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Heritage

I start by congratulating the Committee on its excellent report. In my remarks, I should like to refer to paragraph 134 on planning guidance, paragraph 163 on Stonehenge, and paragraph 199 on places of worship. The Government did not respond to the Committee’s comments on Stonehenge or places of worship, which is an omission to which I wish to draw to the Committee’s attention. I should also like to point out that evidence was taken from the Association of Gardens Trusts, the Garden History Society, the Historic Royal Palaces, the Yorkshire Gardens Trust, the Hampshire Gardens Trust and the Valley Gardens Action Group, but the report did not refer to gardens. That is an important omission, because listing is not exclusively about buildings; it also covers gardens, a number of which are under threat. In my judgment, there is a grave danger that many of our historic gardens could be redesigned without anyone noticing. We are losing too many historic gardens.