What is the forestry minister shaking his head at?
By Sam Macrory - 17th February 2011
There was an intriguing moment during Caroline Spelman’s statement on the government’s u-turn on the forestry sell-off earlier today.
In the environment secretary’s response to her shadow Mary Creagh’s damning assessment of the botched policy, Spelman tells the House that she has invited Richard Macdonald of the Deregulation Task Force to advise ministers on the “the simplification of regulation that applies to agriculture.” Or has she?
Look at the reaction of her Defra colleague Jim Paice, who shakes his head, appears to mutter something, and then purses his lips (skip to 13.02 in the video). Whatever Spelman got wrong, Paice does not try to hide his annoyance.
Which, if you think about it, appears to be a little unfair, especially as Spelman has taken the entire brunt of the backlash against the proposed sell-off.
After all, forestry falls under Paice’s ministerial remit. Conveniently enough, as Spelman does the talking, the minister has said little about the subject in recent weeks.
Back in November during committee stage for the public bodies bill, however, Paice was a little more forthcoming when he told MPs that “we wish to proceed with very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it."
So come on Jim, maybe hide your annoyance next time your battle-scarred boss says something which annoys you.
Article Comments
I'm glad you picked up on this (it happens at 12.51, by the way).
Whatever we think about Jim Paice's reaction, we did not get an answer to the important question that Mary Creagh asked: What is the status of the task force looking at deregulating forestry (or to be fair potentially adding regulations), with a remit which certainly overlaps, and how does it relate to what seems to be being suggested for this panel to look into the future of forestry. At the very least, Caroline Spelman was poorly briefed if she did not know that a very important but very quietly announced industry led review was going on into important aspects of forestry. Clearly the climbdown was not fully thought through, and neither are presumably is this panel.
Details and responses in these links
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-8D8EF3
http://www.savelakelandsforests.org.uk/1/post/2011/1/now-the-government-plans-to-deregulate-forestry-too.html
http://www.confor.org.uk/NewsAndEvents/News.aspx?pid=23&id=782
Imogen Radford
20th Feb 2011 at 11:12 am
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