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10.32 am
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) has done the House a service in securing this debate.
I want to express my support for the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), who has waged an unrelenting campaign to secure the right to roam. I agree that it is essential to ensure that access to open countryside is built into comprehensive wildlife and countryside legislation.
Such legislation also provides the opportunity to settle once and for all the contentious issue of fox hunting. No other issue has aroused such interest, especially in young voters. Our manifesto made it clear that our position was not to legislate against fox hunting but to provide the opportunity for a free vote, although there is huge public support for a ban.
I endorse the work of the Government and the previous Government in developing biodiversity policies. It is important to understand that wildlife protection is not only about furry creatures but goes far deeper: it is about environmental survival. The variety of species that survive is an indicator of the health of the planet on which we all depend. This is not an add-on extra: it goes to the heart of our survival on this planet.
I commend the previous Government's biodiversity action plan, and especially the recently published volume 4, on invertebrates. For those with any interest in creepy crawlies, it is a treasure house of fascinating information. I look forward to volume 5.
Whatever legislation we pass, the protection will be limited if we do not tackle the root causes of environmental degradation. In most cases, those are the deregulated economic processes, both industrial and agricultural, that have disfigured our society and environment for so many years. We must set this debate in the wider context of the reform of the common agricultural policy and the implementation of the Kyoto directive on climate change.
Whatever an individual Government may do, this is a matter on which the limitations of the nation stateare most evident. We must work internationally.
The European Union has an important role and it is crucial that we play a full part in the various international treaties and protocols that have been and will continue to be established to secure biodiversity.
Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley):
I welcome this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) has given everyone an opportunity to express their views and feelings, which is very important. There is nothing more important to people in this country than looking after wildlife, habitats and countryside. There is more pressure as more people want to enjoy the countryside, and we must make it more accessible.
All our mailbags are filled with letters from people who want an end to fox hunting. Sooner or later, it must be tackled. The majority of the House and of the country support a ban. It is time to legislate. Let me describe what happens in conservation areas that are supposed to protect wildlife. In Rivington, a beautiful part of my constituency--I am lucky to have a mainly rural constituency where we can enjoy the pleasure of the countryside--the hunt comes along, and the fox hunters, having had no luck that day, dig out a fox. They do not kill it instantly. Oh, no. We cannot have fun without cruelty. They release the fox and chase it and chase it before killing it. Is that how we should treat our wildlife? I say not. The time has to come to end such cruelty.
In the southern lakeland, gamekeepers use traps on badgers. In their view, killing them instantly is obviously wrong. They believe in cruel traps and it takes a long time for the badgers to die. We have found half-skeletons of badgers. What a terrible end for such a beautiful animal. Badgers are protected, but such practices continue.
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford):
I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on securing the debate. She will be either cheered up or worried when I say that I agree with about 90 per cent. of what she said. The Minister and I are getting used to each other: this is the second Wednesday
It is clear that we broadly agree on many of the aims of wildlife and habitat protection, although I am slightly worried by the means that many Labour Members have discussed. There is an inclination to reach for the stick rather than the carrot, and I hope that the Minister will not go too far down that route.
I shall deal with the various details in a moment, but the question at the heart of the debate is not whether there should legislation, but why there has been none so far. Like the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), I listened to the "Today" programme this morning with great interest. However, when the hon. Gentleman said that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with its 3 million members, had written off the Prime Minister as uninterested in the environment, he added a plea that the Minister for the Environment should retain his job. If I were that Minister, I am not sure that I would consider that the most helpful intervention in the debate this morning.
The "Today" programme item was instructive for several reasons. I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mrs. Brinton) repeat what she said on the programme--that the reason for introducing wildlife legislation was that the Labour party was worried about losing rural seats. That is a terrible reason for wanting to protect the environment, and anyway it will not wash, because of other factors that I shall describe later. However, I am happy to assure the hon. Lady that, even if she is right about the reason for introducing legislation to protect wildlife and endangered habitats, Conservative Members would still support it, because we consider the underlying issue so important.
The contribution to the programme this morning by the Minister for the Environment was equally instructive, although I am not sure that I am as optimistic about what the right hon. Gentleman said as the hon. Member for Pendle. To me, taking to the air waves to fight for a place in the legislative programme is a sign of desperation, not of confidence. I hope that I am wrong, that the matter is all stitched up and that the Minister was simply making a lap of honour in public. However, I suspect that I am not wrong.
The Minister for the Environment also said that the Prime Minister, and the whole Government, were very much in favour of the legislation. Perhaps that is so, but we are coming up to what may be the final full legislative session before an election in which the Government can guarantee taking a Bill through the House, and we are still unsure about whether such a Bill will be introduced, despite the manifesto commitment to do so. St. Augustine famously said:
What specific measures should any new legislation contain? The first point to be made is that it would be much more sensible if the Bill were confined to updating
the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. We would support a Bill with that general aim. Various hon. Members have spoken this morning about how a Bill should be extended to include much more controversial matters such as access and the right to roam, and some have even proposed that it be used to bring back anti-hunting measures. Anyone observing the debate will have noticed that the latter possibility, more than any other, set the juices flowing among Labour Members. It was instructive to see so strong a desire to oppress minority interests.
We all agree that there is an urgent need to promote wildlife and habitat protection, and Conservative Members would support and seek to improve any legislation to that end. However, including in a Bill other, much more controversial measures would impede its passage through the House, and might even prevent it altogether. That would be a tragedy for our wildlife and countryside. I hope that the Minister will resist the siren calls from Labour Back-Bench Members.
Any legislation would cover those areas already designated as sites of special scientific interest, but it could go further. The RSPB has proposed some helpful principles for the contents of a wildlife Bill, and I hope that the Minister will consider them seriously. The RSPB proposes that such a Bill should include a statutory purpose for individual SSSIs and the whole SSSI network. It should also contain provisions to give a legal underpinning to the bio-diversity action plan, to improve the powers of the statutory nature conservation agencies, and to impose a duty on all public bodies to protect and manage SSSIs.
However, we need a comprehensive strategy for all green land, whether it be part of an SSSI or not. Friends of the Earth rightly wants greater protection for species that are outside SSSIs, and a related problem involves land adjoining an existing site. If that land is developed unsympathetically, the knock-on effects can be very damaging to the neighbouring SSSI. We hope that any legislation to be introduced will be wider and more comprehensive. It should include incentives for better management and adopt a partnership approach.
I said that I was worried that Labour Members shared a tendency to reach for the stick rather than the carrot. In the long term, without the partnership approach advocated by responsible bodies such as the Country Landowners Association and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the effects on the countryside will be less beneficial. We need to engender support for the measures in a new Bill among people who live and work in the countryside. A permanent state of war between visiting regulators and people who live in an area every day would not be helpful.
I am sure that the hon. Member for South Swindon would agree that merely establishing a strict police force is not enough and will not work. Strict policing is necessary, but there must be a mixture of regulation and incentives.
"Oh Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."
The updated, modernised, new Labour version would be:
"Oh Lord, make me green--but only with the agreement of colleagues across Whitehall."
That will not do. If the Minister cannot give a positive commitment to early legislation, fears will arise that delay is turning into inaction, and that another broken promise is on the way.
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