One of life’s greatest pleasures is looking out onto Britain’s green and pleasant land and admiring our rolling hills, our ancient woodlands, and the creatures that inhabit it. That is why being environment and farming secretary was such a privilege, set with the task of protecting and enhancing our beautiful country.
We know though that the habitat for flora and fauna to flourish is far from perfect, with an estimated 19 per cent loss in nature in just the last fifty years. That is why we put in law targets to halt and turn around this decline.
It is why right across England, councils are now working on local nature recovery strategies. It is why the Government is working with farmers and landowners through Environmental Land Management Schemes to grow and nurture food and nature sustainably. To do that, the top priority has to be to preserve and improve habitats and improve our soil. One such key habitat is peatland.
Our peatlands are precious, but their importance is rarely appreciated. Making up 12 per cent of the UK’s land, our world-famous fens, blanket bogs, and raised bogs provide a vital home to British wildlife, including rare species like the threatened hen harrier.
Peatlands are also our largest natural carbon store, holding approximately 3,200 tonnes of carbon. This is more than all the forests in England, Germany, and France combined.
Despite their importance to our national biodiversity, over 87 per cent of our peatlands have been destroyed, damaged, or dried up. With peatland growing at a rate of merely one millimetre a year, any amount of extraction that occurs is fundamentally unsustainable. Yes, our Conservative government has funded many restoration projects, yet peat extraction continues in the name of selling peat to unsuspecting gardeners wanting to give their plants a nutritious boost.
In the retail environment, peat products continue to be sold without being clearly labelled, hiding in potted plants and trays of bedding plants. This means that even the most environmentally-conscious gardeners, of which I know there are thousands across the UK, are rarely able to go properly peat-free, despite their best efforts and there already being alternatives on the market that compete on price and quality.
Some retailers have acted. Our world-famous Kew Gardens is peat-free and was joined by B&Q last year. The Royal Horticultural Society itself supports an end to using peat in horticulture and is now 98 per cent peat-free. Despite these admirable steps, the horticultural industry as a whole still has a long way to go as a number of retailers are still selling peat and the sector still makes up 70 per cent of all peat sold in the UK.
That is why we must take action and get on with the ban of the sale of peat in retail settings to protect our countryside and consumers, which is long overdue. We started on this path over a decade ago, with a voluntary phase-out of all peat products with the pledge that failure to do so would be followed by a blanket ban. With industry already having had a decade to adapt, that is why as environment secretary I committed to a ban on peat and peat-containing products in retail stores to come into effect in 2024.
Unfortunately, we missed the boat to legislate this promise within the Environment Act. Now, with a general election on the way, the deadline to deliver on this promise in this Parliament is rapidly approaching.
It is not only gardeners we need to protect, but also British taxpayers. The Government is investing £50 million to restore our peatlands. Without addressing the demand for peat, this money will be as good as wasted and progress towards protecting our environment will be hindered.
It has been 13 years since the horticultural industry was warned that its actions have consequences for our natural environment and that a Conservative government is not afraid to put things right. We now need to deliver on this commitment.
The Government has to ration the time it is allocated for primary legislation in Parliament. However, they can support Private Member’s Bills to achieve their pledges. That is why this week I am supporting Theresa Villiers’s Bill to ban the sale of peat, and I urge the Government to do the same.
First published by The Daily Telegraph. Thérèse Coffey MP (Suffolk Coastal) is a member of the Conservative Environment Network.
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