Mary Creagh
MP for Coventry East · Labour · United Kingdom
“The actions taken by this Government stand in stark contrast to the actions of previous Conservative Governments, who were happy to watch the closure of the Massey Ferguson factory, the Alvis tank factory and Peugeot in Coventry in the ’80s, which led to 20% unemployment in the city where I grew up.”
“I welcome the Lord Chancellor to his place and congratulate him on the steps he has taken this summer to reduce prison populations while excluding the most dangerous offenders. We must never again be in the position of having more prisoners than prison places.”
“Under this Government, more than £100 billion of private investment in the net zero economy has been announced. We have done much on mitigation. However, following advice from the Climate Change Committee, we are setting stronger objectives for climate adaptation.”
“Since we have come into government, approximately 10,000 hectares of peatlands have been brought into restoration through our nature for climate peatland grant scheme. Last week we announced £44 million for lowland peat—which I do not think the hon.”
“The hon. Member asked about a range of policies. I will talk about natural flood management. We will invest £300 million in natural flood management over the next 10 years—the highest ever figure for floods programming, and that is the minimum level.”
“I remember when I was Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee doing an inquiry into heatwaves that started during the “beast from the east”, so nobody gave us any evidence, and ended on the first 36° June day in London, which I think was back in 2017 or 2018. The point my hon. Friend makes is a valid one.”
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“At the same time, we are modernising how annex D operates by digitising import permits, which will reduce time and expense for businesses. We will continue to keep those species under review, based on scientific evidence. Moving to the shadow Minister’s questions about animal welfare—I hope that I answered the permit questions adequately—I am grateful for his co-operation on getting the puppy-smuggling ban through. That was a great moment. As a Government, we are committed to delivering the most ambitious animal welfare programme in a generation, as set out in our animal welfare strategy, published in December 2025. Our trade strategy set out that the Government will always consider whether overseas produce has an unfair advantage.”
“We will seek to extend their use for certain low-risk imports and exports of live annex B and C specimens to speed up processing for genuinely compliant traders and to reduce routine administrative delay. That is not an automatic entitlement; eligibility will continue to be assessed case by case by the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Standard permits may still be required where they are appropriate. Any abuse of the system will lead to appropriate enforcement action, including revocation of eligibility to use semi-complete permits. We are retaining annex D, which plays an important early warning role in monitoring trade in species and responding to emerging trade risks for vulnerable species—whatever is in fashion on the Instagram reels at the moment—as the shadow Minister rightly said.”
“As Ministers, if there is any science advice from different agencies that we are concerned about, we have a kind of peer review process on the science. I really do take the hon. Gentleman’s point about ferns that have almost become extinct in Brazil because of the actions of Victorian plant hunters who stole them, not for their intrinsic value, but just to grow orchids in greenhouses back here. That shows the despoliation that has been going on for at least 200 years since Darwin brought his first samples back on the Beagle. I will be going to Kew on Thursday to do the final digitisation of some of these herbarium samples. They are just incredible and our gift to the world. Semi-complete, pre-issued permits are currently used in limited circumstances for businesses that meet strict criteria and have shown consistent compliance over time.”
“Okay, I will do some more then—play to the gallery shamelessly. Funga, as it is called, is neither flora nor fauna. It is a third form of life. With the brilliant mycologists at Kew, we are looking at how to protect fungi in the wild, and at how we bring them in and out. That is because as mushroom kits get more popular, that causes issues for some of our native plants. The annex B imports list will be drawn up in consultation with the scientific board, and it will be readily reviewed and published. Other activity and work will continue. I can assure the hon. Member for Epping Forest that in other parts of the Department we have adopted a much lower risk appetite for certain other things than was originally recommended to us. We are also developing a process whereby the chief scientific adviser also reviews some of that.”
“The second is end-of-life vehicles, and the third is scrap metals, where we know there is a criminal industry with cable theft and so on. There was a similar site in Wakefield that eventually went bust, owing the taxpayer £60 million.”
“We are overhauling the regulation of the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime, moving from a light-touch, paper-based regime—where campaigners registered Oscar the dog for a licence—into a full, environmental-permitted scheme. Those paper systems are going. We are going to have mandatory digital waste tracking. There will be a single UK-wide platform to monitor those waste movements—as it goes from the transfer statement on to someone else and on to someone else, as that is where it gets lost and it goes out into the environment—so that we can spot diversion and fraud earlier, further up the chain before it turns up on a motorway. We are also removing widely-abused waste permit exemptions on three things. The first is waste tyres; we have all seen the mountains that somehow catch fire.”
