Photo: UK Parliament
By Sally Nex, Peat-free Partnership
We’re never ones to give up easily here at the Peat-free Partnership.
As you know, there is still no legislation in sight to end peat sales for horticulture – despite a firm government commitment made back in 2022.
So one of the few remaining options open for getting something done about this is for one of the many backbench MPs who would like this to happen to bring in their own legislation. And the main vehicle for that is the Private Members’ Bill.
Yesterday saw not the first, but the second introduction of the Horticultural Peat (Prohibition of Sale) Bill into Parliament. If you remember, the first try was led by now former MP Theresa Villiers – foiled within a week of its second reading by the announcement of a General Election.
But it takes more than an election to keep a good Bill down. It was back again on Wednesday, this time proposed by Glastonbury & Somerton MP Sarah Dyke. Ms Dyke has a special interest in ending peat sales as her constituency lies right alongside the Somerset Levels – one of only two remaining areas in England where peat is actively extracted for horticulture (there are many more in Scotland and Northern Ireland).
Ham Wall Nature Reserve, Somerset Levels (Photo: Peat-free Partnership/Sally Nex)
So she was able to argue passionately for the need to protect these unique landscapes. “With our current knowledge on the damage peat extraction does to nature, the environment and the land around us there is simply no excuse not to change course,” she said. “Somerset faces ever more devastating flooding every winter. The degradation and destruction of our peatlands does little to lessen its impact, by reducing peatland’s ability to absorb excess rainwater and act as a natural flood defence, as an intact peat bog would do.”
She told MPs about a visit to Durston’s Garden Products, based near Street on the Levels and until recently a fully peat-based compost manufacturer as well as being involved in peat extraction. They’re now 75% peat-free, aiming to go all the way soon, and, Sarah said, they fully support legislation for a ban.
She also namechecked the open letter we sent to the Prime Minister in September as proof that a sizeable sector of the horticulture industry would like legislation too, to end the uncertainty that’s dogged nurseries, wholesale growers and retailers over this issue ever since the government promised to legislate but never saw it through.
Ms Dyke was right to point out that switching to peat-free means a more sustainable, circular economy, too: apart from coir, peat-free substitutes tend to be derived from recycling, repurposing and reclaiming from existing industries, generally also sited near where the compost is actually made. She mentioned Rocketgro, another great Somerset horticultural business which processes digestate – a side-product of the renewable energy industry – into good quality peat-free compost for gardeners. No need to devastate a unique habitat and release the carbon it contains; zero transport miles as it’s produced on site; and a great use for an otherwise underexploited byproduct.
“By setting dates in stone, with legislation, this would remove the uncertainty that is damaging the industry and reducing the opportunities,” she said. “The destruction of these precious, beautiful and important habitats must stop.”
Her speech was greeted with firm “Hear, hear”s by her good-sized audience of MPs and passed through to a second reading on 24 January next year. Elections permitting, we’ll be there watching, urging on this best chance yet of securing legislation as it makes its way at last through the House.
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