My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 79; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his support. This is a probing amendment. It aims to ensure that development of the land around our large towns and cities will feature in the Government’s strategy. By “large towns and cities” I am referring to urban areas with a population of at least 200,000, but of course priority is bound to be given to our great metropolitan cities—London, Manchester, Birmingham and others.
We know that green-belt land represents 13% of England’s land-mass: 1.6 million hectares. I believe the green-belt area doubled in size between 1979 and 1993. According to the Government’s official climate change advisers, the UK needs 1.5 billion more trees to absorb sufficient carbon dioxide and help restore wildlife. We can argue about how much agricultural land should be given over to trees, but there are swathes of undeveloped green-belt land. Surely we can do a great deal better than we do at the moment, not only for our urban populations but for the climate.
Mass tree planting is just one part of the solution to the green-belt wasteland, if I may call it that. Others include agricultural and horticultural development to provide the nearby urban populations with fresh food, in particular fruit and vegetables—avoiding the climate-destroying long-distance transport too often involved currently. Of course, an effective green policy for the green belt would need a shift in people’s attitudes to eating out-of-season fruit and vegetables. If people continue to demand to eat strawberries in December, however much we grow on the green belt will not help the climate as much as it should and could.
Finally, some investment on the green belt should surely be into energy products: solar panels and wind farms. Again, proximity to our metropolitan areas and other large towns and cities should be a driving factor for that. I hope the Minister will assure the Committee that climate-friendly development of the green-belt land will be an important element in the Government’s plan.
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