Speaking at a fringe event hosted by The Woodland Trust, the shadow minister for environment, food and rural affairs Barry Gardiner said the Coalition Government still did not understand the proper role of the Forestry Commission.
Gardiner said that Labour was exploring the statutory remit of the Forestry Commission to ensure that those public values – biodiversity, habitat, ecosystem services, public access – were given proper priority.
Describing Labour as “the true party of the countryside”, he said more focus was needed on the fact that public goods today were indirect goods, rather than the direct goods of the past.
Gardiner said: “What the Coalition Government so obviously forgot ... is that the value of trees lies in infinitely more than the commercial timber production that they can give.”
He went on to say that Labour wanted a Forestry Commission that would carry out proper scientific research on diseases and pathogens that damaged the woodland habitat.
He also criticised the withdrawal of funding for research institutions which investigated pathogens and diseases that the country’s woodland faced.
The shadow minister finished his speech explaining Labour’s approach to formulating environment policies:
“We do it because we understand that making space for nature is making space for ourselves, and whatever we do for nature we do for ourselves.”
After being asked by chair Clive Anderson, president of The Woodland Trust on commercial forestry, Gardiner said Labour would make a clear commitment that they would not sell off the public forest estate.
The statutory duty of the Commission to subsidise the private sector was “displacing” what Labour wanted the other responsibilities to be, including protecting ecosystem services, he said.
The Woodland Trust’s chief executive Beccy Speight said the charity wanted to create a new Charter to protect irreplaceable woodland, restore damaged ancient woodlands and create new and diverse wood.
Speight also claimed that woodland was “not as protected as everybody thinks it is” and consequently was “vulnerable to development”.
She said the Charter would include a public forest estate “with people genuinely at its heart” as well as “garden cities” with a minimum of 20 per cent canopy cover. It would improve everyone’s quality lives, wherever they live, she claimed.
Praising the previous Labour government’s record on woodland, Speight described the Read Report as “ground-breaking”.
She concluded by saying that if Labour were to win the General Election, The Woodland Trust thought they had “unfinished business” in making the UK a world leader in forest stewardship.
Anderson asked whether the new Charter was similar to that of the 13th century. Speight said that the old Charter was about immediate survival and that idea was the same as today, only less clear – “the Charter is a way of making that obvious,” she said.
Joan Walley MP said that one of the major problems with environmental policy was that the political cycle and the pace of environment policy do not “synchronise”.
She said that the focus was usually on the most pressing political issue of the day and that environmental policy needed to be looked at long term.
Walley claimed that the framing the environment narrative in a political way wasn’t working and said the Charter could be used as a way of “mobilising” people and delivering on environmental issues.
Anthea Sully, former leader of Peterborough City Council highlighted some of the practical realities that local councils faced in relation to the removal or addition of trees and the impact it had on the community.
She said during a time when councils were facing severe budget pressures it could be very easy to see environmental issues as an add-on that could be pushed out in the face of other priorities, such as social care.
“It can be really easy to dismiss trees and woodland as being something only people who are really affluent can enjoy,” she added, claiming that it was “vital” that people of all ages were able to enjoy trees.