Regulatory Reform (Forestry) Order 2006

I thank my noble friend for introducing the order; declare an interest as chair of the Forestry Commission; and thank the noble Baronesses for their comments. I just make the general point that the days have gone when the sole job of the Forestry Commission was to produce wood. One might now argue—I know that the noble Baroness takes the point—that some of our most important work is other than timber. It involves managing the space between the trees as well as managing the trees. It is just as much to do with biodiversity, conservation, recreation, public amenity, landscape, climate control and health promotion as it is to do with silviculture. As a commission, we felt that the 2001 Act gave us an opportunity legitimately within its narrow confines to try to consider the issue of proportionality raised by the noble Baroness and whether it was lifting a burden from us. We felt it right and proper to go to committees of both Houses—we are very grateful to members of both committees for all the work that they put in—for them to test our judgment and give us an opinion. We are very pleased that they agreed that what we suggested was within the provision and made sense. However, as with all these things, there are points that people want to raise. The first concerns the felling licence. The present system is cumbersome. There is a time constraint on it. As the noble Baroness said, it catches only the owner when often it is a lessee, licensee or operator who takes trees down illegally. There is nothing that we can do in that case. That strikes us as wrong. We can pursue that only through due legal process. We are very hesitant about taking a legal process, because it is cumbersome—it costs a lot of money and in the long run you have to weigh up whether it is in the public interest. We also involved our regional advisory committees, who are usually senior people involved in land management and forestry within the region. Their opinion will be brought into the new system. I am not sure whether the appeals system will be precisely the same as the existing one, but we appreciate that there has to be one. I understand the noble Baroness’s strictures, but we feel that as we move ahead there is an opportunity and a real demand from our citizens to enjoy out-of-the-way places such as our forest cabins—we only have three. The situation is ludicrous, because we are not able to borrow money over 25 years—as one would if it was done sensibly—and write it off over 25 years so that rent and incomes are consistent for that time. We hope that this will allow us to bring in private investors. We will have to be careful, because we want people who share the existing public service ethos, which is at the forefront of everything that we are trying to do. We want to bring in their skills and expertise to help us to provide that service. We are not thinking of expanding cabin services willy-nilly across the country.