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Forestry Commission (Northumberland)

And finally, to forestry. I am very glad of the opportunity to raise the issue of employment in forestry, and particularly employment by the Forestry Commission in Northumberland. There is more forestry production in Northumberland than in any other English county, and part of it takes place in my constituency, where the Forestry Commission has Harwood, Rothbury, Kidland and other forest areas. The greater part of the production takes place in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), which has Kielder, Wark and Redesdale forests. Forestry jobs in my constituency are centred on the commission's Rothbury office, but all 12 full-time equivalent jobs are planned to go with its closure. That is out of a total of just under 90 full-time equivalent jobs in the county, and they are to be reduced to 65. Most are based at Bellingham and Kielder in the Hexham constituency. Those numbers might not seem large to Members from urban areas, but they are very important to small rural communities such as Rothbury and Bellingham. Forestry staff are key holders of expertise on woodland issues. The forest ranger—we will have only one at the end of this process—used to educate schoolchildren about the forests and their wildlife, as well as helping to secure income from deer stalking. Forestry employees are key members of their local communities, often serving as first responders and trained firefighters. There are jobs in the wider community dependent on forestry, and the Rothbury office puts £200,000 a year into the local economy in salaries alone. Looking at the post-war history, it is interesting to note that the few remaining jobs in the direct employment of the Forestry Commission contrast with the original plans to provide a major source of employment in the countryside. Whole new villages such as Harwood in my constituency, and Kielder, were built between the 1940s and the 1960s for the workers who were expected to be employed in the expanding state forests. Now almost no forestry workers live in these houses. There were many critics of the policy that replaced hill shepherding with massive, regimented plantings of Norway and Sitka spruce, but the critics were told that trees meant jobs. Kielder village alone was projected to have a population of 800, but it never happened. The more accessible but still remote village of Harwood has become home to people who travel to a variety of jobs elsewhere. Even the house that has been built during my time as an MP, for the forest manager at Harwood, is no longer in forestry use. To get a reminder of the almost ideological commitment that brought large-scale forestry to our hills, I looked at the 1950s edition of the Shell guide to Northumberland written by the legendary town planner, Thomas Sharp, who said:"““there is now taking place…an agronomic and scenic revolution of a kind that has happened only once before in the recorded history of England…The present revolution is in the development of the great new FORESTS that are being planted by the Forestry ""Commission, acting as the agent of Government…two or three hundred square miles of Cheviot country is being… transformed…beyond all recognition from grassy sheep walk into vast forest of…Sitka and Norway spruce.””" He goes on:"““You may not like what you see. Most of us who have loved these grassy hills with their soft, many-tinted, cloud-shadowed outlines, their sense of wide, unrestricted freedom, their clean free air, cannot but regret the beauty that has gone. But when these forests have matured they too will have some beauty of their own. And in any event, the case for change is incontestable. In the planting that is now going forward much hardly-used land is being brought into enormously increased productivity for human benefit. Where before, as sheep walk, it employed one man to approximately every 500 acres, as maturing forest it will employ twenty times as many””." He says that the new villages were to be"““large enough to afford opportunities for a reasonably full social life even in these remote hills: and all so designed that they will not be suburban-looking intrusions but closely-knit places””" with"““something of the character of the true English village…in this great Government undertaking you will see in progress a rural revolution””." Well, we should beware of planners and their forecasts. Even in those days, many country people and many who loved the hills as walking country did not subscribe to this vision. Indeed, the Forestry Commission was often criticised for covering the hills with regimented blocks of non-native trees and for the failure of so many of these jobs ever to materialise. The majority of the jobs that were created in the local communities disappeared as a result of mechanisation, the use of highly mobile contractors, and the sale of standing timber to be harvested by the purchaser. We all experienced the recent campaign against the forest sales. The enthusiasm of that campaign, which has led to a rethink of the policies of the present Government, and indeed the previous one, is something of a tribute to the Forestry Commission and its staff. It was not that they campaigned, but that