“The action plan that we announced last Friday is the next step up, and it is a scale up. We are calling zero tolerance on this crime in three different areas. First, we are preventing illegal activity before it starts, by getting better at working out how criminals act. Secondly, we will strengthen enforcement so that offenders are caught and punished. Thirdly, we are cleaning up the most harmful sites. I will come on to the site mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley shortly, but let me first take each of those areas in turn. First, on prevention, we are tightening the rules and closing the gaps that criminals exploit. How?”
“What have we done? We have put boots on the ground and we are putting drones in the air. Since coming into office, we have boosted the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget by 50%: it has gone up from £10 million to more than £15 million. When I was Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee in a previous Parliament, before my enforced gap years, I remember sitting and watching pollution happening in our country. I was really frustrated, and I understood the Environment Agency’s frustration that it was not equipped and funded to do its job. We have pursued major regulatory reforms, and we have boosted the joint unit for waste crime. In the first 18 months of this Labour Government, the Environment Agency has stopped illegal waste activity at more than 1,200 sites. It has achieved 122 prosecutions and 10 people have gone to prison.”
“Organised criminals, as we heard, are exploiting the waste sector for profit. They have moved in on a large scale over the past 15 years, on the Conservatives’ watch. They damage our environment, threaten public safety and undercut decent businesses doing the right thing, and they are making a lot of money out of it. That happened under the previous Government and was allowed to continue, so that it became a consequence-free crime. The Environmental Services Association estimates that 20% of all waste in England is illegally managed. That costs our economy more than £1 billion. In the 2024 financial year, criminals evaded at least £150 million in landfill tax. They do not pay it, so we all pay it. Waste crime is organised crime. Waste crime is serious crime, and this Government will treat it as such. We are calling time on waste crime.”
“It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I have slightly more time than normal, so I hope that we can have a bit of discussion because I am absolutely passionate about tackling waste crime. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) for securing this debate and to all hon. colleagues who made such valuable points. I say first that we have a programme called Pride in Place. Everyone’s environment starts at their front door, and if their front door has dog mess or fly-tipping on it, or if, as we have heard today, their car is covered in dust from an illegal waste site—or from a permitted waste site in breach of its permits, as the lawyer on my shoulder would say—then people do not feel at ease where they live. Those waste criminals and permit breachers violate our spaces.”
“We will also look at putting penalty points on the driving licences of persistent fly-tippers—again, to make them think twice before they do a job for their mate on a Friday night, shall we say, that may affect their regular employment during the week. We are coming at it at all levels of the chain.”
“If digitally excluded or older people give their waste to somebody, they should not get the fine. They should be able to clearly see that the van coming to pick up the stuff is a registered vehicle. We should have that confidence, because we as consumers should know that the van is compliant. We will consult with councils on powers for them to issue fly-tippers—we have heard about them—with conditional cautions to make them clean up the mess they make. What is a conditional caution? I, too, have learned some things: it is an on-the-spot fine of up to £300 and an on-the-spot penalty of 20 hours of unpaid work. We think that clean-up squads are educating people about the harms they have caused, and that getting people to clean up is the best possible way to get them to think twice before they do it again.”
“It is bringing together environmental watchdogs, police forces and the National Crime Agency; some of this involves very serious, hardcore, dangerous criminals, so we need some heavy people with us to deal with heavy people. They are getting ready to dismantle the serious organised crime networks that blight our communities. The penalties for the crime must match the harm. The carriers, brokers and dealers reform will increase the penalties for offenders to up to five years’ imprisonment. Our manifesto made it clear that those who spoil our streets and parks should face up to what they have done and put it right with their own hands. I am extremely keen that carriers or brokers should have their registration numbers on all their advertising and on their vans.”
“We are pursuing waste criminals with every tool in the box. We are doubling the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget, with an additional £45 million over the next three years. There will be more boots on the ground and more drones in the air to stop the criminals in their tracks. We are giving the Environment Agency new police-style powers so that it can intervene earlier, disrupt criminal networks and bring more criminals to justice before illegal operations, such as the one my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley mentioned on the motorway, become established. Alongside that, the joint unit for waste crime—I visited it in the midlands just a couple of weeks ago, where it is doing some absolutely excellent work—is strengthening its hand.”
