09:30 Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)

Our country—indeed, our planet—faces two major environmental crises: climate change and biodiversity collapse. The principle that trees harness the power to help us overcome both those crises is one on which we can all agree. I hope, too, that we can agree that, as the famous Chinese proverb puts it, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

However, the fact remains that we do not have enough trees and we are not yet looking after the trees that we have adequately. That is why the England tree strategy is so important. It represents a golden opportunity to rethink our approach to trees. Moreover, it is a chance to show the world how the UK is leading the way in addressing the climate emergency, by championing nature-based solutions ahead of COP26.

I turn now to the issue of targets. As we know, the Government are committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Although I appreciate that there is considerable debate over the ambition of that date, if the Government are to achieve this goal, the UK will require a major expansion of tree cover. Despite the role that trees play in combating the climate crisis, there is no formal way to set targets regarding trees in England.

In its sixth carbon budget, which was published last week, the Committee on Climate Change was clear that the UK needs to do more. According to the committee’s report, we need to increase tree cover in the UK from the current level of 12% to around 20%. This will require up to 70,000 hectares of new trees and woods to be established each year. On our current trajectory, however, we will get nowhere near that recommendation.

This point may be better directed at the Minister’s colleagues at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but currently London’s Mayor is the only Mayor in England with the power to produce a binding environment strategy. Despite the lack of devolved powers, we have still developed a plan in South Yorkshire to reach net zero by 2040 at the latest. My ambition is for woodland creation and tree planting to play a pivotal role in getting us there.

The Minister will be aware that I wrote to her and the Secretary of State last month following a constructive South Yorkshire flooding roundtable. Perhaps she will give a quick update on the points that I raised in the letter. First, where are we on confirming the provisional funds allocated to us through the medium-term plan and grant-in-aid proposals? Secondly, where are we on our innovative proposal to work together to deliver nine shovel-ready projects to protect 860 homes and critical elements of our regional infrastructure? Such a commitment from the Government would show that they are serious about working hand in hand with local leaders to level up, tackle the climate emergency and solve the problems faced by our communities.

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09:43 Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)

My dendrological exuberance does not just extend to planning. The UK’s horticulture sector is worth £24 billion and supports more than 560,000 jobs. Not only will it play a vital role in aiding our ambition to reach net zero by 2050; it will play an important part in our national recovery from covid-19. The Government’s ambition to recognise the importance of trees through a national tree strategy is a part of this.

I recently contributed to an article in the Conservative Environment Network’s net zero northern powerhouse series, setting out the importance of the Northern forest. It has never been more necessary to secure a future for generations to come and it is essential that policies and practices are put in place to protect trees and woods, to safeguard and buffer ancient woodlands and to stimulate new planting.

The presence of trees and other greenery in our environment has a discernible effect on the physical and mental wellbeing of us all, as well as being responsible for cleaner air and playing a role in addressing climate change. As someone who lives in a flat, I say to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central that he is absolutely right that those parks were essential during lockdown.

With an environmentally sensitive approach, planting the right trees in the right areas and ensuring that these are maintained as part of an ambitious long-term arboricultural strategy that is fixed on our 2050 goal, we should return around 30% of our country to nature in our lifetimes. In that way we can become, in the words of the Latin playwright Caecilius Statius,

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09:48 Derek Twigg (Labour)

The Woodland Trust is working with the Mersey forest, City of Trees, the White Rose forest, HEYwoods and the Community Forest Trust to create a new Northern forest. This will increase woodland cover, while bringing endless benefits and opportunities to the people of the north. The Northern forest is already in progress, and once completed it will help tackle climate change; encourage nature-rich landscapes; reduce the risk of flooding, which has already been referred to; create thousands of new jobs; of course provide cool and clean air in our towns and cities; and improve health and wellbeing.

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10:03 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

As has been said, planting more trees is absolutely central to efforts to address the climate change emergency, the ecological emergency and the devastating collapse in biodiversity that we have we seen, by providing natural carbon sinks and habitats for wildlife to flourish. As has been mentioned, it also prevents soil erosion and flooding. In the winter of 2015-16, when I went to some of our northern constituencies that had been badly affected by flooding, there was much discussion about the need to plant more trees to prevent soil erosion. I went to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and talked to Yorkshire Water. It is about planting trees in the right place, as well. It is not just numbers that count but location and the type of tree.

Without natural climate solutions we have little hope of reaching net zero emissions or preventing further species decline. The issue is not limited to tree planting; peatlands and sea grass meadows are also vital carbon sinks. I give credit to the RSPB and the WWF for their recent work to raise the profile of those areas. I hope the Government will finally act in response to their campaigns.

I briefly want to mention my concern about deforestation overseas. We are here to talk about England’s tree strategy, but it is shocking to see the continued devastation in the Amazon rainforest, which is referred to as the lungs of the Earth, due to its immense capacity to convert carbon to oxygen. It faces an onslaught due to industrial agriculture, mining and forest fires linked to climate change. When the Environment Bill was in Committee we tried to add provisions to start measuring our global footprint and the links to deforestation in our supply chain.

