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Mr. Alan Clark (Kensington and Chelsea): I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and to the House for arriving a couple of minutes late for the debate.
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to say that protection must be extended to SSSIs, and support for early-day motion 11 testifies to the House's view. However, there must be penalties and prosecutions if protection is violated. The person or company who violates sites must be susceptible to truly penal redress.
Often, the stakes are so high and the speculative possibilities of extraction so immense that people will ride roughshod over protection. They will accept a prosecution, paying perhaps some nominal fine, but perhaps not even that. Unless we put in place a penalty system that truly deters people from acting in that way, legislation, however well intentioned, will probably not have much effect.
Mr. Breed:
I agree entirely with the right hon. Gentleman. Under the Competition Act 1998, the Government decided that penalties on companies should be a percentage of their turnover. Those are real penalties. The Government should indicate clearly what the penalties will be for violating SSSIs, and we should also insist that sites are reinstated as far as possible so that there is no incentive for people to challenge the system, pay a relatively modest fine, then secure considerable commercial advantage from exploitation of a site. Penalties must relate to the commercial profitability that may be generated from damaging a site.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
I am prompted by the interventions of the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea
Mr. Breed:
I agree. We need some modest change to the planning process as well as a Bill to protect wildlife. There is no doubt that many concerns and individuals exploit loopholes in the planning system and in legislation to carry out harmful development. Often, local authorities are forced to back down in the face of the costly challenges that companies and individuals can make. We should support local authorities that fight such actions on appeal to maintain the regulation and control that most people want.
Finally, I call on the Minister for two specific assurances. First, I would like an assurance that the Government will widen the debate and consider key threats to SSSIs. That is not included in the Green Paper, which was a discussion document. Indeed, it has generated much discussion, and I hope that some of the approximately 600 contributions to that debate will have raised many wider issues and will taken into account. Secondly, will the Minister assure me that a wildlife protection Bill will be mentioned in the Queen's Speech later this year?
Mrs. Helen Brinton (Peterborough):
I am grateful for the chance to speak in this important debate, and I congratulate, as I am sure we all do, the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed), on securing it. Having heard his contribution, and some of the interventions in his speech, I suspect that many of us on both sides of the House will make the same points. Not only do we want legislation, we want legislation with teeth. I add my voice to those calling for new legislation to protect and enhance wildlife.
We have heard much about damage and destruction of our wildlife sites. Many hon. Members are already familiar with the facts and figures, but there may be one or two who are not. More than 300 sites of special scientific interest--the best wildlife sites in the United Kingdom--are damaged every year. Between 1991 and 1996 one in five SSSIs in England and Wales were damaged, and 45 per cent. of English SSSIs are in an "unfavourable condition"--a description that may rather understate the case.
Since 1945, we have lost 30 to 50 per cent. of our ancient woodland and 80 per cent. of our chalk and limestone grasslands. Those are not small percentages. I was shocked when my research revealed that 95 per cent. of our wildflower meadows have also been lost.
Many of the problems affecting wildlife habitats, especially SSSIs, are not the result of direct destruction by development, as happened in the past; they are the result of neglect, which is partly due to inadequate funding. The problems are also caused by continued damage by agricultural practices and water abstraction. Drying of wetlands and low river flows are affecting the quality and sometimes the very existence of some of our major important wildlife sites.
The problems caused by water abstraction will increase as the demand for water rises with the projected growth in the number of households. My constituency of Peterborough is in an area in which rivers and wetlands are an important feature, with many designated sites, including the Nene and Ouse washes. Yet we have already lost much of our precious fenland. I note with great concern that the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire now have less wildlife per hectare than anywhere else in the country. Those are shocking statistics.
I am glad to say that in this Session the Government are engaged in several excellent on-going consultations, including those on water abstraction licensing and planning regulations, which should, as all of us on both sides of the House would expect, result in measures that will do much to improve the situation.
Many aspects of the Government's consultation paper on SSSIs have been strongly supported by those who are professionally concerned with conservation. However, I am sure that I am not alone in believing that there are still gaps that require urgent remedy, and that we need a whole package of new measures.
Those measures would include increased powers for wildlife agencies to encourage positive management and to stop damaging operations on all SSSIs, and powers of entry to wildlife areas for agency staff. As we have already heard, there must be increased penalties--penalties with teeth--for offences. There must also be powers to secure the restoration of damaged sites, and all public bodies must have a duty to protect and manage SSSIs. Finally, there must be greater protection for species on land water and in the sea, and protection of habitats outside SSSIs.
Mr. Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington):
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) on securing a debate on such a crucial issue. My hon. Friend has illustrated the importance of protecting wildlife in his Cornwall constituency. I shall concentrate on the importance of such measures nationally.
The protection of wildlife and sites of special scientific interest is not a foreign issue to the House, as is reflected in the massive support for early day motion 11, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) and supported by Members from all parts of the House, representing both rural and urban constituencies. I understand that the National Farmers Union and the Country Landowners Association also believe that some reforms are needed.
The report "50 Years of Extinction", published yesterday by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, lists many SSSIs that have been damaged since 1949. One of the listed sites nearest to my constituency is Rainham marsh, where a road has been put through part of the site and the rest is threatened by warehouse development. I am afraid that it seems that the local council favours development on that site.
That is one of the better known examples of SSSIs under threat, but there are thousands of other threatened sites throughout the country, many of which are not SSSIs but are just as worthy of protection, which I am afraid is not now afforded. For instance, in my constituency there are Ruffet wood and Big wood, which are local nature reserves, and an area of the Roundshaw downs.
As we have already heard, and will no doubt continue to hear, this is a one-sided debate. There is broad agreement that action needs to be taken--an argument accepted by the official Opposition, by Labour Members and by the Liberal Democrats. That argument has also been enthusiastically endorsed by the Minister for the Environment. Only last month, he told a lobby that the Government would go for legislation at the earliest opportunity. In fact, although I do not have a transcript of what he said, I think that he was even firmer than that, and said that he was staking his credibility on securing legislation in this Parliament.
The issue is therefore not whether but how we shall act--or more crucially, when we shall act. I was hoping that the position would be clarified in a response to a parliamentary question that I received yesterday. Sadly, the familiar mantra about the Government seeking to act, but only as and when time allows, was repeated. While the argument may have been won in the House, as early-day motion 11 confirms, it has not yet been won in Whitehall. I understand that the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions has four possibilities for the Queen's Speech, including wildlife legislation. It is perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister who needs to be persuaded of the urgency of the task. Yesterday, he was due to receive 250,000 wildlife pledges from supporters of 22 environmental organisations, but pulled out at the last moment. He was in the House for the statement on Kosovo, but another Minister should have been there to receive them.
The Deputy Prime Minister should not doubt that the task is urgent, not least because our international credibility depends on it. My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall touched on that. I and other members of the Environment Sub-Committee are flying this evening to Brazil and Venezuela to discuss international environmental agreements, but we will also talk about local environmental issues. We will not be in a position to complain about how developing countries treat their environments when a relatively prosperous country such as Britain treats its environment so carelessly and fails to deliver on its stated 1992 commitment in Rio to
maintain biodiversity. As hon. Members have noted, an SSSI is destroyed or damaged every day. As there are relatively few such sites--6,500--many of which are small, it is obvious that this urgent problem needs to be tackled as soon as possible.
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