---

Public Forest Estate (England)

The hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). We have made it clear that we would not expect charitable trusts to take these on without the running costs, so the hon. Gentleman's fear is unfounded. Some smaller, local areas of woodland might fall into heritage status, but for those that do not, we are consulting on whether to offer them to local community groups or charities to take over first and foremost. If no local groups or charities want to take on the leasehold and no suitable buyer with a credible access and environmental protection plan comes forward, the woodland will simply remain in public ownership. As I have said, for sites that are predominantly commercial in nature, we propose offering long leases with conditions attached. To be clear, there will be no one-size-fits-all approach, no land grabs and no fire sale. Instead, there will be a thoughtful, detailed, long-term programme of reviewing the estate, potentially over 10 years. There will be no rush; it is more important to get this right. We will look at how to improve the rate of recovery of plantations on ancient woodland sites, thereby enhancing biodiversity. We will look at how the Forestry Commission can work with communities to help them to bid for local woodlands and at how we can actively improve access rights. I am thinking in particular of how we can access resource improvements for people with disabilities. We will look at how we can enable groups who run woodlands to draw down environmental grants in a way that the Forestry Commission currently cannot. Those are all things that the Forestry Commission, with its expertise and dedication, is perfectly well placed to do. It is where it will really add value. If Members were to ask someone from the Forestry Commission whether they would rather be working with communities to help in the recovery of ancient woodland sites, or shrink-wrapping Christmas trees, what do they think they would say?