7 February 2011, Dailymail news - Ministers have signalled a retreat on selling off England’s precious woodlands, saying the contentious plan was ‘not a done deal’. The government performed its first big U-turn on the austerity plans for precious woodlands, scrapping proposals to sell off 140 National Nature Reserves.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman pledged that they would remain in public ownership after all. She also stressed that the consultation to sell off 258,000 hectares of national forests was ‘not a done deal’ and that ministers would listen to campaigners. Mrs Spelman was trying to appease public anger over the move, which has united environmentalists, celebrities and even Tory backbenchers into a campaign against handing over woodland to private firms and charities.

The government wants to hand a quarter of woodland managed by the Forestry Commission to new or existing trusts, and another quarter will be offered to communities and charities. Half of the woodlands in England will be put on the open market over the coming years. Mrs Spelman told the BBC’s Politics Show that it was only week two of a 12 week consultation, signalling there was still time for the policy to change. She said: ‘We're in the very early stage of the consultation, this is a genuinely open consultation, unlike some of the consultations we saw in the past... like the Post Office closures where you knew it was a done deal. ‘This is genuinely open and we want people to get involved with this consultation because it's about great local accountability and some greener solutions.’ Plans to sell off the forests to charitable trusts and the private sector would go alongside much stronger rights for public access. She also said campaigners had been ‘worked up’ by the ‘wild’ and ‘inaccurate speculation’ about the government’s plans. ‘A lot of people were reacting to the myths and now we have the true proposals on the table I'm encouraging all of them, everyone who wants to get involved in the consultation.’ Campaigners had reacted to the plans before they had even been announced in detail, she said, pointing to a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘Before our proposals were made public, I think what a lot of people have got worked up about and afraid of has been down to wild speculation quite frankly.’

Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow environment secretary, seized on the government’s U-turn over nature reserves and called for ministers to rethink the wider sell off. She said: ‘This is an inevitable u-turn by the Conservative-led Government. These nature reserves are of national importance and should be managed for the benefit of the country as a whole. Any organisation taking them on would need to apply for grants to run them, but with no guarantee they would receive funding the charities have, quite rightly, made it clear they aren't interested. I hope the Government will now think again about plans to sell off England's forests as well.’

The growing fury over the government’s plans to sell off England’s forests culminated in an attack on a minister last week. Mark Harper, the Tory MP for the Forest of Dean, was pelted with eggs at a public meeting in his constituency on Friday. He was defending the government’s plans for a forestry sell off when demonstrators attacked. During a heated Commons debate last week, Julian Lewis, the Tory MP for New Forest East, warned that the plans could become David Cameron’s ‘poll tax’. He said: ‘There are some policies that make intellectual sense but which you can never sell to the electorate and the forestry sell-off is one of them.’ So far around 300,000 people have signed a petition to halt the sale, which would represent the biggest change in land ownership for more than 80 years.