Labour’s wood-burning stove crackdown is another attack on the countryside, writes Rachel Johnson

And I have one because I live in the middle of what used to be called Exmoor Forest – the clue’s in the name. The wood is all around us.

There’s basically an infinite supply of this fuel, and the choice is either central heating or using the wood on the ground that we can cut and store ourselves, rather than getting a van to come from Minehead to fill our oil tank with fossil fuel and then burning that. And, by the way, we once had our oil tank drained by thieves – they’re not exactly going to come and steal our wood pile, so that’s a bonus.

My view is that it’s better for the environment to burn the wood that’s free and in infinite supply on our own farm than to order in kerosene. So yes, we have a wood burner. It’s in the main room in our Somerset house. I wouldn’t have one in London – I completely get that argument. You wouldn’t want to add more particulates to already toxic city air.

But out here on Exmoor? We’re two miles from tarmac. I doubt we’re causing much pollution or adding to the degradation of the air. We live in one of the most remote valleys in the southwest. If you climb up a hill you can't see another house for miles. There is no pollution to add to.

With the UK supporting over 3.3 million hectares of woodland, much of it sustainably managed, there is ample local timber available for rural households to use as heating fuel without relying on fossil‑fuel deliveries.

It’s traditional where we are. When I was a child growing up on the farm, the only entertainment - indeed the one of the only activities - was gathering wood. My father would shout up the stairs as we hid in our bedrooms reading: “kids, we are going wooding!” that meant, in all weathers, climbing into an ancient series 2 Land Rover, driving up vertical cleeves in the sleet, dragging huge chunks of beech and oak into the back, unloading them in the yard, and then him cutting them.

He sometimes took a chainsaw. On more than one occasion he managed to injure himself – once, sitting up a tree next to our house, he cut off the very branch he was sitting on and ended up in hospital, having knocked out his two front teeth. But undeterred, he kept wielding a chainsaw without goggles or any protective gear.

So, there’s no way Labour could ban wood-burning stoves in the countryside. I think there’s a case for banning them in cities, where there’s already a lot of particulate in the air. You wouldn’t want to make the air quality worse.

But in the country? From a class point of view, it would be a sort of class war to tell the middle classes, upper classes, and even the yurt-dwelling classes that they can’t burn wood. This is something freeborn Englishmen have been doing since prehistoric times – it’s in our DNA to sit around a fire, open or enclosed.

Labour is right to tread carefully. It’s a hot potato. I’d say there’s a case for restricting new wood-burning stoves in towns, but out here in the country? Not a chance.

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Rachel Johnson, as told to Katy Ronkin.

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