“Understood. We are talking about Knowsley, and I am not the canals Minister, but I will take that back to the Department. I am sorry to do the DEFRA silos, but this is not the first time I have heard that. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I was talking about tyres, scrap metal and end-of-life vehicles. We are tightening seven more activities that people currently do not need a waste permit for. We are also going after the tax evaders; it is the Al Capone method. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is going to expand tax-check rules to the waste sector. If someone has not paid their taxes, we are going to be asking them questions before we renew their licence. We are going across the chain on that. Secondly, let me turn to enforcement. We are matching our preventive work with tougher enforcement.”
“The EA will conduct site visits imminently to make that assessment and there is a live enforcement case under way. Finally, on Jameson Road, there have been over 500 odour complaints in February, so clearly there is an ongoing problem. We are not going to fix this overnight, but we are doing our absolute best. I give all hon. Members present from across the House my absolute commitment that we will tackle these rogues. We are coming for them, and we are going to put them out of business. Question put and agreed to.”
“I have spotted vehicles fly-tipping on the M1 while driving back from Coventry at night, and I have called 999 straight away because it is clearly a waste crime in progress. We heard about the action that was happening on the Simonswood industrial estate, with the Environment Agency. We have had investigations; the Environment Agency has stopped burning and sent reminders to all permitted sites. However, it is clear that the ongoing waste odours and problems mean that further action must be taken. I remember that when we first met, my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley told me the site was making Mo Salah sick. I am devastated that he is leaving Liverpool before we have had a chance to make things right. On Windmill Services, the EA is looking at the next regulatory enforcement step, including revocation of its permit.”
“Let me quickly return to the issue of St Joseph’s college, because that was not on my radar—I thought, “What problems do we have here?” I have a note that refers to the development of a new golf course bringing waste material on to the site. Let me look into that as soon as possible once I get back to my desk, because if something is going on there we want to get in super quickly and get it done super fast. If it is a golf course, then let it be a golf course—not something else. The key is to raise it earlier and to call 999 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. If something does not look right and feels wrong, a person must tell the police. It is no good assuming that it is the council, National Highways or workmen.”
“We are getting cleverer at working out what happens before an illegal waste site is created, and we are going to use satellite technology, as well as drones, to be much smarter about how we move earlier on these things. In the meantime, we are monitoring the situation and working with local partners. For local authorities that want to clear up waste sites on their land, we are looking to develop a rebate scheme for the landfill tax they pay. We will also look, with the insurance industry, at developing an insurance model to shield farmers, businesses and landowners from bearing the cost of waste dumped on their land through no fault of their own.”
“We are supporting the clean-up of three illegal waste sites, which my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley mentioned, and we have published clear criteria for those sites where intervention is needed most urgently. They include an assessment of the landowner’s capability to clear up the site without Government needing to spend taxpayers’ money. I understand why the residents of Knowsley want the site next to the M57 motorway to be included in that work. We still need to see the fire risk from Merseyside—that was covered in the last meeting we had—and the Environment Agency is in conversation with the landowner about clearing the site.”
“Local authorities have those powers already, but they are not very confident at using them, so I have issued guidance to local authorities to say, “Come on—you’ve got these powers. Why don’t you use them?”. One of the things I hear back is that local authorities have to store the vehicles, pay for a pound, and make sure a vehicle is properly illegal before they seize and crush it. But Labour’s Merton council, in south-west London, does an excellent job on seizing and crushing, as does Sunderland city council up in the north-east. They are in my star hall of fame for seizing and crushing a lot of vehicles; I hope that, if we have this debate next year, other local authorities will be in the mix. Clean-up costs should rest with the landowner. The polluter should pay, and we will go after the criminals to make sure they pay.”
“The hon. Member is absolutely right, but in the last five years under the previous Government, incidents rose by 20%. We are encouraging councils to seize and crush the vehicles of fly-tippers, and we will be consulting on a conditional caution so that people who do fly-tip will pick up and pay up.”
“I agree that the environmental improvement plan that we inherited was not fit for purpose. We will oversee the largest ever investment in nature. We have banned bee-killing pesticides, licensed the first wild beaver release in England for 400 years, and announced the first new national forest for 30 years.”
“In my own Coventry constituency, where there is one the poorest and most highly developed wards in the country, there are signs of water voles—Ratty is alive and well. I saw my first ever kingfisher about a mile from Coventry city centre, and there are also otters living in the canal and at Coventry golf club. Nature is all around us if we sit, look and know where to find it.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Sir Roger. For anyone who is unaware, I broke my wrist playing beach volleyball; the score was Germany 1, England nil—let us hope that is not repeated at the world cup this year. I thank all colleagues who have sent their good wishes. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on his excellent opening speech, and I thank other Members for their thoughtful contributions. I am not the water Minister or the oceans Minister, so I will do my best, but if I am unable to reply, we will organise the meetings that Members seek so that they get the answers they deserve. Nature is the monopoly provider of everything we need to exist, and it is our duty to protect and restore it.”
