My Lords, I rise with great enthusiasm to support the noble Baroness in moving this amendment. I emphasise that I am very involved in the kindred area of national parks, and am vice-president for the Campaign for National Parks.
There is room for hope. As we wait for the White Paper, we hope it will have within it the same kind of undertakings that the Government have given on the national parks regarding their indispensability, their importance to the culture and the values of our society and the recreational and spiritual regeneration of those who are able to take part in what they provide.
I worry often about our highly quantitative society. There is a desperate need to reassert the qualitative dimensions of our society. Woodlands are rich in the heritage and history of our country. There are trees that have witnessed the whole evolution of our democracy and society over centuries. They are a real link with where we are, where we have come from and what we want to be, as our history is indispensable in understanding society and life and its challenges.
Other dimensions make the woodlands so important, particularly the ancient trees. Of course we want to build houses. Of course we want a thriving economy. But for what? Is it just to be able to say that our economy has grown and that people own houses to a greater extent than before? Or is it so that people can enjoy a richer, fuller society? Our young people need to have a sense of imagination and vision. Just think about what imaginative teachers are able to do with young children if they have ancient trees in their midst and can use the experience of the ancient trees in their whole approach to history, understanding and learning.
In my life, I have too often come across evidence of the absence of vision and space for too many of our youngsters in society, who grow up in a restricted material environment that denies them the opportunity to flourish as individuals and to become richer, fuller people. I must not yet again tell the story, which profoundly moved me at one point in my life, about a youngster—a seven or eight year-old—from an inner-city area saying that what was so exciting about being in a youth centre beside Windermere in the Lake District was that she had never seen far before in her life. What do we want our children to be? Automatons or living creatures with imagination? How will we sustain our democracy and our future unless we have people with vision and potential? Trees are crucial to this.
When I saw that my noble friend Lady Young was considering this amendment, with the able support that she has had from our Liberal friends, I felt that I must become involved, because this is an imperative. I hope that the Minister will hear the message and say that the Government will look with good will at the challenge. In a few hours, a whole story with its links and roots in history can be uprooted, thrown away and destroyed—something that has been there for hundreds of years. We must not go down in history as a society that has lost all sense of root, destiny and continuity and is just living in the instant in a material sense. I cannot think of an amendment that is more appropriate to the kind of discussions that we have been having this afternoon.