Archived press release

MP kills bill to protect wildlife habitats

8 May 1996

Matthew Banks, Conservative MP for Southport today tried to destroy a Private Member's Bill that would provide additional protection for Great Britain's top nature areas, the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).The MP's attempt to wreck the Bill is remarkable considering Mr Banks is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Environment Minister David Currey who is, along with Environment Secretary John Gummer, a firm supporter of the Bill. Conservative Whips confirmed earlier this year that they hoped "it [the Wildilfe Bill] would be on the statute book in early summer".

The Wildlife Bill was first drafted by Friends of the Earth and has been sponsored as a Private Member's Bill by James Couchman, Conservative MP for Gillingham. The Bill would help prevent damage that arises annually to hundreds of SSSIs as a result of pressures ranging from quarrying and peat digging to overgrazing and simple neglect. The Bill has strong cross party support in the Commons (over 270 MPs have formally endorsed it)and Britain's major conservation groups (such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the World Wide Fund for Nature) back its provisions.

Tony Juniper, Deputy Campaigns Director at of Friends of the Earth, said:

"The Wildlife Bill is urgently needed to protect habitats and has proved tremendously popular. We cannot understand why Mr Banks has humiliated his own Government in this way or ignored the strong body of opinion that supports this Bill. The Minister should sack him and find someone reliable instead".

Mr Banks has SSSI habitats under threat in his own constituency and could have expected these important sites to be better protected if the Bill became law. For instance, the Southport Sand Dunes and Foreshore SSSI is at threat from a proposed sea wall, road construction, sand extraction and motorcycle scrambling.

Mr Juniper continued

"Given that Mr Banks has a majority of just over 3000, we would have expected him to be more careful. He may have just committed political suicide".

Main provisions of the Wildlife Bill

The Bill is designed to close loopholes in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 which permit legal damage to hundreds of SSSIs annually.

Specifically....

It would extend powers available to the Secretary of State to order that proposed damaging development on SSSIs be avoided. Currently, such powers are only available to protect sites deemed to be nationally important'.

The Bill introduces a power for the statutory wildlife agencies like English Nature to make byelaws limiting damaging activities on SSSIs like motorcycle scrambling. The existing laws only apply to owners and occupiers and damage caused by so called third parties' cannot be controlled. By making byelaws, the agencies can limit potentially damaging actitivies that presently lie outside the statutory framework.

The Bill would provide powers of entry to private land by the staff of the Goverment's wildlife advisory agencies so that they could assess the state of SSSIs and ensure that public funded management works on such areas were being properly implemented.

The Bill would also allow the Courts to require that persons convicted of illegally damaging sites restore them to their former state. This would be more of an incentive against illegal damage than small fines.

The Bill would enter into statute the intentions of official Planning Policy Guidance such that it would be less easy for planning authorities to grant planning consent for developments that damage SSSIs.

The Bill would also change the present profits foregone' system of management agreement payments such that landowners would receive money for SSSI protection only if they were carrying out positive works. At present, landowners can blackmail the country by asking for money simply not to damage sites.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust