My Lords, I speak in total support of Amendment 295, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and Amendment 312E in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. I want to add a few brief points to theirs, focusing specifically on why these amendments giving protection to the green belt are so important for our nature in England and the UK and for meeting the targets that we have signed up to both nationally and internationally; those were alluded to in the previous two speeches.
Even though green belts were originally designated as a way to keep clear spaces between cities and stop urban sprawl, they have taken on another role. We cannot ignore that fact. They have become incredibly important refuges and corridors for England’s biodiversity and wildlife.
We have heard about the multiple other ecosystem services and natural capital services that green belts provide, so I will not repeat them, but there is one point that I want to make: we are often told that most people have no access to the green belt, so they do not get the physical and mental well-being benefits of it—but they do, because they can see it. Being able to see green and see nature has been shown in some cases to be as physiologically and psychologically important as being in nature. Therefore, being able to have a view of nature from the city is as important as having access. Access is also fantastic, but it is not a reason to do away with the green belt. So while green belts started as one thing, they have changed to provide something else. They have become much broader in this. They have become green spaces that are critical for nature and ecosystem services.
So what is the problem? Why are we all standing here speaking about green space and the green belt? As has been alluded to, green belts are under huge pressure right now. I tried to dig down to understand why they are being put forward for housebuilding; surely the protection we have in place already is enough. Well, it is not, because in the National Planning Policy Framework you are allowed to change the use of green-belt land under exceptional circumstances. Our housing crisis and local authorities’ need to meet housing targets are being used by many counties up and down the country as an exceptional circumstance. That is why there is now so much pressure on the green belt: it is the use of that phrase, “exceptional circumstances”. This is certainly the case in my own city, Oxford, where around 8% of the green belt on the edge of the city is in the local plan but most of our housing development will be on other counties’ green-belt land. We have sort of shifted the problem out from the city boundary.
In a recent report, the countryside charity CPRE beautifully illustrates the trend of increased pressure for housing on the green belt. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of housing units completed on greenfield land within the green belt was around 17,700, but there are currently 260,000 homes proposed in advanced local plans. So, in a matter of three years, we have this massive increase of people looking to the green belt to solve their housing problems.
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The next question is why the green belt is thought to be the best place to deal with these additional housing needs. Many reasons are being given, but I will focus on two, relating them back to nature. The first is the oft-cited statement that the green belt is low-grade agricultural land and therefore of little value to nature. I would like to redo that work; it is simply incorrect. The habitats around the edges of these agricultural lands are now widely recognised as being really important for connectivity, but also for many invertebrates, vertebrates and plants—many of the things we have flagged up in our national plans for biodiversity, such as brown hares, many of our small songbirds and many of our important insects. They are important for these habitats and for connectivity across our increasingly fragmented English landscape.
How on earth do we think we will turn around our species declines when we continue to fragment our green space more and more? The most basic island
biogeography theory tells us that, the smaller the island becomes, the fewer species it can support, and eventually those species go extinct. This is what we are seeing happening day in, day out, in the English countryside right now, and the green belt is a classic example of this.
The second reason why this is happening was alluded to before and is why these amendments are so important: green belts are not protected for nature; only 13% of them are protected.
My final point is the nub of the problem. Even if parts of our green belt are currently in a poor state for nature, we should look to enhance and restore them for the natural capital benefits they provide, not give up on them and cover them in concrete. For example, we would not say that a road or railway is in a poor state of repair; therefore, we are going to cover it in concrete and use it for housebuilding. Why is nature always the thing that can be moved elsewhere, replanted somewhere else, so that we do not need to worry about it? We have to stop thinking of nature as the poor relation to all the other infrastructure that requires space and as something that can just be picked up and moved. It cannot and it will not provide services if we do that.
The legislative framework has to give nature some teeth or we will continue to see more declines of our species, habitats and communities across the English landscape. If we are serious about meeting targets such as 30 by 30, it is critical that we move and act quickly now. Therefore, I see both these amendments as really important, because they start to raise the profile of our green belt beyond just being a legislative or planning requirement that was set up many years ago to something that properly recognises what we have in our green belt and why we need to conserve it.