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Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.
PETITION
Planning (Castle Point)
6.42 pm
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): Castle Point is overdeveloped for its current infrastructure, yet the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is forcing 4,000 more houses on my small community, which is against the community's strongly expressed wishes, without any additional infrastructure support whatsoever.
The petition relates to additional flats opposite Castle View school on Canvey island. The application to build those flats should be rejected for real and substantial planning reasons, including overdevelopment, road safety and other traffic considerations, and public health and safety. I am most obliged to those of my constituents who have signed this petition, because by doing so they show how much they care about defending their community.
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of Mr. and Mrs. Archer and others of like disposition sheweth
That there is considerable public concern about an application to build residential flats opposite Castle View School, Canvey Island No. CPT/664/04/FUL.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House shall urge Castle Point Borough Council to decide this matter by a decision of the Planning Committee rather than under delegated powers and reject the application.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
To lie upon the Table.
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Bats (Churches)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]
6.44 pm
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) (Con): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise on the Adjournment of the House a very difficult issue affecting the conservation of our wildlife and of our built heritage, which appear to be in conflict in several locations across Britain. I am deeply grateful for the Minister's time. I hope that he feels that I am approaching the subject in a measured way and that it is worthy of an airing in this place and, ultimately, of more effective action.
Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), have churches in their constituencies that have become the summer habitat of bats, which are wreaking havoc on their fabric. One such church in my constituency is St. Hilda's church in Ellerburn, near Thornton-le-Dale, which is a very beautiful part of Britain. It is a Saxon church that is more than 1,000 years old. As things stand, it is proving impossible for the bats and the congregation to live side by side. The purpose of this debate is to try to find a solution to a seemingly intractable problem.
I am grateful to the Bat Conservation Trust for a detailed resumé of the occurrence of bats in the United Kingdom and the law relating to their preservation. I am told that there are no fewer than 16 species of bat in the UK, all of which are protected by law because their numbers have declined—although not necessarily in each case to a level where all species can be said to be endangered.
The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which was later amended by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, made it an offence to kill, injure or disturb bats and to damage, disturb or obstruct access to a bat roost. I understand that similar protection is afforded by the European Union habitats directive on the conservation of natural habitats and wild flora and fauna.
St. Hilda's church in Ellerburn is one of Yorkshire's most significant sites for bats. It is home to four of the county's eight bat species—the whiskered bat, the pipistrelle, the brown long-eared bat and the Natterer's bat. Whiskered and pipistrelle bats roost in the roof space—not in the belfry as is commonly thought—but Natterer's and brown long-eared bats roost in the church itself. Clearly, problems emerge if the church is small, as is St. Hilda's.
The Bat Conservation Trust claims that the colony of Natterer's bats at St. Hilda's is particularly important as it is one of only 25 in the whole county of North Yorkshire. I have no information about how many other colonies there are across the country, but I gain the impression from my research into the number of churches complaining about Natterer's bats that there are many similar roosts and that, although English Nature claims that it is threatened, the species cannot be said to be close to extinction. If it were, my attitude might be rather different.
The Bat Conservation Trust claims that during a survey in May this year around 65 bats were found to be using St Hilda's church. Not surprisingly, because some
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of the bats prefer to roost inside the church, the church fabric is suffering significant and largely irreversible damage. I apologise, Mr. Speaker, because this is not a pleasant topic, but the sad truth has to be faced that the volume of urine and bat excreta throughout the entire church at Ellerburn is ruining all the internal fabric of the church, including the furniture and a number of artefacts. The experience at St. Hilda's appears to be in keeping with that of other churches that have suffered significant damage and disfigurement, mostly from chemical erosion, to works of art, wall paintings, brasses, pews, organ pipes, sculptures, stone floors, wooden carvings and even historic gravestones.
The continuing presence of bat droppings is a health hazard for the congregation and, unsurprisingly, attendance at St. Hilda's has declined to a handful of elderly parishioners. I am told that English Nature and the North Yorkshire Bat Group, with the support of the Archdeacon of Cleveland, who e-mailed me today, have tried to mediate between the Bat Conservation Trust and local parishioners but that it has proved impossible to find a compromise. Would that they had found one: we might have been spared being here now. The problem is that the parishioners would like to be rid of the bats inside a relatively small church. They find suggestions that they should put up with the constant deluge of bat urine and faeces every summer a trifle hard to take.
Guidelines that English Heritage and English Nature published, of which, for greater accuracy, I have a copy, do not appear to offer a long-term practical solution. They suggest the use of covers, synthetic lacquers, deflector boards, stuffed owls and sound generating devices, but none of those appears able to do the trick. The parishioners have decided that they would like to be rid of the bats, and, in truth, I do not blame them.
The alternatives of relocation and exclusion offer little comfort. Relocation simply moves the problem to another part of the church, and, in a small church, that is practically impossible. So far as exclusion is concerned, the advice to the church is that, in effect, the law denies that opportunity as it could represent the obstruction of access under the legislation. I shall revert to that later because it is one of the key points.
