Commission" it states: We believe that the two functions of the Forestry Commission—as Forestry Enterprise and Forestry Authority—should be divided between separate departments. This would remove the perceived conflict of interest within the present Forestry Commission in its roles as nationalised industry and regulatory body and provide the opportunity for a more broadly based Authority to oversee the development of multi-purpose forestry". The noble Earl said that he wants the Forestry Commission to remain as it is, but there is the element of poacher and gamekeeper which was so widely quoted in the creation of the National Rivers Authority and which I believe is equally applicable in this case.

That recommendation has the support also of the RSPB and the CPRE. At this point I should declare an interest as a council member of the RSPB. The RSPB would like to see a full review of forestry policy. It stresses the need for diverse forestry to produce not just timber but "public goods" such as environmental benefits. It considers that the use of environmental impact assessments in forestry should be improved and expanded and questions the validity of the national planting target of 33,000 hectares per annum. It is difficult to discover how that figure was obtained. I wonder whether the Minister can enlighten us in his reply. I have seen copies of correspondence between one of my honourable friends in another place and the Secretary of State for Scotland in which my honourable friend tried to discover how the figure of 33,000 hectares has been arrived at and he received quite unsuitable replies.

The Pamham Trust in Dorset is doing excellent work in training craftsmen in wood. If possible it uses only indigenous timber. It is very concerned that so little attention is paid to the quality of United Kingdom-produced trees. Mr. John Makepeace, who is the director of the trust, has developed techniques for the use of roundwood and the use of laminates which gives forest thinnings considerable commercial value and could give hardwood growers a return on their investment much earlier than they would normally expect and much earlier than the figures that the noble Earl has quoted.

Leading conservationists have long opposed blanket conifer afforestation of the uplands. That approach to forestry is destructive to landscape and wildlife and the value-for-money aspect of the exercise is often questionable.

The CPRE calls for greater controls of forestry. It presses for the creation of multipurpose woodland. In maintaining its objection to large scale conifer plantin g of the uplands, it points out that changed agricultural policies could bring more lowland forestry into existence if backed by the right financial incentives. I believe that we should ask the Government to give their attention to that aspect.

The CLA also draws our attention to the need to switch the emphasis in forestry policy away from quantity towards quality. It assures us that landowners would welcome the new opportunities to invest in forestry which could flow from incentives to satisfy multiple objectives in new woodlands. It would like to see a more active role for the Forestry Commission in advice to landowners in identifying markets.

For once the needs of conservation and commerce and the possibility of relief of rural deprivation are all in harmony. I hope that the Government will seize this unusual opportunity and take the wise advice being offered from so many well informed bodies.

Much good work has been done and continues to be done by the Forestry Commission. But the time has come for a fresh look at its purpose and direction. The pit-prop policies of the mid-20th century are no longer appropriate for the century's end and will certainly not meet the needs of the future.

5.52 p.m.

Lord Mackie of Benshie

My Lords, I do not know a great deal about forestry. I have planted only about 12 acres of trees in my life. I planted them in a farm woodland scheme of my own. And although the passage of 40 years has not been long enough for me to reap some financial benefit, at least the trees provide shelter. That is quite useful when the west wind sweeps through the howe of Strath More.

There is a general realisation that trees are a good thing and that we need them for our economy and as an amenity in the countryside. I can think of no better person to introduce the debate than the noble Earl, Lord Radnor. He is a dedicated forester and actually knows about the subject. That is a great virtue at any time.

I wish to make one point. Continuity of policy is absolutely essential if we are to improve the look of the countryside and our economic position. Two major c hanges, one of them only recent. have upset the pattern. I understand that planting last year was down to less than half the projected figure and that it is expected to recover slowly. I stress the phrase, "expected to recover". That is no way to run an industry which is so long term. When one considers the past, the great period of planting trees was through the late 18th and the 19th centuries. In Scotland there is a saying that one should plant a tree that grows when one is sleeping. Such passion was for the descendants of the people planting the trees; it was not for direct gain.

Big tax advantages have encouraged many people to put money into forestry. I am sorry that the Government have been frightened by stories about Terry Wogan. Why they should be frightened by his putting money into trees, I do not know. It seems a perfectly respectable thing for him to do with his money. However, we now have a new scheme. I trust and hope that the Government will produce a further policy that will give desperately needed continuity.

One of the worst actions of the Government was to remove money from the Forestry Commission to plant trees in the belief that this would be done almost entirely by the private sector. I was delighted to hear the firm support of the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, for the Forestry Commission. It appears to me obvious in this day and age that the state must take an interest in the planting and maintenance of our forests, not only in the excellent advisory capacity of the Forestry Commission, but in the actual planting and maintenance of trees and in the planning of the planting so that the ancillary industries can be set up in the right place. That is extremely important.

A great deal may not come from the set-aside and the farm woodland scheme. I believe that the farm woodland scheme will be extremely useful in providing amenity. But it is unlikely to provide a tremendous amount of planting. It removes land permanently from food production. It is by no means certain that we shall not need that land once again to produce food. Apart from that, there are industrial crops that can be grown and developed. For example, we can produce paper from agricultural crops which would save the tremendous import of pulp into this country. I therefore believe that the Government must consider the long term.

I ask the Minister whether he has read the report from the Forestry Industry Committee of Great Britain. It contains many admirable suggestions for spreading interest. But these need government support and fiscal policy directed towards them. If one is going to plant trees for the future, the Government might consider the position regarding inheritance tax and give full relief for people who spend their money in this way. If they are doing so for their descendants they do not want it eroded.

The forestry industry is a necessity. It is a passion for some people and an industry that any government must encourage by all means possible. I trust that that encouragement will be permanent and that policy will not be changed in the middle of its operation as during this past year when nurserymen had to burn millions of trees. I ask the Minister for an assurance of continuity of policy.

5.58 p.m.

The Earl of Carlisle

My Lords, I am well aware that there are many expert foresters in this House, probably more than in any other place, even than in the Forestry Commission. Most of your Lordships' families have been planting trees for centuries. If one goes, as I always have the good luck to do, to see the Buccleuch estate, one sees proper forestry, with landscape and all the rest of the technicalities of forestry; if one goes to see the Forestry Commission woods they are abysmal.

I differ from my noble friend Lord Radnor. I do not think that the Forestry Commission is doing a good job. I shall briefly sketch through its history. We know that it started in 1919, which is not very long ago. I believe that its chairman, the late Lord Lovat, was a very good choice. He had a large forest; he was a Fraser and they are always clever.

Later the commission obviously had a remit to buy any land that it could find. In 1967 I was taken to an area in Sutherland which the late Duke of Sutherland had practically given to the commission to plant in order to provide jobs for the boys when they came back from the war. You never saw such awful stuff! I understand that the trees did not grow so someone threw in a match and started again. When I last saw the area it was slightly better but it was not very good.

I told that little tale because I was amazed that anybody was allowed to plant the Flow Country, which is somewhere in Sutherland or Caithness. No trees will grow and it is crazy that forestry syndicates can persuade people to invest money there. I like birds but such planting will certainly extinguish any birdlife there. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, spoke of the RSPB. I can assure her that in my area on the English side of the Border the commission has blanketed the whole area with its black trees. Therefore, much of the birdlife that I knew in my youth will never be seen again. It is probable that we shall never again see merlins, grouse, golden plover and so forth.

I am annoyed even more by the fact that when in 1925 the commission acquired about 100,000 acres from the trustees of the Angus estate they planted Kielder Forest. They planted every acre and it is the worst form of land management anyone could devise. You blanket the whole countryside with no thought of any amenity. I discussed the matter often with the late Duke of Northumberland, who said that he was very sad about the situation. He said that the right way to plant big hill land was as follows. If he had a 3,000-acre farm—and he often had more—he would go out with his forester and his shepherd and ask what would suit the trees. He said that he would plant sheher blocks, and he did that.

He and I suggested to the then chairman of the Forestry Commission that that was the right way of planting. When we took the chairman to see the area the Duke asked, "What will you do if I drop down dead and you have a 5,000-acre farm?". He said, "We will do just what you have done". With one voice we said. "Liar", because we knew that they would plant every single yard. The commission had the most marvellous opportunity to produce good areas of farms, lakes and amenities but I have never seen it do so. The only place it ever did that was at the top end of Grizedale where it carried out a kind of amalgamation. Other than that it has ruined the northern areas.

I am saddened even more because I do not believe that the commission ever thins its woods; it appears to have given up doing so. I can show you woods that were leased by my father for half a crown an acre. Formerly they were deciduous woods, but what are they now? They are black trees with a sprinkling of larch which have never been touched since they were planted in 1950.

Does the commission want to sell the woods? It finds independent valuers to value the areas and then ask appalling prices so no one buys them. One would have thought that it would have enough sense to put them up for auction where a fair figure would be paid. I cannot make out whether it wants to keep the woods or sell them. I do not believe that anyone knows the answer. I am hoping that by the end of the debate someone will have told us. I do not see why we should not sell woods which are not convenient. I suppose that there is a good case for keeping a block of 50,000 acres under the commission. But is it to buy more land or not? Has anyone decided? I wonder what the answer is. In any event, I shall not go on and on about the Forestry Commission, but I want to know what will happen next.

