This is a rare debate, is it not, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is becoming an ode to nature; a long series of prose poems of colleagues’ enjoyment of nature and what it brings to us and our constituents.
I very much enjoyed listening to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) describe her upcoming walk with her father, now in his 80s, and the joy that will bring them both. My father is now 94. Sadly, his walking days are very much behind him, but they are strong in his memory. He can still vividly describe landscape, nature and birds from throughout his long life. I am sure that is true for everyone here and across the country. I welcome this debate, opened in style by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), with strong support for things that she and so many of us believe in.
My starting observation would be that my sense of nature and public access to it is slightly less central and less driven by Government fiat; it is more about the joys of volunteers, charities and individuals incrementally improving the landscape around us, to hand it on to our children and grandchildren in slightly better shape than we inherited it. It is more a conservative vision of what human involvement with nature is all about. That is what I want to touch on today.
In many ways, one would expect the representative of the city of Gloucester to talk about access to the great nature all around our city. We are so close to the Cotswolds escarpment, Crickley hill, and all of the lands that Laurie Lee and Ivor Gurney described so beautifully. Whether up in the hills or looking the other way to the Forest of Dean, May hill and even to the Malvern hills —which we can see clearly from quite a lot of Gloucester, and where I vividly remember as a small boy tobogganing from school through the snow—we are part of a wider landscape around us. That includes the River Wye, which, despite everything that one might read, is still a wonderful place to go swimming, whether from Lydbrook or Symonds Yat. It has some of the most spectacular country for walking, swimming and canoeing, arguably. That is a free advert for my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).
It is about recognition that in each part of the country that we represent, we have very special nature all around us. As a couple of Members have already said, that came to the fore during the pandemic, when at one stage we were able to go five or six miles for our daily exercise. Five or six miles from Gloucester leads to spectacular places, including Haresfield Beacon, close to where Beatrix Potter used to draw. Aren’t we lucky?
I want to focus on what is happening within my own urban environment in Gloucester. There are lessons and opportunities for the whole country from what is happening in the small city, which the Minister knows so well—she was there not long ago. We could not find a better champion for nature and everything that it can bring to us than the Minister and her colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
What is Gloucester all about? It is 5.5 square miles of urban environment, which happens to include the Robinswood hill, and water in the shape of both the River Severn and the Sharpness to Gloucester canal, as well as other things that I will come to. It has many parks, most of them enhanced considerably over the past dozen years, often with playgrounds—the city council has doubled the number playgrounds in Gloucester over the past 12 years. Playgrounds are often the entry point for small children to first visit and be around nature with their parents and grandparents.
In the same sense, we are lucky to have the headquarters of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust on Robinswood, which has understood that amazing asset and now taken over its management from the city council. That is a really good example, if the House will tolerate this, of what some people would call privatisation but I would call simply a more imaginative management of important resources, better done by a specialist charity. In the same way, the Canal and River Trust has done such a good job of looking after our major canals all around the country, although there are one or two things about that I will come to. It was handed over from British Waterways by a very good Minister in DEFRA at that time, Richard Benyon, who is now in the other place and still doing great work on the environment for his country. We are lucky, geographically, to have those amazing assets. We are also lucky to have good partnerships that make the most of them.
Thematically, I am looking at ways in which we can preserve, enhance and create. Preservation almost speaks for itself, but preserving and enhancing together is a theme that every wildlife trust in the country should—and no doubt is—looking at. The Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, under the leadership of its recently moved on chief executive Roger Matlock, who is now taking over the Council for the Protection of Rural England, led some important steps forward to use Robinswood as a place for education and enjoyment. Sustainable wooden playgrounds and enhanced car parks have been used as a way of bringing families in from all backgrounds.
Colleagues have made points about people from ethnic minority communities who live further from nature than others. That is true in some parts of the country, no doubt, but in a city our size of only 5.5 square miles, where we have a primary school that has more than 50 nationalities, we are all very close to the extraordinary combination of the canal, the hill, the river and the lakes. The question is, does everyone have equal inspiration and drive to go and find, use and draw pleasure from those great natural assets? That is where schools play a major part.
I want to highlight Meadowside and Clearwater in Quedgeley, which has its own town council in the city of Gloucester. Those two primary schools—both rather different, one very new—have embraced the opportunities that using the green spaces and exploring outside can offer children. They are joined by many schools in Gloucester—Abbeymead Primary School was the first to take up my offer for every child in our city to plant a tree at the new Hempsted woods on our recycling centre, where we hope to plant 100,000 trees. Almost 8,000 have been planted so far by five schools. We have a long way to go, but the opportunity is huge and some schools are seizing it fast, particularly the local Hempsted primary.
Creation is important, too, and it can be done in lots of different ways. After the terrible floods of 2007, which hit Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Worcestershire and all around the River Severn, the Environment Agency, encouraged by the Government, created a new balancing pond that will become a diversion for the Sud Brook, rather than it flooding the suburbs of Elmbridge and Longlevens, in particular. That balancing pond serves the functional task of protecting humans, but it has also become an incredibly attractive area for birds, ducks and marine life. It now provides a wonderful leisure opportunity for people to walk and picnic with their families and dogs, with some areas protected so that dogs cannot disrupt nesting birds, ducks, moorhens and coots. That is a creative way in which a government agency has prevented the flooding that had badly impacted thousands of people’s lives, as flooding does, and provided a huge new natural resource that everybody can enjoy.
On a more micro level, in Barton and Tredworth ward, which has the least green space and the most ethnic diversity, last year we were able to open a new community garden—the Sudbrook Community Garden—which I have wanted to do for a long time. With the help of several partners, including businesses, the city council and a housing association, we were able to deliver. I know on the Minister’s next visit to Gloucester this little pocket park will inspire her, as it excites me and provides wonderful opportunities for people living nearby. It includes a little brook beside it.