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10:12 Rachael Maskell (Labour)

Building a carbon-storage landscape in both urban and rural settings means rebuilding lost habitats, creating beautiful environments and, importantly, holding water and restoring soils. The Committee on Climate Change echoes the need for ambition if net zero is to be reached by 2050, although that is far too late. It says that woodland cover needs to rise from the current 13% to at least 17%, but 19% would be better. Friends of the Earth says that it should be 26%—double the current cover.

How are the Government doing? Let us take last year. Some 13,460 hectares of new woodland was created in the UK. Just 17% of that was in England, and just 90 hectares was created by public bodies; 96.2% of planting in England was by the private sector. This is an abysmal record by the Government. They are committed to planting 30 hectares of new woodland in England; at that rate, we will be lucky to meet the Committee on Climate Change targets by the turn of the next century, and meet less than half of our ambitions. In England, the Government are hardly scratching the surface. Compare that with the coverage in France, where it is at 32%; Germany, where it is at 33%; and Spain, where it is at 37%. We have to pull our weight and look at the mitigation that forestry brings.

We need to get the balance right. At the moment, it feels as if it is tipped against nature, and we need to pull that back. After today’s debate, as we head towards COP26, I hope that the Government will wake up to the climate challenge, and challenge themselves, now more than ever.

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22:22 Jim Shannon (DUP)

Having spoken to experts at the Woodland Trust, it is clear that while Northern Ireland Water and Northern Ireland are heading in the right direction, we need to be more ambitious. The Northern Ireland forestry strategy for sustainable growth, published in 2006, set out a plan to double woodland cover from 6% to 12% by 2050. By 2020, we moved to 8%. the Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister announced the “Forests for Our Future” programme in March 2020, which seeks to plant 18 million trees across 900 hectares by 2030. We are told that will amount to an additional 1% of coverage. Although that seems unambitious against the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations, it sets the direction of travel—we are going from 200 hectares to 900 hectares. As I said, that is only 1%, so it is important that we try to do more. The Government in Northern Ireland are doing their bit. It is up to the landowners to do something, too. It is a bold first move to suggest quadrupling planting rates.

The Woodland Trust has commended the DAERA Minister for his ambitious reworking of the grant programme to incentivise landowners to convert to woodland. Perhaps the Minister here can give us some idea of the grant scheme available to landowners and farmers, to incentivise them to do that. The condition of planting trees back home is that they cannot be cut down for 30 years. I never cut mine down; I hope they will live as healthy a life as they can. To meet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change targets, ambitions need to be much bolder, and a renewed tree strategy should be developed as a pillar of the plans to decarbonise; it is important that we reach that target.

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10:30 Luke Pollard (Labour)

We all know that we are living in a climate emergency, but too often we forget that we are living in an ecological emergency as well. To tackle the climate crisis and cut carbon, we need new forests, salt marshes and peat bogs too. We need to value biodiversity, deal with species loss and habitat loss and make sure that we are championing not only totemic, iconic species in Britain, such as badgers and so on, but insects such as beetles, little birds, and all the fantastic variety in our animal kingdom. Nature is one of our greenest allies in defending the world from climate breakdown and it is important that we use it now.

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10:41 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)

Of course, I have to thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for securing this debate about tree planting and the all-encompassing things that trees bring to us and to our lives. Planting more trees in England and protecting our existing woodlands are a key part of the Government’s plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

We welcome the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and we will carefully consider its recommendations as we set out our sixth carbon budget. Our nature for climate fund will invest £640 million in driving up nature-based solutions, including supporting our ambitious tree planting programme. It will be underpinned by the imminent and much talked about England tree strategy, which will be published in spring, as has been referenced.

Lord Goldsmith and I have been engaging with a number of experts and specialists who have illustrated the variety of that kind of planting, which can help our aquatic environment, mitigate flooding, and help us meet our net-zero targets. The Environment Agency has already been awarded £1.4 million from the nature for climate fund to support projects that will plant more than 850,000 trees and protect and enhance 162 km of river.

I shall wind up, Mr Hollobone, because I know you want me to. I thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central for securing this debate. There is a huge amount of synergy in the room. We are totally committed to our tree strategy. I am going home this weekend to plant an amelanchier—a beautiful garden tree that Lord Goldsmith gave me for my birthday. I am going to start this weekend, and I urge every Member to do the same, including the Chair. I look forward to working with the hon. Member for Barnsley Central as a champion of COP26. I am sure there is a lot more that we will be able to discuss.

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10:58 Dan Jarvis (Labour)

This has been a really useful and constructive debate. I am grateful to all Members for their contributions. It has been great to hear about local environmental projects, and of course I am hugely encouraged by the support that exists for the Northern forest. The shadow Minister said that we are willing the Minister on, and we are. There is real agreement that planting trees is a key part of our efforts to address climate change in the biodiversity collapse. The England tree strategy represents an important opportunity to rethink our approach to planting trees and to tree cover.

On the point about targets, what gets measured gets done, so I encourage the Minister to be bold. Given the climate emergency that we all know we are living through, we need to get on with this. Ahead of the COP26 conference next year, there is a really important opportunity to champion nature-based solutions and to show real global leadership, so I hope the Government will meet the moment with the urgency it deserves.

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