My next point is that the forestry authority as such takes at least six months to grant a felling licence. That is our experience in the North, which is absurd. Our area is governed by an office in York and the employees have never heard of Cumbria. You ring them up and ask, "What about a licence?". There is no hope because the chap does not know where we live. We have only one forestry office left in our area, which is probably the largest area of forest in Britain. What is to be done? Are we to go on waiting for felling licences? There is no question but that all the figures that it issues are incorrect. A friend of mine who is a forestry contractor may go to buy 1,500 tonnes of pulp wood but may receive only 1,000 tonnes. He does not pay for the extra, but the figures are wrong. There will be an appalling shortfall by the year 2001. If no one thins their woods, they cannot grow. I do not know what the authorities are doing or what they want to do.

I should like to see the forestry authority taken away from the Forestry Commission. Let the commission run its own woods and run them well. There must be a zoned area for each forestry authority. Whether it is called Scotland, Wales, North or South England would not matter. We hope that if the right officials are employed they will come up with the right answers.

I should like to see areas such as the New Forest put in the hands of a separate organisation. All such areas which are visited by thousands of people, should have nothing to do with the Forestry Commission. It is good up to a point, but surely such areas should be run by a different authority such as the local county council.

I am keen on amenity planting, although my grandfather was much better at it than I am. He was an artist so he had a good eye for colour and knew where to put the trees. Grants are available, although recently I rushed to find them but discovered that they had all gone. However, I have booked for next year. I should like to see bigger grants because the planting of small areas of beech and oak is extremely costly and one never sees the result.

6.7 p.m.

Lord Taylor of Gryfe

My Lords, it is my first duty to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, on his interesting and challenging maiden speech. I am certain that speakers who follow me will respond to his challenging remarks. In all fairness and charity I must say that his experience of the activities of the Forestry Commission is at great variance with mine. I assume that that is also true of other ex-chairmen of the commission who are present in the House.

I am delighted to see that at least three former chairmen of the commission, several ex-members and Ministers to whom I was responsible when I was chairman are present in the House this afternoon. There is one simple message that I should like to go out from our debate. Please, Lady Nicol, it is not that there should be a new look at forestry policy. We have had plenty of those in the past few years. Forestry requires long-term certainty and planning. A long-term strategy should be aimed at in order to promote what is a long-term industry. The message I should like to go out from our debate is quite simply: hands off the Forestry Commission.

In recent years I have noticed a substantial diminvtion in the responsibilities of the Forestry Commission. The selling of land, which began as an exercise in tidying up, had led to another planned disposal of 100,000 acres before the end of the century. In 1980 the commission's planting programme was 15-8 hectares; last year it was 4,500 hectares. That would not be so bad if private enterprise was taking up the slack in the planting programme. However, last year the local planting programme reached only 12,000 hectares against the target of 33,000 hectares, which the Government have regularly accepted. That is a very serious matter for a very important national industry.

As the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, mentioned —and I sat as a commissioner under the leadership of his distinguished father who was a great chairman —the Forestry Commission was not a competitor with private enterprise. It was in partnership with it. Occasionally we competed for purchase of land but essentially it was a partnership pursuing the development of forestry. We shared experience. The Forestiy Commission provided the research for private enterprise forestry in this country. In the countr/side we were always good neighbours and pursued a policy of being good neighbours. We undertook most of the training in the forestry industry and were the pioneers in the development of recreation—camping sites, forest walks and so on—which the private sector has also followed in the past few years.

Most important, because we were a large commercial organisation we could make long-term arrangements in marketing. To attract substantial investment into the new wood processing industry there has to be a major supplier to give some sort of guarantees of supply. Therefore, the Forestry Commission was neither a competitor nor a monopoly. It was part of a partnership encouraging a sensible forestry policy for the United Kingdom in both the private and state sectors.

The decline of this industry is a serious matter. The Government must tell us where they are going now, with a planting programme of 12,000 hectares last year against a target of 33,000. Large-scale investment has been made in wood processing plants on some sort of guarantee that home grown timber would be available in the future. It is a large employer of labour. Questions were asked in this House quite recently about the decline in rural employment. I know that some people would prefer to see parts of Scotland as a large wilderness in order that they may enjoy their occasional recreation in those areas. However, there is nothing more interesting and exciting than a living countryside, a countryside in which men find employment and in which families can live. If we are to cut back on forestry and planting as we are doing at present, large areas of Scotland will be left without schools, life or interest.

Therefore, I appeal to the Government to change their course. They have not been wise in the changed fiscal arrangements which they have made for forestry. I hope that they will read and in due course reply to the report of the Select Committee of Agriculture, Land Use and Forestry, because the opening paragraph states that in the new fiscal arrangements for forestry: The announcement was made after the minimum of consultation within Government and no consultation outside Government and had the immediate effect of undermining confidence in the industry. It also raised doubts whether anyone in the Government was looking at the forestry sector as a whole and giving thought to the fundamental principles which should guide its development". I hope that the Government have a reasonable response to this criticism.

Finally, as regards the future of the Forestry Commission the idea in this report that there should be a split between the forest authority and the forestry enterprise is not a sensible proposition. The people who must discharge their duties in the forestry authority are the same people who are exercising and carrying out duties as the forestry enterprise. They cannot be split. The combined experience of the two sections of the industry is required. I hope that the Govememnt will not continue to reduce the Forestry Commission or on account of dogma allow it to be privatised. I hope that they will not accept these proposals about dividing it into enterprise and authority because they are parts of an industry which require to work together.

6.15 p.m.

Lord Crickhowell

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Radnor for enabling us to debate this important subject and to listen to such a spirited maiden speech.

I intervene to make one particular point about the environmental impact of forestry and the results of research which we now have into the serious problem of acid water in some of our uplands. Before I do that, I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not hostile to forestry and have no doubt about the positive benefits which it can bring if planting is properly planned and is done in the right place. For nearly eight years I shared ministerial responsibility for the industry. I was particularly closely involved with the development of the Shotton paper mill and I know very well how substantial is the contribution made by forestry to the national economy and particularly to the creation of jobs in the countryside and in the forest-related industries.

The huge and escalating balance of trade deficit in timber products is a compelling reason for encouraging afforestation. There are equally compelling environmental reasons for replacing the timber cover which has been so depleted down the centuries. It is not only the tropical rain forests which provide a defence against the greenhouse effect. Surely any policy for sustainable development must involve the replacement of the soft woods which provide 80 per cent. of the timber resource for the industrialised nations.

Therefore, I share the concerns already expressed that changes in the grant and tax structure have led to a sharp decline in new planting. I believe that the Government must look again at the package if their own repeatedly stated objectives are to be achieved.

I hope that this time the examination will take place in a calmer and more rational atmosphere than on the last occasion. Yes, tax breaks can be abused and blanket afforestation in the wrong place can be damaging. Yet a number of cases on which I had to adjudicate as Secretary of State led me firmly to the conclusion that with proper planning and consultation it is, more often than not, possible to reconcile conflicting objectives and obtain a wide measure of agreement. I suppose that in my own way I went out with the noble Earl's forester and shepherd to take practical decisions about practical issues.

My plea this evening is that proper planning and consultation are essential if forestry is to receive public understanding and backing rather than sustained hostility and if we are to avoid serious damage to the environment. As chairman of the National Rivers Authority I am particularly concerned with the water environment. A more comprehensive and effective system of land use planning covering agriculture, forestry, waste disposal, urban run-off and other causes of contamination will be needed if we are to halt and reverse the serious decline in the quality of many of the streams and rivers which sustain our principal fisheries.

Major research carried out particularly in Wales and the South-West in recent years has shown unmistakeably the scale of the damage being done by acidification and the contribution to that process by coniferous forestry in some geological and soil conditions.

A senior executive of the Economic Forestry Group said to me in a letter recently that the problem is not the forests; it is the pollution. That is true up to a point. It is essential that emissions from power stations and other industrial sources be substantially reduced, but there can be no doubt that forestry is an important factor contributing to the grave damage being done in areas such as the head waters of the River Tywi. Trees are very effective collectors of airborne pollutants which are then washed into streams or percolate through the soil when it rains, releasing aluminium and other minerals into the drainage waters. Unfortunately aluminium can kill fish and other water life, and it is a problem which must be tackled by treating drinking water for the public.

It seems to me that the scientific evidence for these statements is overwhelming. The recently published book Acid Water in Wales brings together recent research by scientists from the universities, NERC research institutes, the Welsh Water Authority and the NRA and demonstrates, that in a substantial area of upland Wales, particularly the Cambrian mountains, streams and lakes have either acidified or are likely to acidify over the next century unless there are significant changes in emission and land use policies". In these areas, rocks are slow weathering and the soils have little or no acid neutralising capacity. Data from these sensitive regions show that streams draining plantations of conifers are more acid and contain higher concentrations of aluminium than streams draining moorland. There are many other upland parts of Britain where similar conditions are found. In some soft water streams and lakes in mid and west Wales the sources of some of our major salmon and sea trout river fish populations have been almost totally eliminated.

