Mr. Simon White:

This review talks about an ex gratiapayment. The report states that there has been a complete freeze in action from 2018 to 2023 when nothing was done. What happened in that time? Five years ago, an awful lot of the forests were healthy. It was made illegal for us to salvage anything we had and that is where people lost a fortune. In the time that no action was taken the losses mounted up. The trees that are there now are diseased. There are railway lines going through my farm and 108 trees had to be cut. I thought they would be valuable as firewood but we now find that the calorific value of the timber is low. The timber is rotten and falls apart in your fingers. It is gone and that was an asset that we were prevented from salvaging. That is what is wrong and it needs to be addressed straight away. That asset would have provided money that landowners could have reinvested in replanting and doing things themselves. They do not have that money now; it is gone.