16:32 Olivia Blake (Labour)

The UK peatlands contain an estimated 3,200 million tonnes of carbon, more than the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. There is no way that the Government can tackle the climate crisis without ensuring that our peatlands continue to store that colossal quantity of carbon. It would be a catastrophe if it were released and, yet that is exactly what is happening.

Between the 1940s and the present, there has been a sevenfold increase in burning on peatland in England alone. In Great Britain, between 2001 and 2011, burning increased at a rate of 11% per year. The more we allow that to continue, the greater the acceleration in the climate crisis we will see before our eyes. We will also see impacts on our environment.

In January, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that peat burning should be banned by the end of 2020. The Government have routinely committed to ending the burns, but we have yet to see any legislative progress towards that. Instead, the Government have asked landowners only to sign voluntary agreements not to burn, and they simply are not working. For the sake of our environment, the Government must announce an immediate ban on this destructive practice and restore our peatlands to their natural bog habitats, so that they can deliver for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

Nobody in this debate supports the deregulation of moorlands. The idea that setting fire to large swathes of our countryside is a responsible form of regulation and management is completely incredible. It releases millions of tons of CO 2 into the atmosphere, making the climate emergency worse. It destroys habitats and damages the ecosystem and ecologies. As fires rage on our uplands, they increase the threat of floods from our lowland rivers.

We cannot rely on the good will of landowners to stop the burning—just ask the residents of Hebden Bridge and the Calder valley. We all saw on our TVs the damage done to those communities by last year’s flooding, and many now attribute those floods to heather burning on Walshaw moor. Instead, we need to restore and re-wet our peatlands, using them as one of the many natural solutions to the climate crisis. To do that, we must end the year-on-year cuts to spending on the environment and set out a plan for investing in nature. That means having a national nature service to create well-paid, secure, unionised jobs. We need to lock CO 2 into the ground and to protect biodiversity and our natural environment’s fragile ecologies. We also need to ensure that those who seek to burn protected peatlands face the full weight of the law.

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16:47 Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)

It is frustrating, however, that although the potential for carbon storage is enormous, the Committee on Climate Change has estimated that 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted each year from upland peat in England, the majority of which is due to burning on grouse moors. I welcome its recommendation that legislation to address that should be forthcoming before the end of the year.

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16:51 Edward Leigh (Conservative)

Grouse moors are not the emissions problem. Farming and forestry produce far higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions per hectare than grouse moors. There is a risk to wildlife of not burning, as Lord Botham said in his article last week:

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16:57 Rachael Maskell (Labour)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for excellently setting out the science for us today. The Minister has a clear choice to make. We need progress and we need decisions, because we have been here many times before, not least as we are heading into COP26, where this kind of issue will be on the table.

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17:04 Jim Shannon (DUP)

The latest evidence shows that controlled burns can provide protection against devastating wildfires while sequestering carbon, offering a nature-based solution to our climate change emergency. Traditionally, grouse moorland has been managed for the benefit of our native wild grouse, but the mosaic of vegetation for the birds has revived the plover, the lapwing and the curlew.

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17:11 Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for bringing the debate today and giving Members the opportunity to discuss a critical but often overlooked element of the fight against climate change and efforts to rebalance land use.

A key issue that I want to highlight is the effect of muirburn on peatlands and peat bogs, which are critical for preserving biodiversity, minimising flood risk and fighting climate change. Peat acts as a carbon store, storing more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined. As a result, 6% of manmade CO 2 emissions come from damage done to peatlands. In Scotland’s case, peatland covers more than a fifth of the entire country and stores about 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon, so it is crucial for the environment that steps are taken to protect it from deterioration. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government have acknowledged that and the important part that peat plays in the ambition to become a carbon-neutral country. They have put 25,000 acres on the road to recovery, with a pledge of £250 million for peatland restoration over the next decade.

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17:15 Stephanie Peacock (Labour)

Labour is calling on the Government to restate and act on their commitment to the legislation that they promised over a year ago. It is imperative that rhetoric on climate leadership is more than simply rhetoric, and they have an opportunity to put words into action. As part of our plan for nature, Labour is calling on the Government to help restore degraded peatlands to their natural state by ending the harvesting of peat and the burning of moors or blanket bog. A comprehensive independent review into habitats and fire risk caused by grouse shooting management arrangements, with a view to new regulatory controls, has been a long time coming.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) mentioned that peatland also plays an important role in water and flood management, and I commend her for all the work that she has done on this issue. Our peatlands form a significant and vital part of the UK’s carbon storage. They contain more carbon than the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined but, through the burning of peat bogs, we are releasing huge amounts of CO 2 into the atmosphere each year—the equivalent of driving over 140,000 cars a year. In January, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that peat burning should be banned by the end of 2020 as a “low-cost, low-regret” action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We are facing a great challenge ahead of us. We need immediate and decisive action to ensure not only that we meet our international obligations, but that we are world leaders in the efforts to tackle the climate emergency. Research by the University of Leeds has found that the burning of grouse moors not only releases climate-altering gases, but degrades peatland habitat, reduces biodiversity and increases flood risk. The Government have implicitly acknowledged the damage that burning is causing by including the restoration of peat and moors in the flood and coastal erosion risk management policy statement, and rightly so. Peatland prevents flooding downstream. It absorbs and holds back large amounts of water when there is heavy rainfall, and it releases water during times of drought.

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17:19 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)

Thank you for calling me, Mr Pritchard; it is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I am not sure whether I should say this, but what a fiery, hot topic this is. There are obviously diverse views on all sides, and the debate has been extremely well attended. We have heard some excellent and informed speeches, and I particularly thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for securing the debate, for her interest in this subject, and for the passion with which she speaks about subjects such as climate change.

Restoring and better managing our peatlands is absolutely essential for the nature recovery, which I have just referred to, and tackling climate change. The Committee on Climate Change has highlighted the particular need to restore blanket bogs, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam said. That is why we are committed to publishing an English peat strategy that sets out our direction for restoration, protection and sustainable management. We will be providing millions of pounds to kick-start that restoration from another fund of money helping towards biodiversity, the £640 million nature for climate fund.

Blanket bogs make up around a third of England’s peatland area. They have formed over thousands of years and have created a massive store of carbon. Currently, only 18% of our protected blanket bog habitat is in good condition. That is a legacy of many things. Members might take issue with me, but it is because of a combination of draining, overgrazing, burning and gradual degradation. While upland degraded peats are responsible for only around 5% of greenhouse gas emissions from England’s peatlands, it is important that we restore and sustainably manage these areas for the other multiple benefits that they provide, as well as the carbon issue.

Thank you so much for raising that. I do talk to all those people. I have been out with gamekeepers to look at the land. We have to get this right; we do not want to make enemies. We have to work together. There have got to be ways. We will release our peat strategy soon and there will be some detailed information in there. It will cover all things relating to peat and these other sections, as well as the land managers. The Government have made a commitment to do something about this. We do have to do something about climate change, do we not, Chair?

For the purposes of the record the Chair is neutral in all debates, but without telling anybody, of course we need to tackle climate change. I have probably broken the rules.

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