Hardly anyone taking part in this debate needs convincing regarding the seriousness of that situation. Many noble Lords are as keen and knowledgeable about their fishing as they are about their forestry. However, I am concerned that there has been a recent tendency in the industry to dismiss the evidence or simply call for more research. I believe that the time has come for action. The trouble is that no system exists for land use planning in upland Britain. Decisions on land use change are taken by individual farms and commercial forestry interests, which was a point very well brought out in the report of the Forest Industry Committee of Great Britain.

My case is not that I want to stop forestry. I want to see more of it, but in the NRA we believe that we have to have a land use policy to restrict forestry in those areas where it is likely to cause significant damage to the water environment. We should like to see the Environmental Assessment (Afforestation) Regulations amended so that the NRA can require an environmental impact assessment for those plantings, grant-aided or not, which it believes may have an adverse effect upon quality.

If that sounds negative I must make it clear that I also want clearly identified the places where plantings should take place. That is exactly what the system of regional indicative forest strategies in Scotland is designed to achieve and what the Forest Industry Committee recommends when it asks for a structured rather than an opportunist approach to land selection in order to achieve the positive and balanced contribution that forestry can and should make to our economy and environment.

6.24 p.m.

The Duke of Somerset

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, for his forthright speech. In the words of the Secretary of State for Scotland, the industry is still going through a transitional period after the 1988 Budget changes; so this is a suitable time to take stock. The question is whether we should be looking to plant more trees or whether we should be stopping in our tracks. After all, timber consumption in the UK is of the magnitude of £7 billion per annum, of which 90 per cent. is imported. That is the equivalent of one-third of the current trade deficit, with the constriction industry contributing most significantly to that element of the deficit. The projection is for the UK demand to increase by at least 17 per cent. over the next decade. The trade deficit must be borne in mind when the overall picture of forestry is looked at.

We know that growing trees is long term. Decisions can be taken this year regarding new plantings but it will be another five or six decades before the effect is seen on any future deficit figure. However, that is no argument for procrastination.

In declaring my interest as a woodland owner I should equally like to declare an interest in conservation. Like the vast majority of those who work in, and help to shape, the countryside, I believe that production, be it of food or timber, should be synonymous with conservation of the environment. It is thus axiomatic that the expansion of forestry in the UK would contribute positively to our environmental state, not just regionally, but nationally and globally.

An expansion of forestry would benefit the UK environment not only by creating and sustaining a capital resource for the future, but, for instance, in providing recreation. Trees can accommodate leisure pursuits more easily than open land —from walking and orienteering through motor rallies, war games and many other pursuits in between. That must be part of the aim for the proposed community and urban fringe forests. They will improve the quality of life for the adjacent townspeople but, like forestry in general, such planting will not happen if the finances are not carefully planned.

Other benefits of expansion would include variety of landscape, with varied species of different age classes cleverly juxtaposed. That is an emerging science and one needing further encouragement and study.

Greater planting, which is a viable option on much of the land previously used for agricultural surpluses, would give greater security to the processing sector and add value to the raw materials. Since 1983 £800 million has been invested. That has meant the latest technology and has brought sustained rural employment. The uncertainty of today must not be allowed to jeopardise this industry with resultant knock-on effects.

The Government ask the industry to provide facts, not fears. We know of the 12,000 hectare shortfall in planting. But the evidence in my part of south-west England is that the motive behind the WGS and farm woodland planting is improvement of amenity and sporting facilities. There was initially much resistance to the new concept of the broadleaved policy that production of marketable timber was no longer to be the main object of management. While I welcome that sort of planting, commercial planting for timber should be encouraged in England as well as in Scotland and Wales. To continue both types of expansion the Government should help to promote multiple objectives.

Despite the body blow of the 1988 Budget there is no going back. Forestry can go forward and thrive, but it needs a little fiscal help. May I suggest, first, a maintenance or management grant to help maintain employment and prevent neglect in that trough between planting and thinning. As we have already heard, the removal of forestry from inheritance tax would end the anomaly where a single growing product is taxed every generation, hitting the capital value and inhibiting the planting of long-term hardwoods which span up to four generations.

Furthermore, the grant scheme could be amended to encourage better woodland design by including bare land in the forest, wide rides, butterfly lawns, water and even wild flowers. I cannot believe that those measures would amount to any significant cost. I wonder whether the Government have costed, even considered, introducing any of them.

I expect many people will ask where extra planting should go. We have just heard that Scotland has the new indicative forestry strategy. Perhaps I may go into a little more detail. This identifies three areas: first, the preferred area for forestry where it will attract new investment; secondly, potential areas which pre-identify any local issues or constraints that need to be accommodated; and thirdly, areas that are sensitive and under much less pressure for planting.

This planning process greatly reduces the hassle in new schemes because the environment and the economics can proceed together. In turn, all interests assemble their data and justify their case in advance. Therefore, the reactive and opportunistic approach to development, sometimes seen in the past, is largely eliminated. Let us hope that that enlightened strategy can move swiftly south of the Border. I wonder whether the Government will give any active encouragement on those lines.

Finally, who will be making this investment? We hear that the nurseries have destroyed 40 million trees and that planting levels are seriously down. I am certain that confidence can be restored with a clear statement of positive commitment together with the financial adjustments I have outlined. These would appeal to two types of potential investor that the Secretary of State for Scotland envisaged recently at the excellent CFC luncheon; first, the small investor, then the financial institutions and the pension funds. I suggest that we permit the smaller investors to enter co-ownerships by allowing forestry companies to pay dividends tax-free. That would surely be in the spirit of the 1988 Budget.

How about "planning gain" where an otherwise absentee landlord would be encouraged to use his investment and perhaps build a cottage in his woods? Above all, these investors need stability, not major announcements about a major industry made amid great secrecy in a Budget Statement. That is no way to inspire confidence. This stability should be extended by leaving alone the Forestry Commission, as we have already heard from a number of speakers. I shall not go into more detail on that aspect.

The industry is ready and itching to go. It will clear up after the recent storms. It must forget about the 1988 Budget, but it needs a clear commitment of positive incentives and stability from the Government.

6.33 p.m.

Lord Gibson-Watt

My Lords, this debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Radnor has brought forth a great number of views on what is a complicated industry—the forestry industry. The past few years have seen some dramatic changes in the industry, both in the woods and in the mills. We have also seen changes in the attitude of the general public towards forestry and of foresters towards the other claims on woodland areas.

The code of practice advice produced by Timber Growers United Kingdom is an example. Here I confess an interest as I have been chairman of TGUK for three years following 10 years as a Forestry Commissioner, which has given me some idea of what goes on in the forestry industry. This code of practice, if followed, improves the methods of creating woods and goes a long way towards satisfying other interests, too. Among other things, it lays down that conifers should not be planted close to running water.

As has been mentioned, there is great anxiety about the decline in planting, particularly in Wales, where the figure is very small. This has been largely caused by two factors: the removal of the Schedule D/B tax option and the strong opposition of the Welsh Water Authority. In over half of Wales there is a presumption against planting because of the acidification problem referred to by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell.

I accept that planting of conifers near watercourses can be very harmful. My noble friend made a notable contribution to this debate. There is very little of what he said about acidifcation that I disagree with. He also referred to the indicative strategies which have been worked out on the initiative of the Forestry Commission—and the private side, I remind your Lordships—with the Scottish regions. This may be more difficult to achieve in Wales but it is as well to remember that any planting application now is scrutinised not just by the Forestry Commission but by the water authority and the local authority. Therefore, there is far less risk of damaging planting being carried out. Indeed, I remind your Lordships that there are vast areas which in my view could well be planted. They are a long way from watercourses, are covered with bracken and are habitats for nothing but rabbits.

Anyone who has travelled over them in a helicopter, which I admit I have not done recently, will have seen the great size of those areas.

There has been huge investment in modem machinery in the mills, and that has greatly increased demand. In the woods the gales of 1987 and of January and February of this year have blown down, I believe, 20 million trees and possibly more. It is encouraging that the markets have stood up so well. A glut of trees and a very dry summer in 1989 have filled timber yards. Ten years ago that combination would have hit the markets for six. The industry is now far stronger. Credit for that must go to private enterprise, to the Forestry Commission —referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe—and to the Government, who to a large extent funded the incoming firms.

I should like briefly to refer to broadleaves. A review of broadleaf policy is at present being conducted and we are hopeful that Ministers will listen to the evidence put forward by the practical foresters. After all, they are the people who have to plant the trees and probably pay for them as well. I hope that some heed will be given to their evidence.

I stress the importance of growing the right trees on the right soil. There is no point in growing oak trees at over 1,000 feet altitude. There is no point in growing oak trees where the last crop after 140 years has been cut down and found to be shaky and useless. However, that is what we are at present being asked to do. The private woodland officers of the Forestry Commission are not empowered by Government Ministers to do anything else but insist that broadleaves should be planted where broadleaves were planted previously. In all sense, that must change. It is only a small point but it would make a great deal of difference. Private owners have no appeal system as a last resort.

We are spending, as a country, considerable sums of money on encouraging broadleaves in both the private and the public sectors. That is a total waste of money unless Ministers come forward with a policy on the killing of grey squirrels. Grey squirrels enjoy eating the tops of trees and the leaders. Unless something is done, such expenditure will be a total waste of Treasury money.

