My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. One could say that a farming debate is food and drink to the Green Party—I apologise if that is a mixed metaphor—but she might be interested, or perhaps horrified, to know that I agreed with a lot of what she said in the first part of her speech. I totally disagreed with what she said about predators, but that is another matter. I never cease to be impressed by the breadth of her expertise and knowledge; only today she has spoken on this, her specialist subject, and on both maternity services in England and military intervention overseas. My goodness, she has wide experience and knowledge. Some say that less can be more.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Caithness on introducing this debate. He raised some really important points, which I shall not repeat. I have a close interest in farming because I have a small farm in the east Midlands, where I live. I intend to use my experiences to illustrate a bit of this debate and give a ground-level, coalface view—again, I apologise for mixing my metaphors. I will make three points.
First, the reduction in farming payments will hit farmers overall and may lead to more big farms rather than smaller ones. While some of this may be sensible—I am no great fan of subsidies; it would be better if there were none at all—if there continues to be a reduction in farm payments, the cost of food will inevitably rise because farmers will pass the costs of their inputs and work on to the consumer. At the same time, more farmers will leave the countryside. If they do, the landscape may be changed adversely. I seem to recall that after the Brexit vote the then Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the farming budget would remain exactly the same after Brexit. That does not seem to be the case, unless the Minister would like to contradict me on that.
My second and more important point is about complexity. I support much of ELMS and everything else, but I am rather keen on planting trees. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, around me I see trees and hedges flourishing. I have planted several miles of hedges and acres of trees. I thought I would plant some more because of the England woodland creation offer. This is the letter I got back after my son, who is also very keen on planting trees, sent in an application:
“Missing Evidence … It is mandatory to contact your Local Environmental Records Centre … Historic England area team, Local Historic Environment Service … and prior to applying”,
which is bad English. It continues:
“You must allow 28 days … You must … confirm this and … provide … Evidence of checks made for priority habitats … Evidence of checks made for protected species … Evidence of checks made for designated heritage assets and local historic environment records”.
I could go on, but that is quite enough.
The Government want me to plant trees and have offered to help. I want to plant trees—and have planted a lot already—for the landscape, wildlife and environmental improvement. What is the point of all this bureaucratic nonsense dreamed up in a warm office in Bristol or London? Let us get on with planting trees, not filling in 10 pages of nonsense. It deters people and to no good purpose.
My third point is about species management, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I disagree. It is not really an interest, but I should declare that in 1995 I was responsible for the Eradication of Mink Bill, which noble Lords will remember clearly. It got nowhere because it was a 10-minute rule Bill in the House of Commons. As my noble friend Lord Caithness said, mink have devastated our riverbanks—not just the water voles, although they are particularly obvious, but species such as kingfishers, because they can get into their nests, whereas otters, for example, cannot. There is some anecdotal evidence that otters are driving mink out. I hope that is the case.
Going back to predator management, when I bought my farm 20-odd years ago, we used to have curlews there every year. It was magnificent to have them on a lowland farm in the Midlands. However, now we almost never see them. The reason is probably not foxes or badgers, because we do not see that many of them, but corvids.
Noble Lords may not know that you need a licence to show that you are allowed to shoot or control corvids. Magpies are very clever birds and easily tamed. If noble Lords watch them over the next couple of months, they will see them working their way down a hedge, poking their heads in and looking for nesting birds. When they find a nesting bird, they destroy it. Each magpie is probably responsible for the destruction of 10 nests, but I do not know, as I have not studied it closely enough. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, you need a licence. There is a general licence, but you need to be able to prove that the magpies or crows are causing damage. What is the point of that? Can the Minister confirm that that is the case?
As for grey squirrels, I plant a lot of trees, and in one wood, a third of the trees have been killed by grey squirrels. I trap them. This is legal, I am glad to say; otherwise, I probably would not tell noble Lords. I have caught 14 in traps since Christmas Day and I am catching them all of the time. However, there are still hundreds left. They do so much damage. There are people who challenge the trapping. I ask the Minister: have there been any suggestions that we should make it illegal to kill grey squirrels? We must reduce the number of them if the Government’s ambition to plant more trees is to be realised.
There is a policy move to introduce a contraceptive, which will be useful only for male grey squirrels. I hope that works. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that later. Public sensitivity about killing squirrels is also one issue. I would also say there is some stupidity among the public. If noble Lords do not believe me, they should take their dog for a walk in the park and see what happens if it kills a squirrel in front of a lot of other people.
My real point in this is that there is concern and confusion over general licences and what one can and cannot do. They were all stopped and then restarted in the last couple of years. I return to what I said at the beginning: less—in this case, regulation—is more. We do not need endless regulations and laws to do what is right and humane. Some people will behave badly with or without laws and regulations. We could do with less regulation on the control of destructive species, as well as on tree planting and agriculture as a whole.
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