Lord Gascoigne (Con)

I am grateful to the Minister and everyone who participated in the debate; it started on a high then slowly descended. I have said many times in this Chamber that I massively respect the Minister, but I think he mentioned about five different sets of rules or guidance, and that is precisely why there should be some clear documentation that sets out the different issues and how to tackle them. I am grateful to my own Back Benches, the Greens and the Lib Dems for their comments and support. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised the perfect point that this is also about wildlife, which is often accused or neglected, and the fact that we have the 2030 targets, which we should aim for and this can play a part in that. I am conscious of the time, but there are various things I could say to my dear and good noble friend Lord Moylan. I will take him up on the offer to engage with him. I will make three very quick points. First, while trees do not improve your driving, it is a fact that having trees on streets slows down drivers in urban areas; someone made that observation in mainland Europe, where, sadly, they have more trees than we do. It therefore improves driving, even if it does not improve the quality of the driver. Secondly, my noble friend mentioned the issues with his mulberry bushes. That is exactly why there should be guidance on new development—that is its purpose. Finally, I was googling frantically what sort of tree my noble friend Lord Moylan could be. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but one that I found was the great white oak. I am told that it is big and majestic in many ways, but it is also quite stubborn. I say respectfully to my noble friend: please, let us have this journey; I will come and help him clean up his mulberry bush. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.