Finally, I come to the report of the Commons Select Committee on Forestry. It is good in parts. It recommends a management grant, which is most acceptable, and this would help to keep our woods in good order. However, its recommendation to carve up the Forestry Commission—both the enterprise and the authority—and to put it into Scotland, England and Wales, is pure lunacy. We have something good, so why knock it about? It has had enough knocks in the past few years and in my view we must keep a reasonably large forest enterprise to give backing and experience to those who administer the Forestry Authority. In my view the Forestry Commission is a fine service. As I said, I have seen it at first hand. In spite of recent reorganisations, morale in the service is very good. Abroad it is recognised as one of the best state services in Western Europe. We need to be proud of it. Forestry needs a period of steady, balanced expansion with recognition of the benefits that multi-purpose forestry can bring to our country.

6.40 p.m.

Lord Gisborough

My Lords, I should like to start by declaring an interest as a forester. I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, on his speech and the well-deserved criticism of the Forestry Commission.

The first point I should like to make concerns the lack of success of the woodland grant scheme in boosting planting. There have been a number of applications but as a rule they never get taken up. We have heard that the target is 33,000 hectares. Last year 12,000 hectares were planted, and in 1990 it will be 7,500, so it is simply not working. Set-aside may help, but the Government must look at the grant scheme again if they want to keep up planting.

Reduced planting will have a disastrous effect not only on forestry but also on the processing industry, and in addition to that on potential investment in the processing industry if people who are going to invest start to wonder whether the planting is going to go up and down according to changes in policy.

Following the fiscal change in 1974, it took no less th in 11 years for the planting to recover. It is interesting that in 1989 the nurseries lost some 50 million seedlings. If we wanted to plant again in a big way those seedlings would not be there and nurser es would think twice about growing so many if they thought they would all have to be burnt again.

For forestry to thrive it must obviously be economically sound. One essential is a balanced, integrated industry, with wood processing in every region, One of the problems of forestry is the large cost of haulage. No only does each region need to have its forestry processing capacity, but obviously those should vary in each area. To take an obvious example, there is the beech processing in High Wycombe and people growing beeches in that area. It is an interesting fact that for every pound which the grower receives from forestry the finished product is worth about £15 by the time it has gone through the processing. In New Zealand it is actually £31, 30 times more than the cost of the raw timber.

We have a £6-5 billion import bill in forestry. That is about half the country's balance of payments deficit. We should aim at having 50 per cent. self-sufficiency in this country in timber industry output-not forestry, because we could not do that. I believe that the Government should ask the Institute of Chartered Foresters to prepare a plan to see whether that could be achieved.

The public feel that softwood is an anathema; in fact, il is a dirty word. I believe that that feeling is founded on prejudice fed by bad forestry management, in particular insensitive planting and insensitive felling over a long period by the Forestry Commission —this has been pointed to in previous speech es —where there has been blanket forestry and impenetrable trees, which are thoroughly offensive. Yet nearby —I am thinking of Eskdalemuir —there is private forestry, planted with rides and lots of open land, where there is exactly the same species of sitka but the wildlife has doubled and it is an environmental asset.

It is interesting that, while we denigrate softwood, some of us save up to go to the American West Coast to see the sequoias, to the Black Forest, where I was the other day, which is mainly Scots pine, or even to the areas of access to the Forestry Commission, those few areas that it has looked after which people like to visit because they have been cleared out.

Eighty per cent. of the timber requirements in this country are for softwood, so it is nonsense to try to convert this country totally to hardwood, not that that would work anyway.

In previous times we have been able to maintain our forestry throughout its life—that is to say, brashing, thinning, pruning—with all the essential hard work that produces high forest of good quality. Now that the system has changed —management will be very expensive —that probably will not be done. Much objection has been shown to the black sitka, tree, but now it is said, There is only one economic solution to forestry, that is to blanket your land with sitka and never touch it because it will be too expensive to maintain, so put something down which you do not need to maintain". That is exactly what we do not want, but it is exactly what that policy will point to.

The key to acceptable forestry is not in the variety; it is in the shape of the planting and the management. Whatever tree you get, if you manage it correctly, prune, brash, clean and thin it and produce a final crop, it will look just as good and nicer than a lot of hardwood plantations which have perhaps been neglected.

The problem with management will be cost. I should like to return to something I said in one of the debates on crime. I believe that the enormous amount of brashing which should be done to improve the quality of our forests, in particular those of the Forestry Commission, could be undertaken by convicted offenders. Instead of sending them to prison, where suitable they could be made to brash so many acres of forestry. It would make them work, make them get up in the morning and in the end they would have done something useful and the country would have benefited. I think that is a point which should be followed up.

It is absurd to attack the forestry investors. The country wanted people to invest in forestry, and when they did they were told "You can't do that, you are avoiding tax", so they stopped it. To my mind, that was absurd.

There is talk of 30 per cent. hardwood and of various percentages that should be planted. Again that is meaningless. Twenty per cent. in rows 30 foot apart ends up as 100 per cent. hardwood. Thirty per cent. in blocks ends up as not more than 30 per cent. A lot of the talk of percentages is meaningless.

I should like to finish by saying that we should design forests better and encourage better management, and that we must have increased grants if we are to succeed with our planting.

6.48 p.m.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy

My Lords, like many other noble Lords who have spoken I have to declare an interest in that I plant and fell a few trees, mainly for amenity.

I much enjoyed the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Carlisle, and I was very glad to hear that he thinks Erasers are clever people. I hope he will not have changed his mind by the time I sit down, because not for the first time I am going to defend the poor old conifer.

Two important facts to realise are, first, that, as the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, has just said, 80 per cent. of the timber requirements of this country is for softwoods; and secondly, that Britain not only still imports 90 per cent. of her £7 billion worth of annual consumption of forest products but that her consumption is forecast to increase by 17 per cent. by the year 2000.

Therefore, it would appear to follow that either we shall have to grow a far higher proportion of our own requirements or we shall have to import once again more than 90 per cent. over the next 10 years. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, has pointed out that we are not even planting as much as the Government's target. But shall we be able to import more than we do at present? Shall we even be able to continue to import at the present level? Apart from the adverse effects on the balance of payments of doing so, to which the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and my noble friend the Duke of Somerset have referred, will the timber be available?

The depletion and destruction of the world's natural forests is now universally deplored as environmental awareness has grown, and it is doubtful whether we shall be able to cut down other people's forests, whether tropical or the conifer forests of the northern hemisphere, which are also under heavy pressure and whose destruction affects climate, global carbon fixing and so forth. Even were we to continue to assist in their destruction, one day not so far off they will no longer exist and then what shall we or our children do? Is it right that we should deplete the world of its renewable assets by not renewing them?

A recent report to the Government by the International Institute for Environment and Development mentions the idea that, to ensure that the next generation has the same productive potential as the present one, it is necessary for us to pass on a stock of assets no smaller than that which we ourselves have inherited —a concept well known to landowners both great and small from time immemorial but apparently less well known to governments.

So we have no alternative but to try to grow a far higher proportion of our own timber requirements. That means softwoods and principally the much maligned sitka spruce. It grows quickly. It is a most versatile tree, both in the variety of latitudes and soils where it will grow and in the variety and quality of its many end products, from paper to construction timber. It is the tree which can best supply our industrial demand in the future, taking the pressure off other less robust and slower growing trees and off semi-natural woods which can thus be managed for a wider range of environmental benefits. It is the bread and butter crop which will finance and underpin many of the non-profitable benefits which forestry offers and to which many noble Lords have already referred.

It is necessary to regard the growing of timber as a crop, a crop which may not be to everyone's aesthetic taste but which is just as important as wheat, barley, potatoes, turnips or rape. There are certain caveats. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, mentioned the acidification of water. It is also a greedy feeder and a thirsty drinker. If the rainfall is inadequate it will "steal" local water supplies, and it is liable to exhaust the land.

My noble friend the Duke of Somerset has already spoken about investment in the processing sector and about the socio-economic benefits which are derived from the forestry industry. The Forestry Industry Committee of Great Britain's recent publication The Impact of Forestry in the United Kingdom, based on an independent study by the Eraser of Allander Institute at the Strathclyde University Business School, has demonstrated that the total value of the output of the United Kingdom forestry industry is five times greater than previously appreciated. Indeed, £2 billion of output, £552 million of household incomes and 55,000 jobs are involved. We owe this largely to our conifer resource.

As the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, has said, conifer plantations need not be ugly blocks of unrelieved dark green. They can greatly enhance landscapes, particularly in winter, as at the Queen Elizabeth Park at Aberfoyle. The edges of plantations need not be straight lines, although it is cheaper to plant so. A requirement to do otherwise would need to be taken account of in the levels of planting and maintenance grants. In Upper Deeside, there are plantations where larch and naturally regenerated birch scattered through plantations of Scots pine, with rowan and gean at the edges and also in some cases scattered throughout, combine to give a rich and varied colour both in spring and in autumn. This is a great attraction to tourists and also makes the countryside a delightful place for the local inhabitants.

Additional environmental benefits are that conifers are efficient fixers of carbon —4 tonnes per hectare per annum, as against beech at 2-5 tonnes per hectare per annum—and the carbon continues to be locked up in the processed wood product. I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, say that young trees are more efficient at this than old trees. Young people work more efficiently than old ones anyway.

