Forestry came up in the debate in which I participated at the Game Fair.
Remember the Government was heading towards a consultation on its Big Society/Small Government plans to sell off or hive off some of the forest estate to communities and businesses when it scrapped the consultation and promised to think again, and along the way set up an expert panel on forestry to advise it. Max Hastings described the events at the beginning of the year as having been mishandled politically and I had to agree with him.
I’m not sure that we necessarily agreed on where was the mishandling though. The Government’s ideas were perfectly in tune with the Big Society/Small Government philosophy. Why should government be involved in the more commercial aspects of forestry when we don’t have state farms or state fishing fleets? If you were planning government involvement in land use then you wouldn’t start here.
Of course, the tricky thing would be getting the detail right, and if you don’t trust government to run a few forests for us I’m not sure why you should trust them to divest themselves of the right forests when the moment comes. But if ever there were a place for government to get out of an area of commerce then surely it is in timber production where you can actually make a bit of money out of flogging off the land and the timber.
If government had gone ahead then it would have made it easier to revise the remit of the remaining Forestry Commission which would be dealing with the forests of greatest importance to the public in terms of access, landscape value and biodiversity rather than the conifer timber factories. And that could have led to a better deal for the very best of our English forests under a Forest and Wildlife Service.
While I harbour some hopes that the expert panel might recommend some such changes still the momentum has gone out of this subject and the danger is that nothing changes at all. And I am rarely happy with the status quo. So I agreed with Max Hastings when he said that the subject had been mishandled politically but I am not sure that we agreed on whose were the fumbling hands.
From my point of view it was David Cameron himself who got the politics wrong, rather than Caroline Spelman (who was sitting further along the platform from Sir Max and me). The Prime Minister behaved very badly to the Defra team when, in Prime Minister’s Question Time, he denied his own government’s policy in the most crass of ways. To disown one’s own policy when the going got tough was to ditch collective responsibility in a shocking manner. When the seas got choppy we weren’t ‘all in it together’, the Prime Minister rushed to his own lifeboat leaving his Defra colleagues manning the pumps on their own. He shouted ‘abandon ship’ but he didn’t take anyone with him in the lifeboat. And was the ship sinking or was it just a storm to rattle inexperienced mariners? Now government forestry policy is becalmed.
One of the clearest tests of Big Society is the Campaign for the Farmed Environment – a Big Society approach set up by the previous Labour Government. Instead of fulfilling their promises to replace the environmental benefits of set-aside the previous administration caved in to the bleatings of the NFU and opted for a voluntary approach. The trouble with it was that the voluntary approach expected farmers to favour the interests of wildlife over their own financial interests and although I am sure that many farmers will be doing their bit I am equally sure that many will not. If all farmers were going to volunteer then why weren’t they already volunteering?
Imagine that government needs more money for the NHS and instead of taxing us it asks us all to donate some more money voluntarily. I am sure that some of us would do so, maybe the rich would fork out or maybe it would be the more generous elements across Society that would do so. But do you think that this would be an effective measure? Neither do I. And so I fear that the CFE is doomed to miss its targets – I hope I am wrong – and that wildlife will have lost out because government did not have the courage to act.
Land use and land management, like the planning system, are areas for government to get involved not to shirk its responsibilities. These subjects involve lots of public money, affect us all and often involve decisions which have long-lasting consequences. We need good government but I don’t really mind whether that government is Big or Small, but it has to be there acting on behalf of the current taxpayer and future generations.
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CFE – Mark writes ‘I fear that the CFE is doomed to miss its targets’. Sadly you may be right, but I suggest you have not identified the key, which is the simply crass operation of the RPA and the draconian attitude of its inspectors. They appear to be pharisaic in approach; they lack pragmatism when dealing with practical matters on farm. They show no understanding of the farmers’ challenges on the ground, when for the first time in decades arable cropping is profitable. There is no extension service to assist farmers to achieve the best CFE answer on farm and there is no practical understanding from inspectors. They are the reason that there is farmer reticence to signing up with CFE. Farmers should not bear the whole blame.
Birdseye – top marks for ‘pharisaic’!
Utter Trippe. This country is in recession. So we sell off all our assets! Many governments before have done this and it never helps. The extra money will help save the better woodlands! I know you want a job but do you really trust this amateur government. Mass public money thrown at wind farms destroying the uplands for ever. Roxy, our radio tagged Eagle takes up residence next to a wind farm previously clear felled forest on the M74. Estates are destroying Golden Eagles just so they can make millions in wind. Better still ‘our’ timber cut down makes money and that money can be then used to ‘our’ needs not some foreign investor you does not care about Britain but just wants to bleed as much money out of the country as possible.
John – ‘I know you want a job’? You know nothing of what I want – but thanks for your comments.