Moorland Burning

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of moorland burning.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the important issue of moorland burning. I hope no one in this House would dispute that we are in a climate and nature emergency. That means we have not only a moral imperative to ban this destructive practice, but environmental, ecological and existential imperatives to protect and restore our precious peatlands.

The UK peatlands contain an estimated 3,200 million tonnes of carbon, more than the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. There is no way that the Government can tackle the climate crisis without ensuring that our peatlands continue to store that colossal quantity of carbon. It would be a catastrophe if it were released and, yet that is exactly what is happening.

While upland peatland should be a net carbon sink, continued mismanagement means that the UK’s peatlands are a net source of emissions. When they could and should be being used for carbon sequestration to safely store carbon, our peat bogs are instead releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reports that that is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide released by 140,000 cars a year. The cause is moorland burning.

Between the 1940s and the present, there has been a sevenfold increase in burning on peatland in England alone. In Great Britain, between 2001 and 2011, burning increased at a rate of 11% per year. The more we allow that to continue, the greater the acceleration in the climate crisis we will see before our eyes. We will also see impacts on our environment.

Britain’s blanket bogs make up 10% to 15% of the world’s entire resource. Burning peat bogs dries out peat soil and lowers the water table, changing the flora and fauna to advantage species such as grouse, and transforming these rich, biodiverse habitats into distorted ecologies suitable for only a few animals and plants. We have a duty to preserve their vast biodiversity.

The dried peat soil also negatively impacts our water quality by releasing soil carbon into watercourses, which degrades their quality and increases the expense of cleaning our drinking water. That is because the burning harms the sphagnum mosses, which hold water in the peatlands. While the mosses recover, grasses and heather replace and out-compete them, which means that the water runs off down the hills, taking carbon from the peat with it and leading to polluted water. Burnt bogs are consequently less able to slow water flow, which leads to heavier flooding after rainfall.

I am sure my South Yorkshire colleagues will remember the terrible flooding our region suffered last year: 90% of the homes in the village of Fishlake near Doncaster were flooded last November, and, unfortunately, over a year on, some still have not been able to return to their homes. Funding for flood defences is a pressing issue, particularly when the south-east gets double the funding per person of Yorkshire and the Humber and more than five times that of the north-east. We need the Government to deliver fairer funding for flood defences, but we also need to move the debate away from mitigating the effects of the climate and environment emergency to tackling the causes. That means locking carbon in the ground by restoring our upland peat bogs, slowing the water flow, soaking up heavy rainfall and preventing the next flooding crisis before it occurs.

Peatlands also play a vital role in UK water security and must be protected to preserve the UK’s water supply in the coming years. Researchers at the University of Leeds estimate that 72.5% of the storage capacity of reservoirs in the UK is peatlands-fed water. That demonstrates the crucial role that peatlands play in our water security.

In January, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that peat burning should be banned by the end of 2020. The Government have routinely committed to ending the burns, but we have yet to see any legislative progress towards that. Instead, the Government have asked landowners only to sign voluntary agreements not to burn, and they simply are not working. For the sake of our environment, the Government must announce an immediate ban on this destructive practice and restore our peatlands to their natural bog habitats, so that they can deliver for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

But that is only the first step. Announcing a ban is not the same as enacting one. For example, in my constituency, the moors at Stanage and Strines are both sites of special scientific interest, which means they should be protected areas, yet both regularly see burning. Due to the lack of proper resourcing and maintenance, too many of our protected areas are protected in name only. This Government’s record on maintaining existing areas of environmental protection shows a sustained failure to protect those protected sites.

In 2010, 43% of SSSIs in England were in favourable condition; by 2020 that had dropped to 39%. The condition of SSSIs in England is actually worse in our national parks and areas of natural beauty than outside them. That is a direct consequence of under-resourcing and underfunding conservation—yet another devastating consequence of the last 10 years of austerity. The Government’s own figures show that public sector spending on biodiversity in the UK fell from £641 million to £456 million between 2012 and 2017—a drop of 29%. The RSPB argues that the Government’s approach to achieving nature targets has completely failed due to

“neglect of basic monitoring and compliance, a reliance on voluntary approaches and unwillingness to regulate, and dwindling public resources for action”—

a damning summation.

As well as committing to banning peatland burning and giving a firm date on which that will come into effect, Ministers must commit to properly resourcing conservation bodies so that they are able to monitor and clamp down on any illegal burning and ensure that peatlands are rewetted and restored. That is why I am so pleased to support Labour’s plan for a national nature service.

An expansion of spending on maintaining or restoring our peatlands is vital if we are to maintain our zero carbon commitments, but it is also a way of providing the employment stimulus we need in the wake of the pandemic; protecting and maintaining our peat bogs and our natural environment in all its diversity goes hand in hand with creating good-quality public sector jobs.