Misleading statements have been made in the brochures of Friends of the Earth urging the use of recycled paper. They say: Each year 90 million trees are cut down to supply paper for the United Kingdom alone. Indigenous forest, rich in plant and animal species, is being replaced by thousands of acres of conifer plantation with soil erosion and acidity as a result. Using recycled paper reduces our need for these plantations". The facts are that in this country conifer plantations are not replacing broadleaves, for it is not permitted under broadleaves policy. Paper and board products are made from thinnings and tops derived from plantations grown to supply saw logs for construction and so forth. Acidification derives primarily from atmospheric pollution from industry, although it is true that it is the trees which absorb it and conduct it into water sources. My time is up so I shall sit down.

6.55 p.m.

Lord Burton

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Radnor for initiating this debate and I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, on his maiden speech. He has fired his first salvo and we look forward to hearing him again.

The Country Landowners' Association brief for this debate states: Forestry is still far too much a source of conflict in the countryside". I thought that this was a rather good text to start on, particularly in view of what has been said so far in the debate which has been if nothing else controversial. Much of this conflict could, I believe, be disposed of if forestry schools and colleges broadened their curriculum to cover countryside affairs in general, giving a much greater perspective to the young forester. Young men who have just finished their forestry courses seem to know little of the countryside other than how to grow trees.

I shall give one example. A young forester fresh from graduation came to me recently and told me that a certain planting had suffered badly from rabbit damage. As there were no rabbits in the area, this mystified me. A quick look soon revealed that the damage had in fact been done by sheep getting out of a nearby field. Any individual with some country background would clearly have seen that. I am afraid that we are seeing too many young men of that kind at our forestry schools.

Another example is that certain forestry workers have only recently been stopped from putting their feet on any nests of Capercaillie which they find. These birds have become so rare that we may soon have to protect them. It is terrible that instructions used to be given to destroy their nests. Several forestry companies murder all deer that go near their plantings, in and out of season, often to the great detriment of neighbouring deer forests.

Phosphates are sprayed from aeroplanes onto plantations, polluting our water. The Economic Forestry Group has a wildlife branch in Eskdalemuir. The head man there has done an excellent job and has carried out much education not only of his own company but of many other bodies, including the Green Party. But even this company has not extended what he has taught there beyond Eskdalemuir. It is a great pity that it does not do the same in other parts where it manages forests. What a difference there is with German foresters who really do have a knowlege of what goes on in their woods.

The Forestry Commission has no wildlife ladder. Would it not be a good example for the Government to follow if what has happened in Eskdalemuir was practised in the public sector? I do not want to be critical of the commission. It has done much good work and is at least some sort of brake on the financial conjurors who call themselves forestry companies and who leave the Government with little alternative but to do something to curb their activites, which unfortunately sweep all forestry into the net.

On a different tack, most planners know little about trees. As they are the people responsible for the layout of the countryside for the future, this can have disastrous consequences. Once again, that seems to fall back on their education.

Roadside trees are another problem. Roads engineers seem to think that trees are something to be destroyed; that they are a danger to the motorist and should be cut down. The salt which is put on the roads is in any event highly destructive to trees. Many places along our new roads are being planted with trees. That could be very nice and beneficial, but once again no allowance has been made for the fact that the trees could grow to a substantial size if they were allowed to do so. They could then become a danger to the motorist. In my view they have not been looked at from the point of view of what they will be like in 20 years' time.

I was told recently by the region's archaeologist that we could not replant a plantation as it was near a stone circle. I emphasise the words "replant" and "near". My family have looked after that stone circle for 400 years and I have myself done so for many years. Therefore, noble Lords can imagine that I was not best pleased when I was told that I could not plant this area as it might interfere with public access and the archaeologists' digging activities. We are getting more and more interference with our efforts to grow and look after our trees from people who know nothing about trees. If we are to continue to look after them, we shall need some help.

I shall conclude with one final brief problem. We are being encouraged to grow more hardwoods. I have with me a cutting from one of today's daily papers. The Economic Forestry Group wants to plant 1,300 hectares of mainly farming ground in the north-east Highlands. The Nature Conservancy Council is reported to have complained that only 10 per cent. of that massive plantation will be broadleaved trees. But what is to be done with even 10 per cent. of these trees? There is no market for hardwoods in the Highlands, or very little. You can of course sell them for firewood; indeed, beech is only required for firewood. Oak and ash can be transported to England but the costs are enormous. If foresters and landowners are to grow more hardwoods—and I hope that they will—there is a great need for further outlets for their products in the North.

7.2 p.m.

Lord Moran

My Lords, this debate is taking place in the shadow of the severe losses of trees caused by recent gales. Immediately after those gales, I walked around our tiny hill farm in Wales and saw the sad sight of 20 fine oaks which had been blown down. Others have suffered much more. For example, the famous Selbourne hanger has been devastated. We all have to set to and replant.

It is unfortunate that commercial forestry has led to so much controversy, echoes of which we have heard during this debate, not least in the maiden speech of my noble friend, which I much enjoyed. Commercial forestry has tended, regrettably, to get itself a bad name. Why is that? There have been perhaps three reasons. The first was the tax dodges by celebrities which were stopped by the 1988 Budget. Secondly, there has been the slow but strong public reaction to the errors of past policy—the monocultures of softwoods, hard edges to plantations and the lack of regard for landscape needs. Thirdly, there is the planting of the Flow Country, which the NCC, perhaps to its cost, brought to national attention. That did more than anything else to damage the image of forestry nationally.

However, there are some encouraging developments. First, there are the plans of the Countryside Commission for a Midland Forest and 12 community forests, including three in Wales near Swansea, Neath and Cardiff, and the generally far-sighted views which the Countryside Commission has put forward on forestry which it continues to advance. Secondly there is the work in Wales of Coed Cymru in promoting proper management and natural regeneration in Welsh woodlands. Far too many of those woodlands are dying because of overgrazing by sheep, which has been encouraged by the unsatifactory method of giving grants on the number of sheep one has thereby encouraging overstocking. Coed Cymru is a real success, but it needs funding to give it proper security for the future. Its work could well be imitated in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Thirdly, there is now generally more emphasis on hardwoods and native species. For example, there is the farm woodland scheme. I was surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, say that it was not working. The figures that I have seen suggest that it has been quite successful. Recent government policy has been helpful. Fourthly, there is now more evidence of better and more imaginative planting. Fifthly, foresters are now reported to be looking at birch as a potential commercial species. I see that the Forestry Industry Committee of Great Britain is funding research at Aberdeen University on the benefits of native birch in Scotland. There have certainly been good results in Scandinavia, and especially in Finland, with properly selected varieties. In my view, more research is needed on the commercial growing of birch in this country.

I am especially concerned with the situation in Wales where I live. The Environmental Study Group of the Prince of Wale's Committee, of which I am vice-chairman, examined many aspects of the question at a seminar held at Lampeter last September. The committee's report is now available. The Council for the Protection of Rural Wales has also just published a study, based upon a year's work, which calls for a coherent forestry policy in Wales. It also makes a number of detailed recommendations which I think are worthy of study.

I continue to be puzzled that the policy announced by the then Secretary of State for the Environment on 16th March 1988, that approval would not normally be given for new planting predominantly of conifers in the uplands of England, gave no similar protection to the uplands of Wales or Scotland. The explanation subsequently given by the Secretaries of State for Wales and Scotland were not very convincing. If conifer afforestation in the uplands has effects in England which persuaded the Government to disallow it, it seems odd that they continue to permit it in Wales and Scotland.

As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, pointed out in his speech with all his authority as chairman of the National Rivers Authority, the particular problem in Wales is acidification. As he said, this is of great concern to fishermen. Indeed, the Welsh Salmon and Trout Anglers' Association, of which I have the honour to be president, asked to see the Welsh Office about the matter. We were most courteously reveived, had a valuable discussion and were encouraged by the understanding attitude that we encountered.

I mentioned that problem when I asked a Question about conifer afforestation in Wales on 18th July last year. I pointed out that 60 miles of river in Wales had had to be downgraded because of acidification and that many lakes —in fact, between 8 per cent. and 20 per cent. of all the lakes in Wales—had been affected. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said then that he thought the dangers mentioned in my Question were grossly exaggerated. I felt constrained to write to him afterwards pointing out that everything I had said was based upon information from Welsh Water or on what had been said by government spokesmen. I said that I did not accept that there had been any exaggeration. I received a helpful letter afterwards from the Director General of the Forestry Commission.

We have now received word from the Royal Society, and its colleagues in Norway and Sweden leading 30 teams of scientists who were reported on 29th January as saying that their researches conclusively prove the link between acid rain and the destruction of aquatic life in thousands of lakes and rivers. They say that trout and salmon in up to one-third of rivers and lakes in Scotland, and large areas of the Lake District, Wales and the Pennines, have been wiped out or badly affected by acid rain. In some areas acid levels are so high that it will be impossible to reverse the process. Many less affected areas can be saved, although it may take decades. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, does not think that the Royal Society is guilty of exaggeration. We shall need to study the report carefully when it is published in October.