“When I was talking to our chief scientific adviser yesterday, I asked how we will meet some of those species targets, and we will have a baseline developed by 2028-29. It is all very well legislating, but it is also about how things are measured. As a former Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, I am all about how we measure it, because that is how the Government are held to account. I want to hold to account myself or any future Minister, whoever it may be.”
“I congratulate the mayor; he is a trailblazer both nationally and internationally through his climate and nature work. I know that Justin Beaver and his wife—I cannot remember her name, but it is a similarly cringeworthy pun—are living happily ever after. Actually, I do not know whether beavers live happily ever after; I think they are quite mean to each other. But they are definitely living happily in Ealing and providing those natural ecosystem services that we need—they are nature’s original ecosystem engineers. In December, we published our 2025 environmental improvement plan, and over the next five years, it will accelerate progress towards those Environment Act targets. I gently say to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson), that some of those targets do not have a baseline.”
“Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) also has about 800 homeless children in his constituency. Those realities of nature loss and homeless children have a similar root cause: political short-termism and the ducking of big decisions on land use, investment and environmental recovery, leaving the nature and housing crises to deepen. Politics has failed both, and the nature restoration fund can unlock stored housing and infrastructure while still achieving enormous, tangible environment outcomes. We want more for infrastructure and more for nature, not less.”
“I will just finish my point. Over the next five years, we will improve species abundance, reduce species extinction risk, and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich land. We are also delivering our international commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030, which will help us to tackle the climate and nature crises while supporting growth. We have heard a little about housebuilding versus infrastructure, and the system we inherited was too slow and too fragmented. Across the country, we have more than 164,000 homeless children living in temporary accommodation. In my city of Coventry alone, 2,000 children wake up to that reality every day—we have one of the highest rates of child homelessness outside London. My hon.”
“I am happy to get the water Minister to meet the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers). On soils, we have committed to bringing 40% of our agricultural soil into sustainable management by 2028 and increasing that to 60% by 2030. Soil is the foundation of our food system, but also an important part of our climate system. That will be achieved via our environmental management schemes—”
“In Mozambique, for example, that is supporting local partners to establish a corridor of 20 locally managed marine areas. I am not the Minister for chalk streams, but I want to address them very quickly and say to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) that we will be delivering more than 1,000 targeted actions for chalk stream restoration. I will take his message back to the water Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy). On the national policy planning framework, the consultation is still live, and I think we are looking in that consultation to put chalk streams as features of high environmental value into planning policy. We welcome and support the ambition of the curlew action plan. There are many such plans across many of our protected landscapes.”
“Nature-based solutions include Saint Helena’s cloud forest, which is providing clean drinking water, the British Virgin Islands mangroves and the Falklands Islands peatlands. We have heard about salt marshes and seagrass, and they are incredible buffers against the increasingly intense storms that are buffeting our ocean. Our ocean is also under threat from acidification and heating, and that is why we are driving to protect marine ecosystems and working for a global plastic pollution treaty. A new chair has been elected for that process, and we look forward to making further progress. We have committed £14 million to eight projects in our ocean grant scheme to support locally led solutions to protect the ocean and the communities who depend on it.”
“This year, we will publish a new trees action plan for England, outlining how we will meet our Environment Act target and improve the resilience and conditions of trees and woodlands nationwide. We have £1 billion for tree planting and forestry sector support over this Parliament, which is the largest investment in nature in our history. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) raised the issue of our overseas impacts and the 30 by 30 work. Our overseas territories hold over 90% of the UK’s unique species. We reaffirmed our joint ambition with the territories to protect their ecosystems and launched the first ever co-created overseas territories biodiversity strategy with every territory Government. We have funded 43 new Darwin Plus projects worth over £7.9 million.”
“We expect future tranches to be delivered with further funding allocations. That part of the largest nature-friendly farming budget in history goes alongside significant funding for further nature-friendly farming schemes. We heard from the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) that, last year, tree planting in England reached its highest level in over 20 years, but our woodland cover is still too low. We are committed to meet the Environment Act target to increase woodland cover to 16.5% by 2050, and the new national forest in the Ox-Cam arc is going to make his constituents closer to nature. That shows that we can build beautiful housing, a new railway line and new nature alongside each other.”