We should take inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942, whose workers planted 3 billion trees and paved the way for America’s system of national and state parks, which were also a central part of the new deal. The national nature service should be at the heart of the green new deal for workers, creating a zero carbon army. We need to manage our moorlands effectively and to lock CO₂ into the ground. At the same time, that would provide a host of secure jobs and benefit many people, including young black, Asian and minority ethnic workers, who have been hit hardest by the employment crisis. It would also help to diversify the conservation sector.

Nobody in this debate supports the deregulation of moorlands. The idea that setting fire to large swathes of our countryside is a responsible form of regulation and management is completely incredible. It releases millions of tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, making the climate emergency worse. It destroys habitats and damages the ecosystem and ecologies. As fires rage on our uplands, they increase the threat of floods from our lowland rivers.

We cannot rely on the good will of landowners to stop the burning—just ask the residents of Hebden Bridge and the Calder valley. We all saw on our TVs the damage done to those communities by last year’s flooding, and many now attribute those floods to heather burning on Walshaw moor. Instead, we need to restore and re-wet our peatlands, using them as one of the many natural solutions to the climate crisis. To do that, we must end the year-on-year cuts to spending on the environment and set out a plan for investing in nature. That means having a national nature service to create well-paid, secure, unionised jobs. We need to lock CO₂ into the ground and to protect biodiversity and our natural environment’s fragile ecologies. We also need to ensure that those who seek to burn protected peatlands face the full weight of the law.

I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to outline the timetable for bringing forward legislation. It is time to end the fires, floods and climate chaos. It is well past time we banned the burn.

May I remind colleagues that there are five minutes for the Opposition Front Benchers and 10 minutes for the Government. This debate is due to finish at 5.32 pm. I am not putting a time limit on speeches, but we have eight other speakers apart from the Front Benchers and the mover of the motion at this point. Please bear that in mind.

Two thirds of the North York Moors national park—that glorious countryside that many of us will have seen on the television programme “Heartbeat”—lie in the Scarborough and Whitby constituency, and 79% of the North Yorkshire moors and Pennine special protection areas are managed as grouse moors. It is vital—I agree with the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake)—that we preserve that peat.

The North Yorkshire moors are not, in the main, blanket bogs. They are dry heathland peat, and different ways of management need to be conducted on different types of moorland. It is also vital that we preserve these fragile habitats, and if we are to preserve them, they do need managing.

Heather moorland is rarer than rainforest, and 75% of Europe’s heather moorland is in the United Kingdom. Of the upland SSSIs, 60% are on moorland, which has, for decades, been managed in traditional ways.

I remember, as a child, crossing the North Yorkshire moors and seeing people cutting peat for fuel. Indeed, the legendary Saltersgate Inn had a fire that never went out, because, apparently, a Revenue man was buried under the fireplace and it was the only way of preventing him from being discovered. Sadly, the Saltersgate Inn is no more.

It is important that we look at all ways of managing peat, particularly in terms of arable degradation—as a farmer myself, I understand that. We should also look at the way horticultural peat is harvested and—the Republic of Ireland is phasing out its power stations—at how we do not use peat for power.

I must make the point that the North Yorkshire moors are not a natural environment. They are a fragile environment. In the middle ages, the moors were covered in trees, which were cut down for fuel and used to smelt the iron stone found under those moors. Only in the Victorian era did management systems come in that encouraged sheep farming and grouse. That involved cool burning the heather in the winter period, between 1 October and 15 April, when the fire was unlikely to get into the peat itself. That involves burning small patches of the moorland to create a patchwork of different stages of heather, some of it very tender and young. It is the tender, young heather that the sheep and grouse can feed on. The old, woody heather is no good for the grouse and is certainly no good for sheep. It is also no good, by the way, for ground-nesting birds such as the golden plover, the lapwing and the curlew.

If the hon. Lady wants to come and see what happens to moors if they are not managed in that way, she should come to Troutsdale moor just outside Scarborough, which has not been managed as a moor for about the last 30 years and has reverted to scrubland. There are none of the birds that we want to preserve on the North Yorkshire moors. If there were no sheep, who would mend the stone walls? According to her, it would be a unionised army of nature service people, but the farmers are the people who should be farming on the moorland and managing it.

Hon. Members know that I try to avoid formal time limits, so I will edge towards an informal time limit of four minutes.

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing this important debate. Before moving on with my remarks, I will be the first to take up the offer of the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) to come and visit his moorland to compare and contrast the differences required in managing that with what is perhaps required in my part of the world, and he has already touched on some of those elements.

