My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and I will just make a couple of points to the Minister.
The mood music around TPOs is really important. There is guidance, as the Minister has said, on revocation, but its implementation is very patchy across the country. The definition of who is interested in the land can be interpreted very narrowly so that the folk who are clearly interested—local residents on a wider basis—are often not informed about revocations. That is just one example of where these amendments intend to demonstrate that the Government are serious about TPOs and want to create a different mood music around them.
In terms of dead and dying trees, local authorities currently move very rapidly to remedy, for example, trees that are coming into a dangerous condition and need to be felled. Those of us who have got ash dieback know that they can move very rapidly on that. I do not think there is a real problem around saying that TPOs must be strengthened because there is disease. What we want for TPOs is a presumption for retention of trees, rather than the possibility of both revocation and removal of dead and dying trees. I am obviously not of the same mind as the Minister.
I will make a slightly barbed political point. I do not know whether there are any friends of the Conservative leader of Plymouth council in the Chamber. He must
be rather regretting that he was not strenuous about the observation of tree protection orders, since he lost his job over the recent debacle of the illegal felling of trees in Plymouth. So I urge the Government to recognise that the public, bless their hearts, have the bit between their teeth on this. Unless the Government demonstrate that they recognise that there is a point, and unless they make some movement towards finding ways of enabling the public to be more effectively involved and to feel that TPOs are a stronger protection, this could happen again and again.
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