“We talked about beavers, and I was thrilled to visit the National Trust’s Holnicote estate in Somerset for the release of a mother beaver and her two kits last month, which was one of two wild releases in south-west England this year. Beavers bring many benefits: creating havens for other wildlife, improving water quality and reducing the impact of flood and droughts. That is part of our mission to protect and restore nature. On landscape recovery, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) talked about the vital role of farmers and land managers in creating wildlife-rich environments. The plans for landscape recovery are backed by a down payment of £500 million over the course of this Parliament, which is the lifetime cost for the first tranche of projects coming through in round one.”
“On species recovery, my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) talked about the red-billed chough and the tough little Cornish black bee. Bees’ Needs Week is coming up soon, and I urge everyone to go to the website and get their local organisations involved. Kew at Wakehurst will host the prizegiving this year, and I encourage local groups to get involved. Since the early 90s, we have prevented 35 national extinctions through the species recovery programme and supported 1,000 species, such as the fen orchid, the large blue butterfly and the red-billed chough. We are committed to funding that programme—there is a new round of funding until 2029. More than 200 projects have applied, and we will announce the successful ones in May.”
“When we came into office, those authorities were not really sure what the strategies were for, so we had to provide a lot of guidance and work with local councils and regional combined authorities to publish 28 of the 48 strategies, with the remainder fast approaching completion. Those strategies will be a new tool in driving action on the ground, and helping partnerships in the public, private and voluntary sectors to work together to focus collective efforts on where they will achieve the most. We will also go further and faster on protected landscapes. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) and I saw kids from Newcastle who were out for their first ever walk in his gorgeous Northumberland national park. Making sure that our green spaces are greener, wilder and more accessible is crucial to what we want to do.”
“I will not give way, as I want to respond to some of the points that hon. Members made. The hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) mentioned biodiversity net gain, which became mandatory in February 2024. There is emerging evidence that it is working as intended, and we will publish our response to our consultation on that shortly. Developers are seeking ecological advice earlier in the planning process so that they do not waste money trying to build on precious sites, and they are seeking to avoid biodiversity impacts when choosing between sites. The shadow Minister talked about local nature recovery strategies, as did the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The hard work of local authorities to finalise and publish those strategies is bearing fruit.”
“I have stood beneath the spruce and pine of Kielder forest with the people who manage it, and I have heard about Forestry England, which is the largest provider of parkrun in the country, with 220,000 people a week running through our national forests. I was of course passionately against the coalition Government’s attempts to try to sell off England’s national forests—that was 16 years ago, but some of us have very long memories. The Government’s plan for change sets out how we are going to build a stronger, fairer, greener Britain, and I gently say to the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth)—I am not sure whether she is standing in or she has had a promotion, but if it is a promotion, then many congratulations.”
“I met the social enterprise Forests With Impact, launched at His Majesty’s prison Haverigg in Cumbria, which upskills prisoners to grow trees for onward planting. One of the comments from the Ministry of Justice about the prisoners who grow the seeds is that they want to know where the seeds are going. As they imagine their lives on the outside, they want to know where they can visit and say, “I grew that seed,” or, “That might have been a seed that I handled,”. I pay tribute to the last Government for some of the work done in prisons on that intimate connection between environmental justice, social justice and the criminal justice system.”
“Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) talked about, is prescribed by doctors to prevent anxiety, lower stress and help heal depression. I heard about that on a visit to Wakehurst—I recommend a visit—which has done experiments on different tree scents. The Japanese cypress gives off an odour and oils that are a mood enhancer, lifting the mood and clearing the mind, as my hon. Friend said. I think I will steal that idea for the future. Growing up in Coventry, I played every weekend in the War Memorial Park, the city’s great act of remembrance for those we lost in world war one. Every tree has a plaque beneath it remembering the people who died—a living memorial to the lost. As forestry Minister, I regularly see the majesty and benefit of woodlands up close.”
“We talked about leafiness and how it was associated with wealth, but when we walk in a city and see a glorious display of cherry blossom, we almost have public art in the street. That display of luxuriance and beauty is there just because it is there; it is not performing any function apart from providing a visual display. It is absolutely glorious to see some of the urban planting going in across our cities, and when I cycle around places, as I often do, I am always thinking, “When they designed this place, what were they thinking about for the future?” It really makes you think about how councils think about their constituents. Trees are part of our shared national culture. They stand as symbols of endurance, wisdom and renewal. In Japan, forest bathing, which my hon.”
