Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. They are leading and I am following on Amendment 44, which is about the duties of the Forestry Commission. Given the hour, I will be brief in bringing out two points. First, the noble Earl rightly said that both Wildlife and Countryside Link and the Wildlife Trusts—two of our key organisations—totally back the approach in the amendment, which says that the Forestry Commission needs a clear mandate on climate and nature. As the noble Baroness just set out, this has just been nibbled at, changed and fiddled with over many decades, but that has not given the Forestry Commission the clear remit that it needs. Secondly, the point that I will make that has yet to be made is about how incredibly precious our forests and woodlands are specifically because we have so few of them. Having just been to Ukraine and Poland—the latter is nearly 30% forest—it was striking that forest is part of just about everything I looked at. Even Ukraine, with its huge reliance on arable agriculture and the destruction it has been enduring, still has a higher percentage of forest than we do. We are talking about a terribly rare resource for Britain in looking after our climate provision and our nature. We cannot afford the Forestry Commission, which is such a major landowner, not having clear direction from legislation stating that its job is to look after climate and nature.