Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, I ask the Minister about liability; I notified him about this yesterday. Given that a landowner can be held liable for doing something on their land that interferes with a neighbour’s land, where does the liability rest in this case? Imagine I owned land next to the noble Lord’s, who had been instructed or followed advice by Natural England as to how to manage his land—and because of that management the fuel load increases—and I warn the noble Lord, my neighbour, of the consequences the inevitable wildfire will cause. Sure enough, imagine this happens and destroys some of my property. Who is responsible? Am I entitled to sue Natural England, under the new regulations? Should not its directors face the same consequences as those that the directors for water companies face? It is a pity these regulations have been brought forward in such a hurried state after a short consultation period, and when so much badly needed research is currently being funded to try to get more science into this particularly knotty issue.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support the Motion in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. There are indeed matters to regret in the manner—and especially the timing—of these regulations. I cannot claim the experience that other Members of this House doubtless have in dealing with those very large expanses of northern moorland. My experience is from decades of land management on Exmoor, in particular the matter of heather burning, by which I also include gorse, bracken and grass. I am aware of the finely balanced expertise involved in burning operations: the topographical issues, soils, ground moisture, the dwarf shrub combustibility at any given moment, burnable volume or fuel load, wind direction—often depending on which side of the hill you are—and available manpower. I pay tribute to generations not only of Exmoor farmers but of land managers in the uplands in particular, across the country. Their efforts have retained much of what the public appreciate in terms of the natural beauty. I think here particularly of heather moorland—one of the reasons why Exmoor was designated a national park in the first place.

I am also aware of the effect of regulation and the perils of swamping land manager initiative in a sea of red tape, in which timeframes for consenting matters cease to be simple or cognisant of an essentially spontaneous alignment of the factors I have just referred to. In other words, practical matters are subordinate to process.

In my experience, heather is not the invasive species that obliterates moss and bog species. Most heathers do not seem to like boggy conditions, but they do like peaty podzols, where competition from other vegetation is impeded, allowing this pioneer species to develop and thrive. It is held in that balance by the management process: a management driven by purpose, usually gainful agricultural enterprise but also sometimes for game and sporting interests.