Government land use framework will ‘strengthen food security’ in the UK

We spoke to Environment Secretary Steve Reed about the purpose of the land use framework.

Steve Reed: The land use framework is about giving decision makers, farmers, landowners, planning authorities, access to the information they need to make sure that the decisions they take are the best for the land that they’re taking decisions about. Having a land use framework that seeks to balance nature’s recovery and the way that we farm, with the other demands that we make on our land, we can strengthen, not weaken, food security. That is one of the explicit outcomes we want from this.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But this will boil down to priorities. I mean, as it is, farmland being used for food is going down. It did under the last government. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We’re losing nature at an alarming rate. But the government’s priority right now is ‘build, build, build’. That’s what we’ve been hearing this week. You know, build new airports, build new buildings, sweep away objections. So how can we trust that your priorities are going to protect the things that matter?

Steve Reed: We do want to build the homes that we need to deal with the housing crisis. We need to build the sites for the data centres and giga centres and infrastructure that we’re going to need. But we want to do it in a way that also protects food security and helps nature to recover. Take the housing, for instance. We’re not letting the need to protect nature block housing and development. That’s going to go ahead faster. But developers will pay into a nature restoration fund that will pay for improvements to nature at scale across whole communities. So although we won’t be protecting nature, bat by bat, if you look at it in the round, we will have more nature after doing this development than we started with, in the first place.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So if this is just about data, then why do you need a consultation?

Steve Reed: We want people to tell us, how do we use this data to inform decision making about how we not just maintain food security, but strengthen food security in the face of climate change, which is damaging it immensely. And these things don’t all have to be separate as well. There’s another concept of multi-functional land use. So if you’ve got a field that is getting flooded more because of climate change, you can’t grow crops there anymore. Can you grow trees there? The trees help the land hold more water. So when the flooding happens, it’s not cascading down the river into populated areas and flooding people’s homes. If we take decisions like that, we can protect nature and habitats and protect communities from flooding.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: You’ve got a trust problem with farmers, though, haven’t you, after the budget? Where they feel this government is out to damage them. And you’re not going to back down on inheritance tax on farming. Is there anything really that you can offer that is meaningful?

Steve Reed: The concerns that farmers have got go way deeper than one tax change.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But that’s very deep isn’t it?

Steve Reed: Farmers were made all sorts of promises, for instance, when Brexit was happening. That they would be able to maintain access to the European markets. In fact, the previous government put up trade barriers and exports have gone down by 20%. In the farming roadmap, we’re putting farmers in the lead. I’m not sitting in a government department telling farmers how to farm. We’re handing power to farmers and they will map out the path ahead.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So how will this framework kick in on a decision like Heathrow? But what will its role be?

Steve Reed: The land use framework is about looking at all the land across the whole country so that we can make the best decisions in the round for the whole.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So it won’t affect Heathrow, is what you are saying? That decision’s already gone effectively.

Steve Reed: The chancellor was very clear that any proposals for growing Heathrow will meet our climate and environmental targets. So we’ll see how that looks.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you were against Heathrow, weren’t you? Have you changed your mind?

Steve Reed: I was only against it because I was in favour of expanding Gatwick, because it benefits my constituency, and that’s being expanded as well. So this is great as far as I’m concerned.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So you weren’t in principle against the expansion?

Steve Reed: I’m not against the expansion of air travel. I wanted ,as a good constituency MP, my constituency to benefit from the new jobs that would come from expanding Gatwick. Happily, we’re going to benefit from that. But the country more widely will benefit from the proposals for expanding.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What do you say then to those people, and, you know, there’s a lot of suspicion about this government, that you’re an urban- focussed government who don’t understand the countryside? And your priority right now is growth. And you’ll talk a good game on nature and farming, but ultimately we know what your priority is and some things will suffer and it will be nature and farming.

Steve Reed: We have more rural MPs than any other party in parliament. But the way that we’re taking these decisions, this is not ministers in Whitehall taking decisions about people. The land use framework, this is a consultation that we’re opening up to farmers and to landowners and to developers so they can tell us the best way to use the land, to achieve all of the outcomes that we have on it. It’s the same with the farming roadmap.