Nearly a quarter of England’s blanket bog habitat is located in Yorkshire—I am pleased to see the region well represented in the debate—with about 50% of the country’s peatlands in the Pennines. Its wellbeing is, therefore, crucial for us in Calderdale on a number of fronts. If we manage our moorland and peat bogs responsibly, as we have already heard, they lock in water, which protects us from flooding, and carbon, which helps us to mitigate the extreme weather that presents such a challenge to us in a steep-sided valley. Kept wet, they will also protect us from the damaging wildfires that we have already discussed.

We have suffered devastating floods twice in the last five years—first, in December 2015 and again in February this year. In addition, there have been several significant wildfires in the same period, so the integrity of the moorland in the upper catchment is essential if we are to manage the different risks.

We have had an ongoing challenge with burning, largely undertaken by those involved in the grouse shooting industry to engineer grouse breeding habitats. I am pleased that in July, Calderdale Council supported a ban on burning in an attempt to restore the peatlands, alleviate the pressures on our fire service, enhance biodiversity and contribute to the package of measures that we need to have in place to mitigate flood risk.

It is frustrating, however, that although the potential for carbon storage is enormous, the Committee on Climate Change has estimated that 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted each year from upland peat in England, the majority of which is due to burning on grouse moors. I welcome its recommendation that legislation to address that should be forthcoming before the end of the year.

Many years ago, I joined the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I did so because I understood it was a charity whose purpose was to protect birds. It is not the royal society for the politicisation of birds, but is quite clear that the RSPB has long had a campaign, motivated primarily, I suspect, by its hatred of grouse shooting. I do not shoot myself, but I live in the countryside and I see how shooting shapes the countryside and preserves it. In particular, I salute the work of gamekeepers. The fact is that the evidence does not support this campaign of the RSPB.

The recent call from the RSPB to stop burning peat—a rather emotive phrase in itself—seems to deliberately confuse controlled and uncontrolled burning. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) has made clear, the press release makes six references to burning peatland and blanket bog, all in connection with management practices and consents that are actually for the controlled burning of heather, the surface vegetation, and not peat, which is the underlying soil. Controlled burning of surface vegetation is permitted only in the winter, when it is cold and wet. It is deliberately limited to small areas—the heather and grass burning code suggests a maximum of 30 metres by 600 metres, with cut margins as firebreaks surrounding them and a firefighting team of gamekeepers in attendance with fire fogging units and leaf blowers to extinguish flames quickly.

I was inspired to come along to this debate by the excellent article by Lord Botham. I always knew he was a great cricketer and I once saw him do his wonderful century, but I did not know that he was such a fine campaigner for rural issues and rural people. It is about time that people such as Ian Botham were allowed to speak up for those of us who live in the countryside.

Grouse moors are not the emissions problem. Farming and forestry produce far higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions per hectare than grouse moors. There is a risk to wildlife of not burning, as Lord Botham said in his article last week:

Is the right hon. Member aware of some the most recent research, which shows that 68% of wildfires in the higher uplands have actually been caused by so-called controlled cold fires?

I suggest to the hon. Lady that any research that comes from the RSPB or related organisations should be treated with a great deal of scepticism. I suspect that they have a political agenda. The fact is that the RSPB distorts the science on burning. The Times reported how it does so. A dozen top scientists—a dozen, I say to the hon. Lady—wrote that RSPB press releases on burning bore “only passing resemblance” to the science.

The RSPB is a charity. It has to act like a charity and not like a political organisation. It is all very well to argue, “Ban the burn”—an emotive phrase, but that is to try to simplify something that is highly complex in reality. The royal society—it is a “royal society”—makes no distinction between two different things: the controlled burning of heather for wildlife management and the burning of peatland. Shooting requires careful land management that protects the growth and survival of many species of birds. Rural people have spent decades in careful custodianship of the land and the wildlife that lives in it. Despite that, they find themselves the target of RSPB campaigns that would do serious harm to the environment.

Farmers and gamekeepers must be central to the preservation of wildlife in this country. They live and work in the countryside. There is simply no way around that; nobody else has the resources to protect our countryside. As Lord Botham pointed out, the seed gamekeepers put out for pheasants also feeds lapwings, yellowhammers and corn bunting. I live in the countryside, in a cottage on a shooting estate, and I see how the gamekeepers preserve our wild birds.

What about thinning out the canopy of trees, so that the branches do not close in and deprive bushes and shrub life of much-needed sunlight? Will the RSPB do that? No. Will Members of Parliament do that? No. Gamekeepers and farmers do that. Without managed burns, we increase the risk of uncontrolled wildfires, as has already been argued. As a result, nature and biodiversity suffer, plant life dies and habitats for species wither away. The richness of countryside is dulled, if the knowledge of people who work in the countryside is doubted.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for excellently setting out the science for us today. The Minister has a clear choice to make. We need progress and we need decisions, because we have been here many times before, not least as we are heading into COP26, where this kind of issue will be on the table.

