My Lords, I will be very brief. I support all these amendments. We should be proud of our heritage in this country, but I am not sure, as others have pointed out, that we have been doing enough to protect our cultural landscapes in recent years. They may vary from ancient monuments all the way up to the present day, and include the lived environment, which overlaps so much with the past.
There are two real concerns, at present. There may be more, but I will point out two. The first is the lack of local authority funding and the second is the danger
of untrammelled development, particularly through the tearing up and sidestepping of planning regulations. It is a disgrace that, in a country not affected by war at home—and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, mentioned Afghanistan—we have lost one site of world heritage status, Liverpool’s Waterfront, and are in danger of losing another, Stonehenge, if that road tunnel is built. We still do not know what is going to happen.
On the lived environment, I am put in mind of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the artist Joseph Beuys, who co-founded the German green party. His work “7000 Oaks” involved the planting of oak trees, often in bombed-out sites, across the city of Kassel. This was not a simple tree-planting exercise, as each tree was accompanied by a large stone marker. As the trees were planted—and it took five years to complete the project—the pile of 7,000 stones in front of the city’s museum was gradually reduced. Beuys’s idea for this piece, which was radical at the time, was that of nature being in harmony with humanity. His ideas have been copied in America and Britain. In this context, I just mention the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. This lesson of sensitivity towards our environment is something that we all need to learn.
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