their work had changed the way that the Forestry Commission is perceived. From a position that was controversial to many, it has over the years won a lot of friends. How? It has significantly increased its commitment to landscaping and the use of native species, and adjusted its planting policy to avoid the alien squares and rectangles that wrecked the hill landscape in earlier forestry plantations. It has developed access and leisure opportunities that are much appreciated by the public. At Kielder, this is in co-operation with Northumbrian Water. Through the forest service, which is the main activity at the Rothbury office, it has provided valuable advice and administered grant and approval schemes for the large number of private forest owners and farmers in Northumberland. It has educated children and young people about forests and wildlife. Forest Enterprise, its commercial arm, is regarded by the timber-using industries, which are well-represented in Northumberland, as a guarantor of supply and relative stability in the market. It is obvious from all the e-mails we receive that people have learned to love the Forestry Commission, and that is down to the work of its staff. Clearly, a massive sale of forests would reduce the small staff even further and bring to an end much of the activity I have described. Smaller forest sales to rationalise the estate and some purchases can make sense and I would not want the prospect of charitable trusts choosing to run some ancient woodlands, as the Woodland Trust already does, to be thrown out with the bathwater of the large-scale sales idea. The threat to jobs does not come from the halted programme of large-scale sales; it was planned to meet the financial pressures on the commission under the spending review. The redundancies were to be paid for out of the proceeds of the more limited programme of sales that the Government had announced earlier, based on the system for forest sales operated by the Labour Government, which has also been halted while the Government's new independent advisory panel, chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool, considers the future of state forestry. If the panel recommends that there should be very few further sales, how are the redundancies to be financed? How are the losses, funded by the previous Government partly from sales, to be funded? If the panel recommends that more work should be done in access and leisure, in biodiversity or in education, how can it be done without the expertise of the staff who are being made redundant? How will the advisory work of the forest service in Northumberland's private forestry be maintained? Its role is crucial, in, for example, combating disease when the threat arises. How will the panel consult not just the Institute of Chartered Foresters, which is represented on the panel, but forestry workers in general? There is a further crucial point that I want Ministers to consider. The Northumberland forests are unlike the forests of southern England—they are predominantly commercial, high-yielding forests. There is also extensive private commercial forestry to regulate. If all the forest service offices in the northernmost counties close—Rothbury, Hamsterley and Penrith—that work will not be easily or well managed from York or Delamere. Forestry in Northumberland is much more akin to forestry in Scotland. Indeed, the border forests used to be seen as a single group—I have with me tonight a guide book to the border forests—and they meet at the border in some places. Northumberland's forests are commercial producers on a very large scale and they need to be understood differently from some of the forests in southern England. I have a specific proposal for the Government about the Rothbury office. The national park is considering closing its information centre in Rothbury and both Natural England and the Environment Agency work closely with the Forestry Commission and the national park, as does Northumberland county council. Why cannot those agencies pool a small amount of resources and maintain a presence in shared offices in Rothbury? In that way, they can retain an effective local service and improve joined-up working, which proved itself to be essential in handling the recent floods. It is time to think more radically about how services vital to the countryside and the rural community can be maintained. Here is an opportunity to set an example. Nationally, under the spending review, the Forestry Commission is likely to lose 29% of the staff of Forest Enterprise and 19% of the staff of forest services. Nowhere is that more keenly felt than in Northumberland. Now that the forest sales that were to fund that redundancy programme are being reconsidered, surely the office closure and the redundancies must be reconsidered, too. Apparently, half a million people signed—or perhaps clicked on—the petition opposing forestry sales. They were not convinced by the argument that large-scale commercial forestry does not need to be state-run, at least in part. They were particularly concerned to maintain the access and biodiversity work, which needs experienced and qualified commission staff. This is not an easy circle for the Government to square, but they must listen and they must respond.