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10.21 am
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on her initiative in introducing today's excellent debate. I very much support the call from my hon. Friend and others for new countryside and wildlife law. I do so as a committed environmentalist and as a Londoner.
Despite the common perception here and elsewhere, London's wildlife encompasses rather more than the pigeons in Trafalgar square. Londoners have always very much supported and valued the city's elegant parks and municipal flowerbeds. There is increasing recognition of the precious diversity of our wildlife. We have urban habitats, railway corridors, private gardens and wasteland, all of which support valued wildlife.
The London Wildlife Trust has a membership of 7,000 and I am proud to be one of them. We are engaged in a great fight to try to preserve our precious wildlife against the on-going and unrelenting pressures of development. It is not that the development is unwelcome--indeed, in my run-down and deprived constituency rehabilitation and regeneration are critical to our economic life and employment opportunities. Although I support building homes on brown-field sites and protecting the green belt, the pressure on those sites means that Londoners may be deprived of their wildlife and that is clearly not acceptable.
Our quality of life in London depends on getting the balance right between appropriate development and respect for ecology and the recognition that biodiversity matters. A surprisingly wide range of animals and plants are found in London. Many of them are thriving, but others are only just surviving. We cannot take that natural wealth for granted. In London, as elsewhere, there has been a haemorrhage of wildlife sites over the past 30 years. Unless we have stronger wildlife laws, the process will continue inexorably.
My constituency is no exception. Although its border is just five miles from here and it is a dense urban area, just 200 years ago it was an area of market gardens.
A nationally rare species of plant known as the Deptford Pink dates from that time. Another rare species is found in Deptford creek. The black redstart, which is rarer than the golden eagle, first bred in London in the 1920s. Seven per cent. of the national population and 40 per cent. of the London population of black redstarts are found in Deptford creek. However, Deptford creek is now a silted up part of the river. It is bordered on all sides by dereliction and it is prime land for redevelopment. The creekside project in my constituency, led by Jill Goddard, has undertaken a mapping exercise to ensure that we understand what wildlife is there so that the development that we welcome will preserve wildlife habitats. Amazingly, the Environment Agency has constructed new flood defences from old wood and in a way that protects the wildlife habitats.
Given all that, why do we need new laws? The black redstart is listed in schedule 1 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Its nests are protected; its eggs are protected; breeding adults are protected and so are the young birds. However, for the rest of the year it is possible to destroy its habitat and, as we all know, if the habitat is destroyed, the species cannot breed.
There are many similar cases in other parts of London. Water voles are under threat in many areas such as the Erith, Crayford and Rainham marshes that were mentioned by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake).
Caroline Flint (Don Valley):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on securing today's debate. I should like to concentrate on peat lands and the Thorne and Hatfield moors that are in my constituency and the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) and for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey). They form one of the United Kingdom's rarest and most vulnerable habitats and are all that is left of a vast wetland that once existed around the Humber estuary 4000 years ago. Over time, layer upon layer of mosses accumulated and became compacted in the waterlogged conditions. Plants and insects colonised the surfaces and rare or even extinct bog plant, dragonflies, butterflies and beetles were commonplace many years ago.
Today, 94 per cent. of the United Kingdom's peat bogs have been lost and fewer than 6,000 hectares remain in near natural condition. Thorne and Hatfield moors are part of this and today they represent England's largest raised peat bog site. They support more than 3,000 insects, 800 flowering plants and hundreds of liver-worts, lichens and fungi. They are vital for breeding, migrating and wintering birds including golden plovers, hen harriers and nightjars. People have worked on the moors for 500 years and the incredible archaeological record contained within the peat was, until relatively recently, undisturbed.
Such a site should be managed for its incredible wealth of bog vegetation and associated wildlife, yet, instead, I am sad to say, it is being threatened by commercial peat extraction. Instead of being treasured, protected and nurtured, it is being plundered for its peat.
Peat extraction threatens many important sites in the United Kingdom. Of the 14 extraction sites in England, nine have SSSI status. Thorne and Hatfield, along with Wedholme Flow--all three proposed EU Natura 2000 designations--account for more than 50 per cent. of UK production. The fact that extraction of peat is permitted on SSSls highlights the major weaknesses in protecting those sites.
The problem dates back to 1951 when planning permission was granted for peat extraction. Then, as for hundreds of years previously, hand-digging was the norm, but industrialisation of the process has ravaged the land. In the 1960s, the process was mechanised and now, since milling methods were introduced in the 1980s--with little complaint from the Opposition--extraction involves the almost complete removal of surface vegetation along with the top layer of peat. That has occurred on large tracts of Thorne and Hatfield and the huge areas of stripped, bare earth, where once were beautiful moors, are a very sad sight indeed.
The vast majority of peat that has taken many, many years to be created, has been lost in only the past decade. That has heightened the sense of the urgent need for Government action. Each day that extraction continues and the land is stripped and drained, with the removal of tons of peat, nature's foothold on the Thorne and Hatfield moors weakens.
Locally, there is immense concern that such an important site is being lost. I get more letters from constituents on that issue than on any other. When English Nature proposed removing the SSSI status there was an amazing campaign, which we won. I was pleased to attend a meeting in Thorne where more than 400 local residents came along to make their feelings known. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Doncaster, North and for Brigg and Goole have had the same experience.
Environmental matters are often said to be the concern of the middle classes--eco-warriors shut away in their leafy suburbs--but the letters that I get are from people in the former coal mining villages that surround the moors, who are witnessing the disappearance of a national treasure. They understand only too well that the extractors' economic arguments do not add up.
Extraction is not and never was a long-term employment option; it will result only in the permanent destruction of the moors. We believe that there is an alternative: a sustainable tourist industry on the site, protecting it while providing enjoyment and long-term economic stability for the local population.
There is such concern that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning has established a peat working group that includes representatives of the industry and of the environmental lobby. Labour Members are keen that, wherever possible, business interests should be married with the public interest, but my worry is that, on this issue, there is no common ground that can be established between the extractors, who see money in peat, and the public, who want the moors to be preserved.
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