The joint English Nature and English Heritage leaflet is valuable in demonstrating the damage that can be done by bats in churches. I do not know whether you can see the leaflet, Mr. Speaker, but it shows some of the damage to which I referred and that occurs in counties throughout the country. It is a serious matter and, although it has an amusing aspect, I am afraid that we have reached the stage when people are rightly saying that something must be done.
In any event, all the advice from English Nature, English Heritage and other quarters that I have been able to access is directed at trying to protect the structure or fabric of the church. It offers absolutely no comfort or help to the people who use the church. As Bishop David Galliford, retired chaplain to the Queen, rightly said:
"Clearly the law is unfair. It gives bats far more rights than humans and no one can accept this when it threatens to drive people out of the church and close it."
His poor wife, Clare, fell ill with severe food poisoning after attending a service at St. Hilda's, and I am told that she was unwell for a fortnight.
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The rector of Ellerburn church, David Clark, believes that the bats accessing the church through a gap in the door cause the problem. The congregation believes that the gap could be sealed, as one would seal any door in one's home through which draughts, insects or small creatures may gain access. However, I am told that the advice to the church is that sealing the church door with, for example, rubber would require a licence from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and approval from the European Union. The church has been discouraged from following that road on the basis that it would be wasting its time. If nothing else, I want the Minister to confirm today the exact position on that. I hope that something can be done along those lines.
It is said that the bats have been at Ellerburn church every summer for the past 10 years. We are considering those inside the church, not those in the roof. If nothing is done to redirect them to another site, the inevitable consequence is that the church will be lost to its congregation and simply become a roosting site for bats. Another parishioner, John Grimble, who is aged 79 and has been going to church all his life, commented:
"If we can't find a solution, we will be forced to lock up this beautiful church where folk have worshipped for over 1,000 years."
I know that we sometimes do daft things in this place, but I cannot believe that such an outcome was the intention of Parliament or the European Union when they considered the current legislation. However, unless something is done, whether through a change in the law or through guidance, the inevitable consequence will be that this church and many others will become derelict, and centuries of ecclesiastical architectural history will be lost.
I suppose that one of the reasons that churches are so attractive to bats is that they are uninhabited for long periods of time or, dare I say it, inhabited by just a few, as the House is now. Their ceilings and timbered roofs are particularly appealing. When I was preparing my remarks, it crossed my mind to wonder what would happen if these Natterer's bats, or similar bats, got into the Palace of Westminster. Unlike another recent invasion, it might take rather longer to spot them. Westminster Hall is nearly as old as St. Hilda's church in Ellerburn, and there are many other parts of the Palace that might be similarly attractive. I appreciate, of course, that we are not surrounded by the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, and we do not have the caves in the North York Moors national park where the bats over-winter just up the road. But the point that I am trying to emphasise is that I am quite sure the Accommodation and Works Committee here would not take kindly to having to deal with the problems of mess faced every Sunday by the parishioners at St Hilda's and scores of other churches up and down Britain.
So, enough about the problem: what needs to be done? In the first instance, I would like the Minister to consider issuing fresh guidance to churches about exactly what can be done about this problem. Church authorities need to know what, if anything, they can do under the existing law to take the action needed during the winter months to prevent the bats from regaining access in the spring when they return from their winter
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roosting sites. If this were possible under licence from DEFRA, will the Minister make it clear in what circumstances such consent would be granted and what role, if any, the EU would have in such circumstances?
It would also help if clarification could be given on what action is permissible to relocate the bats not to another part of the church but to an alternative site. If, as I suspect, the answer to all those questions is that nothing practical is realistically possible, I would ask the Minister to consider at the very least tabling an amendment to the law to allow churches the opportunity of blocking access points without fear of prosecution under the existing legislation. Otherwise, as I have already said, these churches are going to be abandoned and simply left as roosting sites for bats.
That would be an unacceptable outcome for any church. It is even more unacceptable if the church is listed or generally regarded as uniquely historic. There is no doubt whatever that St Hilda's church in Ellerburn—a beautiful Saxon church, few of which remain in Britain—fits the latter description. It seems ludicrous that while the present law, with the permission of English Nature, allows bats, common or rare, to be removed from the interior of someone's dwelling, they cannot be removed from the house of God.
Sadly, there is a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the conservation of one species of wildlife and the conservation of our built heritage, not to mention the interests of churchgoers. While I agree that every effort should be made to enable the two to live side by side whenever possible, I would urge the Minister to accept that there may be circumstances where the differences are, sadly, irreconcilable. At present, the law appears to come down on the side of the bats. I believe that it is time the balance was redressed just a little towards the interests of parishioners and the fabric of their church.
To conclude, I would like the Minister to consider allowing an exemption for our most historic churches. It is not right that we just stand aside and, in the interests of bat conservation, allow historic churches to be destroyed.
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