Unhappily, the great majority of scientists who have studied the problem concluded that, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, conifer afforestation does make the problem worse on base poor soils such as we have in mid- and North Wales by reducing the Ph and increasing the release of aluminium, which is toxic to fish. For example, the research done in Wales on two rivers running into Llyn Brianne, has shown that on the river where there is afforestation with sitka spruce and lodgepole pine, aluminium concentrations in that river, the Tywi, are substantially higher than in the river running from unforested land, the Camddwr. It is a pity that the Forestry Commission tried for so long to resist the consensus of scientific opinion on this, like those who tried to persuade Galileo that the world was flat.

Where do we go from here? The NRA, Welsh Water, the NCC, the Countryside Commission and the RSPB have just submitted proposed guidelines to the Welsh Office and the Forestry Commission.

I hope that these can be considered very carefully. More generally, what I believe needs to be done in Wales is for there to be far more consultation between forestry and other interests. There should be something like a fresh strategy for forestry.

Commercial forestry should not normally be allowed in the sensitive upland areas of mid- and North Wales but it should be encouraged lower down the hill. I agree with my noble friend the Duke of Somerset that we need multi-purpose forestry as advocated by the Countryside Commission. There should be more mixed plantings, more broadleaves—perhaps encouraged by relief from inheritance tax on broadleaf woods—and fewer monocultures. In that way forestry can regain its proper place in the countryside and serve many interests, such as timber production, employment, landscape, wildlife and recreation.

7.11 p.m.

Earl Waldegrave

My Lords, we have had a most instructive and, I hope, a very useful rural afternoon. It has been a long afternoon for some of us. I was very interested to hear the start of this debate on forestry and the spirited defence of the Forestry Commission by my noble friend Lord Radnor. He was immediately followed by a notable and bold attack on the Forestry Commission by the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle. I think a balance has been held by hearing from one side and then the other all through the debate. I am pleased that, in my own view, if I were asked to adjudicate, I could say that the Forestry Commission won—though with certain reservations, because no one is perfect.

It was very interesting to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, because he was chairman of the commission for a while and he also served under me when I was chairman for a short time. Then, in some ways he was rather an enemy. The Economic Forestry Group was always said to have an open chequebook to out-buy us, because we had to work very strictly with the Treasury. He has obviously been converted to the Forestry Commission and no doubt he continues to support the Economic Forestry Group as well.

To me, and I am sure to other noble Lords, one of the most important speeches was that made by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell. It indicated that there is something in what the anti-foresters say. I accepted completely his arguments that the conifer can do damage to water and therefore he must try to stop that. If conifer afforestation is properly done, the conifer is the economic tree. In the end the whole subject comes down to a question of economics. People in the private world cannot be asked to maintain a large and public essential industry if it does rot pay and we have to import enormous quantities from overseas.

I do not think that the value of the conifer can be denied if it is planted well and in the proper place. It grows very well in this country. It should be planted in the proper place and treated in the proper way. It is subject to stresses on the natural side for which we are responsible. As a young tree, the conifer and also the hardwoods is subject to some of the pests that we have introduced. The real trouble was caused by the rabbit. Myxomatosis was the best grant that had ever been given to the forestry industry.

Unfortunately, the rabbit is coming back and I do not know what we can do about it if it is immune. The elm beetle took away all our elm trees and that was a terrible occurrence. People are now saying that certain regenerated elms are growing again. There are some on my own property which we believe are growing again. It may be that as soon as the elms return the beetle will also come back and the elms will disappear again.

The rabbits will be much more difficult to cope with. It will be a total waste to plant hardwood trees, as my noble friend Lord Gibson-Watt very cogently argued, if they are to be eaten almost at once by rabbits. Rabbit damage will also destroy a great many other indigenous trees. The rabbit will take all the sycamore at its very young stage. Not only is the old and mature sycamore a very useful timber, it is also a very beautiful tree, though the young sycamore is rather a tiresome weed. The rabbit put an end to that and will do so again in the future.

In our love of nature, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Tavistock, imported the grey squirrel. That has proved a perfectly frightful check on forestry everywhere. I hope that one day we shall find some means of protection against the grey squirrel. The Forestry Commission has often been criticised for blanket plantation in straight lines. The reason for the straight line is because it is very much easier to string a wire fence to keep out the sheep belonging to my noble friend Lady Elliot. If a wire fence is made in a wavy fashion it does not stand up and it is not good craftsmanship.

When the noble Lord, Lord Taylor and Gryfe, and I were members of the commission together, we moved a little way towards the straight lines. We appointed Dame Sylvia Crowe to advise us about these matters. She immediately recommended wavy lines though we said that these were rather expensive and not very effective among the trees. However, the environment is improved if straight lines are eliminated. That was in the far-off days of 1962-63.

I have forested on a very small scale all my life. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Moran, speaking of the natural regeneration we may get from birch and that it may prove to be an economic timber. One used to be able to make cotton reels with birch but that use no longer exists.

That is often the problem. Often in an industry such as forestry the timber that grows best is not wanted. I am sure that we must have a national forestry policy. That will be needed while we are establishing forests. The forests that I planted 40 years ago are just beginning to be saleable, though instead of selling the timber for pounds I am selling it for shillings. However, the market has stood up much better than I thought it would. Whole blocks of conifer trees have been sold. Purchasers are taking the best trees. As long as the trees are not rotten, they are fairly easy to remove. I would never have cut the trees down as I am far too old; I wanted to keep them just to look at. However, I have had some of my conifers felled and I have found a market for them. Yet I doubt whether I shall find such a market I for the hardwoods. That is a great loss not only in financial terms but also in aesthetic terms for the whole country. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Moran, mentioned the storms that we have had. I believe that he was the first speaker to refer to that.

7.21 p.m.

Lord John-Mackie

My Lords, we must thank the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, for raising this matter of forestry. The importance of the industry cannot be denied, as has been shown by the speeches that we have heard from knowledgeable noble Lords all round the House. The last time we had a forestry debate was, I believe, about four or five years ago. I was thanked by the Minister who replied to that debate for almost taking away all his thunder in replying to the points that had been made. I shall try not to take away the Minister's thunder this time.

I declare an interest in that I was chairman of the Forestry Commission for a few years. I have also planted a lot of trees in the past and am still planting trees although I do not own any land. However, I am still interested in planting trees. I lost a few trees that I planted 30 years ago as a result of the storms in January but I replaced those trees last month.

First and foremost, I wish to be blunt about the question of the two industries that occupy the land of this country; namely, farming and forestry. They employ many people and produce much wealth. Several noble Lords have mentioned the fact that over the past few years there has been considerable criticism of those two industries by environmental bodies. The impression those bodies give is that the control of the countryside and of those two essential industries must fit into their plans. However, the opposite is the case. The environment must fit in with farming and forestry. There is no reason why that cannot be done to the satisfaction and benefit of everyone. I cannot stress that point too strongly. I was most interested to hear the Secretary of State for Scotland make that point in a speech given at a luncheon a few weeks ago. Sir David Montgomery, the ex-chairman of the Forestry Commission, made the same point in an article in the Farmers' Club journal.

However, today's debate is about forestry and its importance. I do not want to go into details as the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, did that carefully, but figures show that we should be planting more than we are at the present moment. Conifers and hardwoods cover just under 10 per cent. of land in this country. That is almost the lowest percentage of afforestation in Europe. I wish to point out to noble Lords that in this country we have 18 to 20 million acres of what is called rough or hill land. If we were to double our acreage of plantations over the next few years we could replant somewhere in the region of another 9 million acres. However, not all of that planting would be on the rough or hill land as some land situated lower down hills may come out of agricultural production and could be used to add to that afforested acreage. That would still leave about 10 million acres of free land spread all over the country. That seems to me to be plenty for ramblers and environmentalists to wander over to their hearts' content. However, one only has to plant a small forestry plantation for people to object and complain that it spoils the countryside or that it spoils their view. A person called Brasher wrote an article in one of the newspapers the other day. He wrote that he has walked across the Lairig Dhu. He said that when he walked on the low ground he could not see the countryside because of trees that had been planted. However, if the lazy devil had walked across the top of the hills he would have had lovely views. Those kinds of people give foresters a bad name when there is no reason for that.

Many noble Lords have said that we should maintain a steady progress as regards increasing the size of our plantations. The removal by the Government of tax relief for plantations two years ago was disastrous. I do not know whether the grant system will prove as effective as tax relief. Time will tell whether that is the case, but, as has been pointed out, planting has almost halved in the two years since tax relief was removed. The point is that we shall never get industry to invest in processing plant unless it can see that planting is being undertaken year after year and that the acreage of plantations is being increased. If that is done, it will make a tremendous difference to employment in various areas and to wealth production in general. The Eraser Trust report showed the tremendous effect that the production of wood has on the processing industry over a wide area of wood-based production. I attended a craft event the other day and I was amazed to see four stands selling nothing but wood-based products. That just showed how much some industries rely on wood.

I shall now turn to some of the criticisms that have been made. My noble friend Lord Gibson-Watt used the term "lunacy" —that term is perhaps a little too strong—as regards the proposal to separate within the Forestry Commission the forestry authority from the forestry enterprise. One could argue in theory that the activities of the authority could be carried out by a bureaucratic body. However, when one considers the ramifications of forestry and the knowledge that the people working in the forestry authority obtain from the people in the forestry enterprise and to a certain extent vice versa, one can see that it would be a huge mistake to separate the two bodies. Most noble Lords who have spoken argued in support of that point.