“Last year, I visited Northumberland to see where the Sycamore Gap tree stood and to hear about the national park’s plans to honour and memorialise it. The power that trees have to speak to us across the centuries and across generations cannot be overstated. It was lovely to hear about the wetland arc in Milton Keynes. I know Bedfordshire well because I taught at Cranfield School of Management for seven happy years. I also did quite a lot of canvassing in a variety of by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and found some places that I had not known about. The trees and woodlands of England and the United Kingdom are more than just part of the landscape; they are part of our national identity. They filter our air, they cool the cities and they shelter our wildlife.”
“What an amazing piece of foresight that was, and what a piece of foresight it was for Winston Churchill to demand that oaks be chopped down across England ready for the reconstruction of the main Chamber we sit and debate in. And how wonderful it is, for those of us who have had the privilege, to stand at the Dispatch Box, which was a gift from the people of New Zealand. People knew that we needed timber after world war two, and the Commonwealth—the empire, as it was then—stepped forward and stepped up. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) on securing the debate. How lovely it was to hear him talk about the “tree of hope” coming out of the Sycamore Gap tree.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and what a lovely debate we have had. It has not been the best part of my week—that was releasing a mother beaver and her three kids on the National Trust’s Holnicote estate in Somerset yesterday—but it has been the second best. We have had a lovely debate, with constructive and thoughtful contributions from many colleagues. Where are we having this debate? In Westminster Hall, which is home to northern Europe’s largest medieval timber roof, built in the 1390s from 650 tonnes of English oak. It was saved from the blitz fires by former Cabinet Minister Walter Elliot, who directed the firefighters to allow the Chamber to burn but, whatever they did, to save that roof.”
“She is standing in—very good. However, I gently say to her that while trees have a key role to play, we have done six interest rate cuts, and inflation is set to come in on target, so the economic plan certainly seems to be going much better than it was in the days of Liz Truss. Let us talk about woodlands. They stitch our habitats back together, and they provide corridors for our birds, bats and beetles. All Government-funded woodlands must be designed and planted to the UK forestry standard. That world-leading technical standard for sustainable forest creation and management ensures a diverse mix of species, which will not only benefit wildlife but make woodland more resilient to climate change and the ever-changing risks from pests and diseases.”
“We do not really have research on deer numbers, but anecdotally they are high, so we need to take action. I am particularly anxious about the east of England, and the steps needed there. I want to say something about the British quality wild venison standard. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may not have shot a deer, but I have certainly eaten quite a lot of venison. That wild, organic meat is really healthy and plays a part in creating that ecosystem. Some charities, such as the Country Food Trust, are doing really good work in that area.”
“We provide grants for capital items such as fencing and for the management of deer by lethal control. That is done through countryside stewardship grant funding where the land manager has been advised by a Forestry Commission deer officer that such action is needed. We are funding projects relating to reducing deer impacts, and I am particularly concerned about the muntjac deer and the Chinese water deer, which are a particular feature of the east of England. They are alien, invasive species, so there are risks about hybridisation with our own native deer. One of the two—I cannot remember which one, but I think it is the muntjac—can breed three times a year, so it is constant breeding. Covid has had a very bad impact on deer management.”
“I am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised that subject, which I was coming on to. Native wild deer are an important component of our landscape, and they play a role in healthy forest ecosystems. However, excessive browsing, foraging and trampling by deer put pressure on woodland ground flora, damage trees, and inhibit the natural regeneration of existing woodland and, crucially, the growth of new trees through natural colonisation. Trees will get on and do it themselves if we just leave them, but they cannot do it if they are constantly being yanked up by deer or grey squirrel populations. We have to manage the impact of deer and grey squirrel populations, and it is our intention to outline plans to do that. We published our squirrel strategy last week, and the deer plan is imminent.”
“To go back to Kew Gardens, I had the pleasure of spending an hour with Kevin Martin, who is the head of tree collections at Kew. He has been going over to Kazakhstan in central Asia to collect tree seeds and do research on the seeds of the future and what our changing landscape will mean as we have hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. I also went out with somebody to look at trees, and we looked at this amazing lime tree with all its heavy nectar. He said to me, “For bees, that is like having a meadow in the sky.” Our city trees and the lime trees that grow along the embankment might be a bit of a nightmare from an allergy and pollen point of view, but for the bees of our capital city, and all our great cities, they are meadows in the sky.”