8. Statement by the Minister for Environment: The Woodland Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:14 pm on 26 June 2018.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 6:14, 26 June 2018

Firstly, I would like to pay tribute to Martin Bishop, the national manager of Confor, who tragically passed away recently, on behalf of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, a committee he worked very closely with, and we were always impressed by both his knowledge and enthusiasm for all things to do with trees.

Can I welcome the Minister's restating the Welsh Government's long-term vision for woodlands and their hugely important role in delivering the sustainable management of our natural resources? I agree that Wales needs more woodlands and trees to help us manage all our natural resources sustainably. In fact, I don't think anybody in this room is going to say we don't need more woodlands and trees to help us manage our natural resources sustainably. But we have not done enough yet to increase woodland creation, so I welcome, for the first time, we have targets for woodland creation in the strategy.

I am pleased that, last year, the Cabinet Secretary accepted the recommendation of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee that we should bring the strategy up to date. I'm also pleased that Welsh Government officials are working to take forward the 13 recommendations made by the committee.

I think that we're all in favour of more trees and we're all very happy having numbers. How are we going to get there? I think that really is the challenge. Does the Minister agree with me that we need to increase the tree coverage in urban areas using appropriate trees and we need to set targets on that? We need to set targets by local authority on that, because, unless we start setting targets that you can drill down into—saying, 'We need an extra 10,000 trees in Wales' is one thing, telling Swansea council they need an extra 1,000 trees is something entirely different and something for which they can be held to account. Does the Minister also agree that we need to set five-year targets for each local authority area for tree planting similar to the way we set the LDP for housing, where, under an LDP, we say, 'This much land must be made available for housing'? Why can't we do the same for trees? Otherwise, we spend a lot of our time having numbers on an all-Wales basis. We spend a lot of our time talking about how we need to get there, but we seem to have a lack of plan on a place-by-place basis of how we're going to get there. And, when we inevitably fail to make the numbers, then everybody blames you, Cabinet Minister, in the first instance, but I think we all deserve some of the blame, because unless we start building it down to, 'You, in local authorities, or you, this area, have to achieve this', then everybody will just say, 'It's up to somebody else'.