Criticism of the Forestry Commission goes back a long way. I noticed that a lot of noble Lords, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, who was a forestry commissioner for some time, spoke about the Forestry Commission. I wonder whether he realises what the remit of the Forestry Commission was. That remit was to replace the trees lost through two wars. A certain amount of money was made available for that purpose. I can imagine the criticism that would have been directed at the Forestry Commission if it had left wide rides unplanted on land that had been bought for the purpose of plantations. There was no remit from the Government for any environmental work.

However, the Forestry Commission has since taken up the point about the environment. It cannot be said that it is doing nothing. I have a bundle of booklets here which show what the commission is doing and the advice that it gives. I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, looks at that bundle of books. I forget what adjective he used but he agreed with the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle. I suggest that they both look at what the Forestry Commission is doing and the advice that it provides. Between 80 million and 100 million visits are made to Forestry Commission forests each year. That does not sound as if the British public dislikes its forests.

Lord Gisborough

My Lords, I am delighted that the commission has learnt how to do it at last. It has taken some time.

Lord John-Mackie

My Lords, it has taken time because the original remit did not include that power

Private forestry has been mentioned. Eskdalemuir has been referred to several times because forestry has been done well there. One has only to go to the forests of the noble Duke, the Duke of Buccleuch, to see what he does or look at the layout of the Scottish forests of the noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, which are all conifers. Criticism of the forestry industry's record on the environment may have been justified 20 or 30 years ago but it is certainly not justified now. However, it continues, as we heard today.

I could spend quite a long time on the points raised by the noble Lord. I have half a page of notes on what he said. However, I have probably said sufficirnt for him to realise that I do not agree with what he said.

I discussed the matter with a private forestry company recently. The company believed that asking for greater acreage from hill land was wrong and that we should rely on higher production from lower, marginal land. That may be the case, but I do not believe that as much land will come out of agriculture as has been suggested.

I do not want to say much more as time is getting on and I am sure that the Minister will want to say a great deal about the Government's plans. I hope that they are good plans. However, there are one or two points that I should like to make. The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, was very anxious—like most of us—for long-term investment and continuing expansion for the reasons that I have given.

The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, made a point about acid water. The noble Lord, Lord Moran, pointed out where the acid came from. Conifers do not produce acid; they catch the acid rain that is created by the factories of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, in the valleys in Wales. He should concentrate on stopping the factories releasing acid rather than blaming the trees. If rivers near forests collect more acid as a result then we should see that the trees are planted further away.

I should like to thank the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, for defending the sitka spruce. The noble Lord, Lord Burton, made a point which I missed about wildlife. Perhaps I shall have a word with him afterwards. The noble Earl, Lord Waldegrave, was very clear about what he wanted. The question of pests in forestry was mentioned and it is important. The noble Lord, Lord Gibson-Watt, would simply shoot every grey squirrel that he saw. Of course, if you plant beech trees grey squirrels have to go. That applies to the other pests that have been mentioned.

We have had an interesting debate. I hope that the Government have taken note of the importance that we place on forestry and that we shall have a very good answer from the noble Earl.

7.35 p.m.

The Eari of Strathmore and Kinghorne

My Lords, once again the debate has demonstrated the depth of knowledge that resides in your Lordships' House on the subject of forestry. I shall do my best in the time remaining to respond to as many of the points raised by noble Lords as I can.

I wish first to thank my noble friend Lord Radnor not only for calling the debate but also for employing his considerable knowledge to remind us of the early aspirations of those who established the Forestry Commission in 1919 and gave this country its first national forestry policy. I should also like to thank him for setting out some of the many changes that have taken place over the years and for sharing with us his thoughts on the forestry industry today. The noble Lord most ably set the scene for the debate.

Although I speak from these Benches on behalf of Her Majesty's Government I must declare a private interest in forestry in the county of Angus.

I should also like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, on his maiden speech. He made a number of interesting points, not always uncontroversial but none the worse for that. It was a most interesting maiden speech and I hope that he will return to speak again soon.

My noble friend Lord Radnor made reference to the commission's disposals programme under which it has been asked to sell some 100,000 hectares of forest land over the next 10 years. There is nothing sinister in that. It is not, as has been suggested in some quarters, privatisation by the back door. The commission manages a very large estate at present and since it will be able to acquire land for planting over the next decade it will still be managing a large estate in the year 2000. The disposals programme, which has been running successfully since 1981, will return some of the assets to private ownership in accordance with the philosophy of this Government as well as allowing the commission to rationalise its land holdings to the benefit of its enterprise activities.

My noble friend also mentioned the splitting up of the Forestry Commission. It has been said by Ministers on a number of occasions, and I shall say again today, that the Government have no plans to privatise the Forestry Commission. The commission will continue to have a central role in the development of forestry in Britain. Your Lordships will be aware of the recommendation of the Agriculture Committee of another place that the Forestry Commission should be split up with forestry enterprise being separated from the forestry authority and the forestry authority itself divided among England, Scotland and Wales, On that point I can only ask noble Lords to be patient and to await publication of the Government's response to the committee's recommendations.

My noble friend Lord Radnor and the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, made the point that private forestry is in need of more government assistance if it is to play a full part. As your Lordships will know, the Government are not short of advice on that subject. Specifically, we have been conducting a full-scale review of our broadleaves policy. We have had a full assessment of the state of the private forestry sector and a number of recommendations from the Forestry Industry Committee of Great Britain representing the whole industry. We have had the benefit of the report of the Agriculture Committee of another place on land use and forestry that followed a wide-ranging investigation lasting two years. The government are giving the most careful consideration to all the evidence that has been laid before them on the direction that forestry should take and on the best means of encouraging forestry investment and achieving satisfactory levels of planting.

Your Lordships will appreciate that I cannot reveal the Government's thinking today. Perhaps we are holding the debate a little early. What I can say is that it is likely that a government statement on the outcome of the broadleaves review will be made before too long. I hope that the Agriculture Committee will be in a position some time next month to publish a report incorporating the Government's responses.

This is certainly a time of change and reassessment. I take the opportunity to restate the Government's strong support for the expansion of forestry in this country and to assure noble Lords that all that has been said in this House today will be noted with care.

My noble friend Lord Radnor also mentioned corporate forestry. I see that a case can be argued for encouraging the man in the street, the small investor, to take a stake in forestry through corporate or other means. However, it is a complicated subject involving, among other things, the proper protection of the investor and company tax law. I hope that the noble Lord will bear with me if I do not venture into that area today. However, I have taken careful note of his remarks. I shall pass them on to my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, mentioned the greenhouse effect. The Government are very much aware that trees absorb carbon dioxide and thus help to counter the greenhouse effect which is of so much concern to us all. The Government are doing a great deal to help to protect the tropical forests, but developed countries such as ours have a part to play by increasing their tree cover. Our record is a good one. We have increased our tree cover for the past 70 years from 4 per cent. of our land surface to some 10 per cent. today. It is government policy that forestry in this country should continue to expand.

The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, also commented on the report of the Select Committee on Agriculture on land use and forestry. I have noted the points that she has made in support of some of the recommendations in it. Although I cannot anticipate the contents of the Government's response to the wide-ranging report, we hope that it will be published soon.

The noble Baroness also asked how the target of 33,000 hectares of annual planting was arrived at. The Government made a policy statement on forestry in 1980, when planting at the rate of the previous decades —some 30,000 hectares —was seen as achievable and desirable. That figure was raised to 33,000 hectares a year in 1987 as part of a land use review in recognition of the fact that more land was likely to move from agricultural use. Again, that is an achievable aim.

The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, expressed concern over some aspects of the industry today and referred in particular to the removal of tax reliefs in the 1988 Budget. It was right for the Government to remove those tax reliefs, although it should not be forgotten that interim arrangements will subsist until 1993. Those tax reliefs have been in place for a great many years and in making the changes the Chancellor acknowledged that the tax system should continue to recognise the special characteristics of forestry, with its very long time cycles between investment in planting and income from selling the felled timber.

However, the Government were concerned that that should be done in a manner designed to provide a simpler and more acceptable system of support and which avoided the previous arrangements under which top-rate taxpayers in particular had been able to shelter income from tax by setting it against expenditure on forestry, while effectively enjoying freedom from tax on the income from the eventual sale of the timber. I accept that the tax provisions resulted in a great deal of planting which might not otherwise have taken place, but increasingly they were seen as anomalous and were a cause of widespread public criticism and increasing conflict between forestry and conservation interests. In other words, it was all leading to a major loss of public confidence in forestry. The forestry industry found itself in a tax straitjacket and it is to the benefit of the industry that the Government have released it.

I am not suggesting that the changes have been without pain. As noble Lords are aware, some tree nurserymen had to burn part of their stock, particularly where they were growing sitka spruce on a large scale, and some forestry companies have lost a great deal of business. Nevertheless, it would be quite wrong to suggest that the forestry industry is in any kind of crisis. Far from it; the industry is now much better placed to expand in ways that will attract a broader measure of public support.

