House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Nov 1999 (pt 8)

Ms Hughes: The record will show that the hon. Gentleman said that, if the price was too high, he would not want the south-east to be one of the top 10 European regions. That is a serious matter for the Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Howarth: The Minister has accused Opposition Members, and I include the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), of a knee-jerk reaction. That is not so. The Serplan proposals have been debated for years. There has been careful consideration of all the factors that she has mentioned and now Professor Crow has come along and thrown the whole thing into turmoil--the whole south-east is in turmoil as a result of that man. It is incumbent on the Government to say that they will swiftly consider--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That intervention is far too long.

Ms Hughes: I will deal with that matter when I come to it in my speech.

We need to recognise that people in the south-east will also suffer if we do not provide housing. House prices will rise and poorer members of communities will be squeezed out. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) alluded to the social problems that can occur.

At the same time, we are conscious of the need to safeguard and enhance the environment of the region. Environmental quality is an important attractor in its own right. There is superb countryside. We want to retain that landscape and biodiversity.

Previous Labour Governments developed the planning system precisely to enable the countryside to be protected and to get away from sprawl. Let us contrast that planned approach with the years of Tory failure. I will not go into that in detail again. We rehearsed it last night and Opposition Members' interventions have taken my time, but they know the record and it stands for anyone to see.

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The problem is that, having built inertia to sprawl and car dependence, the Opposition and their local authority members do not like the consequences. The tragedy is that they are trying, Canute like, to stop the drift from towns, hoping that attempting to stop housing developments in the face of housing needs will solve their problem. The Government have set about revising policy to allow more sustainable development--sustainable in environmental, economic and social terms.

We are revising planning guidance. We have introduced the new deal for transport, the urban task force--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) approached the Chair and stated that I had been unfair to him because I had shortened his intervention. It is my duty to ensure that interventions are short. The occupant of the Chair is even handed with every hon. Member, no matter which part of the House in which they sit. I put that on the record. I certainly do not wish hon. Members to come to the Chair and to tell me what my duties are and what my job should be.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will not take up the time of the Minister because I know that she has to respond to the debate. I will refer the matter to you privately afterwards, if I may. I apologise if I have--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. If the hon. Gentleman has any worries or concerns about my conduct in the Chair, he should take the matter up with Madam Speaker.

Ms Hughes: It is unfortunate, given the manner in which I was prepared to approach the debate, that the antics of Opposition Members have severely curtailed my time and that I cannot make some of the reasoned points that I would have wished to make.

Let us get a couple of things straight about the panel report. The Government did not produce the Serplan report, as the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page) contended. The Government did not produce the independent panel report. That report was prepared after an exhaustive examination in public. It sets out its case strongly.

Mr. Page: Will the Minister give way?

Ms Hughes: No, I will not give way to anyone else.

The panel heard the views of different interested parties in the region. It listened carefully to those views and Opposition Members know its conclusions; I will not rehearse them. The Government will respond to Serplan and the panel report when we are ready, which will be as soon as possible. We do not want the matter to drag on and we consider seriously the views of Opposition and Labour Members.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We now come to the next debate.

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Sites of Special Scientific Interest

11 am

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): I am privileged to be able to initiate this important Adjournment debate. First, however, I should like to welcome my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to the Treasury Bench.

In this Session, we have had more debates, early-day motions and parliamentary questions on the subject of wildlife protection than I would even dare to mention now. Nevertheless, I make no apology for returning to the subject again, after making a speech on it in another Adjournment debate, in July, right before the summer recess.

There is enormous interest in the subject because action on it is so urgently needed. Since July, when we last debated the destruction of our wildlife sites, more than 100 sites of special scientific interest have been destroyed. Government statistics show that more than 2,000 sites have been destroyed in the past six years. When a habitat goes, the wildlife living in it declines also.

With such rapid destruction and degradation of our precious wildlife resource, there has been steady growth in public and political support for tough and comprehensive new laws. In August, in a poll conducted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, 65 per cent. of people said that they would like the Government to change the law, to give greater legal protection to wildlife. Additionally, 35 environmental and conservation groups--representing more than 6 million people--are now united in their desire for urgent environmental legislation. Furthermore, an unprecedented 351 hon. Members, from across the political spectrum, have signed early-day motion 11, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), showing their support for the passage of such laws.

With such clamour for wildlife protection, the Government's document, "SSSIs: the Government's framework for action", which was published in August, was most welcome. I am pleased that it was a Labour Government who, within a short time of being elected, consulted on the issue and produced such a document. Finally, we have a Government who have acknowledged that something needs to be done on the issue.

With such support, and the Government's document, there is now a very real chance of seeing wildlife legislation in this month's Queen's Speech. Many hon. Members, and millions of ordinary members of the public, will be watching and waiting for that to happen. However, they will be watching not only for legislation, but for tough comprehensive legislation.

Let us be clear about it: the opportunity to legislate on wildlife does not come along every day, and we have an opportunity to get it right. If we do not get the legislation right on this occasion, by the time we get another chance to try, in perhaps five or 10 years, we shall have lost many, if not all, of the sites that we are seeking to protect. If the legislation is not comprehensive, sites such as Thorne and Hatfield moors in my constituency will--to use rather unparliamentary language--have had it.

I welcome the framework document, but it is neither sufficiently tough nor sufficiently comprehensive. It contains, for example, no mention of measures to protect

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species outside SSSIs or at sea. It does not contain a legal presumption against development affecting SSSIs; nor does it mention an issue that is at the forefront of my constituents' minds--lowland raised peat bogs being cut up by an American multinational, bagged up and sold cheaply to gardeners to sprinkle in their pots. The word peat is not mentioned once in the document.

As I told the House in July, Thorne and Hatfield moors are part of the United Kingdom's remaining 6 per cent. of peat bogs--94 per cent. of which have been lost. Thorne and Hatfield moors are one of the United Kingdom's most vulnerable habitats. The moors comprise England's largest raised peat bog, and are home to 3,000 insects and 800 flowering plants. They are also vital to birds. I have a postcard from Helen Kirk--from the Thorne and Hatfield Moors Conservation Forum--showing a European nightjar, which is a summer visitor to Britain. The moors are internationally important to the survival of that species.

Such a location should be guarded as a national treasure, yet it is being plundered for its peat by a multinational organisation. Thorne and Hatfield moors are SSSIs. However, their old mineral permissions--granted in 1951, when much peat extraction was still done by hand--could not have anticipated the wholesale destruction that industrialised peat extraction would wreak.

Companies such as Fisons and Levington's, and now Scotts, have turned large parts of Hatfield moors into nothing more than a lunar landscape. The site is unrecognisable as an area that was once, 4,000 years ago, an integral part of a vast wetland stretching from the Humber estuary. Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment described it as an intolerable situation. Yet, sadly, the situation would remain the same under any legislation based on the framework for action, as that document gives no indication of how the Government propose to move forward on the issue. Friends of the Earth estimates that there are still mineral permissions on more than 400 sites. We cannot ignore the issue.