Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Peter Soulsby
Main Page: Peter Soulsby (Labour - Leicester South)Department Debates - View all Peter Soulsby's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Spelman
With respect, the question is about the big tree plant campaign, a partnership campaign that DEFRA will support with £4 million of public money. The campaign is being run in conjunction with a large number of partners and charities, including Groundwork, Keep Britain Tidy, the Tree Council and the National Forest Company. In every sense, it is a big society campaign.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)
Two hundred and fifty thousand a year sounds like a lot of trees, but not when compared with the estimated 250 million trees—1,000 times as many—owned by the Forestry Commission in England, much of which the Government are intent on selling off and putting at risk. Will the Secretary of State tell us what she will say to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is actively campaigning against proposals to dispose of a similar proportion of Forestry Commission land in Scotland—a sale of trees that Lib Dems have described as “hugely flawed” and as a “money-making scam”?