The Minister knows that I frequently speak about flooding—York floods—but the frequency and height of the flooding is worsening. Two weeks ago, we had our second flood this year—the river rose to 4.22 metres—following one in February. We have had others since the devastating floods of 2015, when 453 households and 174 businesses in my constituency flooded.

In 2017, I held a debate in this Chamber on the research carried out by the University of York to improve moorland management. I made the case that ending moorland burning would improve our climate and biodiversity and vastly reduce flooding and the need for expenditure downstream on floodwalls and barriers. Last weekend, yet again, I met with businesses and heard their stories once more about the devastation that flooding brings. I spoke to people who still experience stress every time those rivers rise. One, already struggling after the lockdown, was no longer able to get insurance. There was a flood in February at the start of the lockdown. York’s economy has been devastated this year because of this. The cost is there for all to see.

I say to the Minister, it is five years since we heard promises that these issues would be addressed. We do not need more surveys, questions and debates; we need action. The research undertaken by the University of York looked at the restoration of blanket bog vegetation for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and water regulation. The evidence was powerful, proving strongly that mowing, not burning, moorland curbed water run-off and could remove 20% of excess flow, dropping the flood level in York by 40 centimetres. That would be really significant to our city.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Pritchard.

I agree with much of what my right hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), have said. No one wants to see peat burning, but that is not what is actually on the table here. This process is about heather being managed as part of a perfectly reasonable package of measures that are taken in our uplands, including in my constituency of North West Durham. That package also includes cutting and huge amounts of re-wetting of areas.

I will pick up on a point that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) made when she said we really need to manage the countryside effectively. I agree, but heather burning is an effective part of that management. I totally understand her concerns and those of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) regarding flooding, and I hope that, like me, they will welcome the Government’s recent commitment to huge amounts of tree planting in our upland areas, as part of the Government’s 10-point plan.

Controlled heather burning from October to April is not the key issue. Heather moorland is vital for my local rural communities in Weardale, in neighbouring Teesdale and in Northumberland. It is vital to the local community, to my hospitality industry, to my rural pubs and to my rural jobs, including those of my rural gamekeepers, and to a huge amount of part-time employment for large numbers of local people.

What are the real issues at stake? I ask that question because when I took the Environment Secretary up to the moorland above Rookhope earlier this year, we saw what had happened in the 20th century, when huge amounts of grips were put into the ground to dry large areas of peatland. There had been mass-scale erosion. That was an attempt to overmanage the countryside from one side, which totally drained large areas of peat, causing huge amounts of erosion. It leads exactly to the problems being discussed today. I am all in favour of large areas having those grips removed, to allow blanket bog to return, but it must be part of a managed countryside where everybody is able to work and where the peat is able to return to areas that have been drained. That is part of the bigger picture.

I put on the record very clearly that I am a country sports and conservation enthusiast. They both come together; I see no difference in them. I spoke to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) before the debate, and she knows where I am coming from. We speak together about many things that we agree on, and we have done that recently, but on this we have to agree to disagree. I say that very respectfully.

In the short time that I have, I will describe some of my experiences. I have planted some 3,500 trees on my land and created pond habitats for wildlife. That is something I am extremely passionate about. I am not an expert—far from it—but I am aware of the benefits of age-old practices of land conservation such as burning. We recently watched with horror the Australian wildfires on the TV. They were horrific to watch, and the impact on wildlife and nature was gross, but when the rains came the green shoots were brighter and stronger. I sincerely believe that there is a strong case for land management in a way that is considered and well planned. It should not be like the wildfires in Australia, but well planned in the 30-metre stretches that the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to.

All types of moorland need some land management to maintain the protected and rare habitats and the species that thrive in them. Without any form of management, that jewel of England would be lost. Vegetation and moorland have been burned for thousands of years, and the peat below slowly locks away carbon. The ultimate aim is to protect the carbon store. Thankfully, a large proportion, though not all, of our moors are being managed as grouse moors. That safeguards them from non-native commercial forestry, peat cutting and intensive agricultural modification.

Some 90% of English grouse moors are within the national parks, and 79% of the North York moors and Pennine special protection areas are managed as grouse moors. Some 60% of England’s upland sites of special scientific interest are also grouse moors. Grouse moors contribute more than £100 million to the UK economy directly, and more than 30 million people visit national park grouse moor landscapes annually. The visual quality of those areas is always listed among the top reasons to visit, according to national park visitor data. Why is that? Because they are managed in the correct fashion.