Rebecca Smith: Like Margaret Thatcher, we should be in the business of planting trees

Rebecca Smith was elected the MP for South West Devon at the 2024 General Election

 “We are in the business of planting trees, for our children and grandchildren, or we have no business to be in politics at all,” Margaret Thatcher told the Conservative Party Conference in 1982.

Many often forget how passionate an environmentalist Thatcher was, but her record throughout her time as prime minister demonstrates a sincere commitment to protecting the natural world.

She was, of course, right. Trees are the embodiment of a conservative approach to the environment. We protect our trees, woodlands, and forests because we recognise that they are the fabric of our nation, and we plant new ones not merely for ourselves, but to enhance the world of the generations who will follow us.

From habitats for wildlife, to shade from the sun, and from timber for buildings and furniture, to absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, every Brit knows the benefits that trees bring. Indeed, tree planting is one topic that all political parties seem to agree on. It is why I am so proud of my constituency in Plymouth and South West Devon for planting 35,000 trees since November 2024, leading to Plymouth being called the “Tree City of the World”.

But the sad truth is that we aren’t doing enough of it. The UK still remains one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. And though our woodland cover has increased over recent decades, at 13% it lags well behind nearly all our European neighbours.

The government’s response to addressing this challenge is predictably disappointing. As ever, Labour ministers have little of substance to say on how to protect our natural environment, but they have inevitably created a new quango to do their thinking for them. The new Tree Planting Taskforce will no doubt have sincere discussions about what policies to recommend, but we need action, not more warm words.

And that action needs to be different to what has gone before. Government funding pots and initiatives have their place, but they have failed to restore British woodlands at the pace and scale required. We need a fresh approach.

We should again look to Margaret Thatcher for wisdom. For her, the environment and the economy were not conflicting priorities. Quite the opposite, in fact – the natural world and the free market rely on each other, and conservatives should care about them both. It is high time that we took some sound Thatcherite economic principles and applied them to the challenge of planting more trees.

For too long, too many on the left have treated the private sector’s involvement in protecting the environment as something to be avoided and ashamed of. But if we put the right incentives in place, businesses will respond in kind, planting many thousands more trees at little or no cost to the taxpayer.

Outside of the EU, the UK has the opportunity to do this. Our emissions trading system (ETS) is our key industrial carbon pricing mechanism, creating a financial incentive for companies to decarbonise and invest in cleaner technologies.

But Labour is now threatening to link our independent ETS with the EU’s. Instead of giving away control to Brussels, we should be looking to use it better in the UK. By expanding our ETS to include woodland creation, as the last government was looking to do, we would create a clear incentive for land managers to plant thousands more trees at no cost to the taxpayer and sell the carbon credits.

Through the Woodland Carbon Code, a voluntary private market for tree planting already exists, but it has not seen enough trees planted. Phasing this scheme into the UK’s ETS would rapidly boost the economics of tree planting, expanding forest cover and storing up to 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. With proper measures in place to make sure the credits system represents genuine new carbon abatement, this would be a great step forward. We would, of course, have to ask the EU’s permission to do any of this if the government proceeds with rejoining the EU ETS.

We can go further still.

Successive governments have made worthy steps to create new national forests, but a less prescriptive and more entrepreneurial approach could be much more effective. By actively identifying the land most suitable to forest creation and radically streamlining the process of consultation and obtaining funding support, we can remove the bureaucratic hurdles in the way of faster tree planting.

Featured in our party’s now forgotten election manifesto last year, this conservative policy of new Forestry Creation Zones, based on the principles behind investment zones, would deregulate the system of permissions and grants for mass tree planting.

Instead of passively waiting for trees to appear, we need proactive identification of the most suitable areas and outreach to land managers located within them to promote the opportunities. Designating these zones would skew towards parts of England where the land is most suited to mass afforestation and less suited to agriculture.

When it comes to planting trees, we do not need the government’s newest talking shop: we need action. Trees may not be at the forefront of the public’s mind right now, but they are a symbol of how we care for our environment now and for future generations. As Conservatives, we must always be in the business of planting trees.