The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, referred to planting by the Forestry Commission. It is the Government's continuing intention that most of the new planting should continue to be carried out by the private sector. However, the Forestry Commission has a modest new planting programme of its own —some 4,000 to 5,000 hectares a year. That has mainly been in remote and less fertile areas where afforestation will help meet social and economic needs and in areas where further planting will contribute to the rational management of the commission's existing plantations. However, the Government keep the position under review and there nay be a case for considering changes to the commission's programme when it is government policy that specific types of planting should be encouraged.

The noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, referred to forestry in the flow country of Caithness and Sutherland. The peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland are recognised as internationally important blanket bogs and we have obligations as signatories of the RAMSAR and Berne Conventions; but we must not forget the contribution of forestry to the economy of Caithness and Sutherland. Contrary to what the noble Earl alleged, trees grow well in that part of the world. The timber yield is above the average for Scotland as a whole and trees grow there at twice the rate they do in Scandinavia. Planting started in the 1920s. About 60,000 hectares are now planted, supporting a significant number of jobs at present, with more jobs in prospect as the timber matures. Without further planting, at least two-thirds of the existing jobs would be lost and the opportunities for downstream wood processing would not materialise.

The Highland Regional Council working party did a praiseworthy job in producing a land-use strategy for that part of Scotland, a strategy which has the support of all the bodies involved, including the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission for Scotland, and which has been endorsed by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. Clearly, a balance can be reached in Caithness and Sutherland between nature conservation and afforestation. I am sure that the necessary good will and understanding now exist to bring that conflict to an end.

The noble Earl was critical of the Forestry Commission's planting practices. It would be wrong to compare past practices, when public perceptions and government policies were so different from today, with present forestry practices. The first generation forests, like Kielder, to which the noble Earl referred, are now reaching the end of their first rotation and the opportunity is being taken to convert those forests of an even age into attractive and more varied landscapes and wildlife habitats, with a mixture of types and ages of trees.

The noble Earl also mentioned the Forestry Commission's disposal programme. The commission has been asked to sell 100,000 hectares of land by the end of the century. The commission itself will decide what is to be sold and will take the opportunity to rationalise its estate and increase its efficiency. The commission will continue to have its own planting programme, so it will still be a major forest manager in the year 2000.

My noble friend Lord Crickhowell raised the point of acidification of water courses in the forest areas. As he will know, extensive research by the Forestry Commission and other organisations is currently under way to assess the extent to which afforestation may increase acidification and to measure the effectiveness of various forest management techniques, including liming, in combating surface water acidification. The Forestry Commission has recently published guidelines, prepared with the assistance of the water industry, on the practices to be followed when planting and managing forests in the catchments of streams and river systems.

The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, mentioned multipurpose forestry. The way is now much more open for the pursuit of truly multipurpose forestry. That is specifically encouraged by the woodland grant scheme and the way in which it recognises a range of management objectives. More planting is now taking place down the hill on better land, with the use of a wider variety of trees, including broadleaves. The concept of urban and community forests has been well and truly launched with the central Scotland woodland project, with proposals to create three urban forests in England —in Tyneside, south Staffordshire and east London —with more to follow and with the exciting concept of a major new Midlands forest. We must never forget the importance of growing trees to produce timber, but bringing more of the trees closer to the people will offer a wide range of benefits, not the least of which will be an improvement to the environment in which many people live.

The noble Duke also mentioned indicative forestry strategies. The concept has been introduced in Scotland and is to be welcomed. The first strategy has been prepared by Strathclyde region. Others are in preparation. They should be helpful to all concerned, including potential forestry investors, although I should underline the fact that they are indicative and do not amount to planning control of forestry by the back door. We shall also be looking at the position in England and Wales. However, the need for a strategy depends on the likely level of forestry activity in an area. There is no point in drawing up a strategy if little planting is likely to take place.

My noble friend Lord Gisborough referred to a drop in planting and the woodland grants scheme not having proved successful. Inevitably the phasing out of tax reliefs has seen the withdrawal from the scene of those who were investing in forestry simply in order to obtain tax benefits. As was equally expected, we have seen a drop in the level of planting as the industry has been adapting itself to the new system of support, but there is no reason why that drop should be other than temporary. The withdrawal of tax relief was accompanied by the introduction of the woodland grants scheme, offering much higher levels of grant and allowing for a wide range of management objectives in order to encourage multi-purpose woodland management.

While timber production will continue to be one of the objectives, it will not necessarily be the principal objective. It could, for example, be to create a woodland which makes a positive contribution to the landscape and is designed to create a diversity of wildlife habitats.

Applications for new planting under the woodland grants scheme have been coming in at the rate of some 3,000 hectares a month, which is much the same rate as before the 1988 Budget. The scheme was opened in June 1988 and applications to plant are approaching 70,000 hectares. We do not know how much of that will convert into actual planting. Nonetheless the interest is encouraging.

The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, made a strong plea for the planting of more conifers to meet future timber needs and to encourage the expansion of timber-using industries. I think that it can be assumed that most planting will continue to be of conifers because they are the fast-growing commercial species and the bulk of industrial demand is for softwoods. The noble Lady rightly drew attention to the great economic value of the maligned sitka spruce. The growing of more conifers need not prevent us from seeking to encourage the planting of more broadleaves at the same time. It is very much a question of achieving the right balance and using the right trees to meet the objectives of those who are planting them and the requirements of the wood-using industries.

My noble friend Lord Burton asked why the Forestry Commission cannot follow the example of the sensitive wildlife management carried out by the Economic Forestry Group at Eskdalemuir. I do not believe that the Forestry Commission has fallen behind in that respect, as my noble friend seems to suggest. Indeed, it is giving a lead in its approach to the landscaping and wildlife management of forests. The commission is actively going forward with the process of restructuring its older forests such as Kielder, which has already been mentioned. Already many of the older plantations have attained established value for wildlife.

The noble Lord, Lord Moran, reminded noble Lords that it was government policy to operate what amounted to a ban on large-scale planting of conifers on unimproved land in the English hills. He went on to propose that such a ban should possibly be extended to the hills of Scotland and Wales. However, I do not accept that that would be a sensible approach. The situation in Scotland and Wales is very different from that in England, where the policy was introduced to protect the comparatively small areas of unimproved hill land that remained. There is scope for more planting to take place in the Scottish and Welsh hills without significant loss to the environment. Such planting will be needed if we are to meet our planting aims. The Government's objective is a balanced forestry programme and not one that is confined to the lowlands.

A number of noble Lords expressed concern about the impact of forestry on the environment. I think it is true to say that everyone is in favour of planting trees provided that they are the right trees in the right places. That is a subject which is worthy of a debate on its own. I ask noble Lords to bear with me if I do not go too far down that road today. I believe that it is sufficient for me to say that I have listened carefully to all that has been said during this debate and to assure noble Lords that the Government are fully aware of the importance of afforestation being carried out in ways that are sensitive to the needs of the environment. That has been amply demonstrated by the new woodland grants scheme introduced in 1988, with its clear emphasis on multipurpose woodland management and environmentally sound practices.

Over the past three or four years we have had a continuous and at times rather acrimonious debate, with high media coverage, about afforestation and its impact on the countryside. Perhaps such a debate was inevitable given the fact that forestry represents change and given the heightened public awareness of countryside matters. A number of necessary changes have taken place, however, in the way in which things are done. It is the Government's hope that major conflicts between foresters and conservationists belong to the past. I have heard it said that in many ways foresters and conservationists are natural allies. I believe that to be so. The Government's position on this issue is that in a changing countryside there is a place for an enlarged forestry estate which, with foresight and care, can add to rather than detract from the quality of the environment.

This has been a good debate which has illustrated noble Lords' great understanding of forestry matters. A wide range of issues has been covered. I hope that I have managed to deal with most of them to your Lordships' satisfaction in the time available. Where I have not been able to do so, I shall write to the noble Lords concerned.

It is the Government's policy that forestry in Great Britain should prosper and continue to expand in ways that will bring economic, social and environmental benefits. Your Lordships' advice on this subject is greatly valued. In conclusion, I thank my noble friend Lord Radnor for initiating this debate and congratulate him on his speech, which revealed an enviable breadth of knowledge about forestry.

The Earl of Radnor

My Lords, we have had a vigorous and extremely knowledgeable debate. It has revealed divisions which perhaps most of us knew existed already. I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, on his very vigorous contribution. I hope that he comes among us often as I feel that he will make a doughty debater.

It is late and I shall not pick up any further points. The situation has been dealt with very well except perhaps for two matters. One point which I think is most important was brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie; namely, that forestry is a long-term matter, and governments must treat it as a long-term matter. They have not always done so in the past and it is of great importance.

After hearing my noble friend Lord Strathmore wind up the debate and comment so well on all the matters that were brought before him—and they were many—I must confess that I am still not entirely happy about the situation with the Forestry Commission. I am sure he will understand when I say that I think that the sale of 100,000 hectares in exchange for planting 4,000 hectares a year is not a very good swap.

So far as concerns the environment, I believe that there must be a compromise. I should not go nearly so far as the environmentalists would go. It has been brought out again and again that softwoods are of vital importance to the industry—and it is the industry that we are debating. But I want to catch fish and I take absolutely the point about acidification in Wales and indeed in other parts of England. I want to see birds and I see no reason why I should not do so with a little care. I also want general visual pleasure. But I want an addition to the gross national product. I want employment. I want to smell the sawdust at the end of the day. That is very important indeed. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.