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Mr. Tipping: May I remind the hon. Gentleman for the third time that the amendment does not ask for unfettered access but "reasonable access"? My position on this matter is set out clearly in the Access to the Countryside Bill, which I advise him to read. He can then identify my position, rather than make a false prospectus. Many of the points that he has made could not be attached to the Access to the Countryside Bill.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for trying to clarify his position, and I look forward with great interest to reading his Bill.
Sir Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington): I wandered in and thought that I had got my days wrong. I heard the discussions about habitats, but I thought that we were discussing the Finance Bill. I have listened with interest to my hon. Friend who, if I may say so, is making heavy weather of this. I hold no brief for the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping), but the word "reasonable" is very important in the legal sense. We all know that some people abuse these schemes, but we must bear it in mind that the public legitimately want access to the countryside and that we want to preserve habitats. There should be
"reasonable access" and some give and take by farmers and ramblers. If people start going the wrong way, we must take action against them. But perhaps we should be more liberal than regressive on this matter.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am trying hard to keep my remarks brief, Sir Geoffrey, but I keep being distracted. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend was not here for the start of my speech, so I must briefly tell him that I am not against public access at all, but that we must have the right attitude towards it. The existing rights of way network should be upheld, but if the hon. Member for Sherwood wants to table an amendment such as this, he must specify what he means by "reasonable access."
Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian): The hon. Gentleman is making a terrible meal of this. He has made clear to the House that he has interests in a farm, and so have I. My farm is in Scotland where there is, in effect, a right to roam. It has never caused anybody any problems, and there is a good partnership between members of the public who walk around the countryside and the farming industry. What is the point in having a habitat scheme to protect habitats for the benefit of the public if we deny the public reasonable access to them? He is overdoing it.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The hon. Gentleman has shown clearly that he has no idea what the habitat scheme is for. The whole idea is to keep an area completely undisturbed to enhance a particular habitat, and we must not get that muddled up with other areas of farming land where the public have a perfect right of access. The whole idea is that we wish to enhance particular flora or fauna which otherwise would not exist. That is why we are prepared to pay taxpayers' hard-earned money--to enhance those things that the public want to see.
I do not know about the farm of the hon. Member for East Lothian, but if the amendment were to be applied to it, I suspect that valuable areas of habitat might be affected. We are talking about small areas, and we do not want to deny the public the right of access to huge areas of countryside. We are making heavy weather of this because I keep being interrupted. The amendment is absolutely nonsensical and totally contrary to the purposes of the scheme. On that basis, I totally oppose it.
Mr. Alan Milburn (Darlington):
We have had an interesting diversion for the last 28 minutes. It has been a veritable tour de force--a tour of fauna and flora, molluscs, insects and the animal kingdom.
I want to bring the debate back to the amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) has raised an important issue, which is something of a hardy annual in Finance Bills: it comes back year after year. My hon. Friend should be congratulated on being such a doughty champion of the right of access to land that has benefited from the public purse. He raised the issue in Committee last year and he has done so again today, this time in relation to clause 92, which extends inheritance tax relief to land within habitat schemes.
The amendment would make the relief conditional on a modicum--a reasonable amount--of public access. That is exactly the sort of phraseology that was encompassed in the original Act to deal with the issue: the Finance Act 1976. The continual concern of the hon. Member for
Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) about the words "reasonable access" can therefore perhaps be laid to rest if he cares to examine previous laws dealing with the matter.
The argument is not about the principle of relieving inheritance tax in exchange for gaining public access to important parts of the countryside. The simple principle is that if the taxpayer is forking out a small fortune--because that is what is represented by the millions of pounds of revenue forgone in the past--the Government should ensure that the recipients either fulfil their obligations to public access or forgo the tax advantage.
It is a question of rights and responsibilities: the right to receive public subsidy and the responsibility to guarantee public access. That is the principle that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood wants to enshrine in the law through the amendment. The problem, as he said both this year and last year, is that public access cannot be guaranteed when information about the land concerned is not readily available.
We do not even know the number of sites that are subject to conditional exemption. The Government's shuffling off of responsibility to the Countryside Commission and individual local authorities simply will not do, because the local authorities do not know, and the commission will not say, where the sites are. The public, who are the ultimate financiers of the relief, cannot find out where the land is.
Last year, I paid particular attention to the Minister's comments when he replied to a similar debate in the Standing Committee. He sought to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood about information being available to the public. He said that such information was available
I appreciate that it would be wrong for the Inland Revenue to disclose information about the affairs of individual taxpayers. We do not ask how much relief is worth in individual cases, but we want to know where access has been promised in return for relief and we want that access to be guaranteed. As the Ramblers once memorably put it, the law is supposed to give the taxpayer some quo for its quids.
Mr. Jack:
Has the hon. Gentleman studied Inland Revenue publication IR156?
Mr. Milburn:
I have not had the opportunity to study that publication, but I am sure that in his response the Minister will acquaint the whole Committee with its contents. I am concerned to ensure that, if public subsidies are given to landowners to take land out of farming use and to attain the laudable environmental objectives of preserving the countryside, the people that that is supposed to benefit--the public--have a right to reasonable access.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
The hon. Gentleman is advancing a reasonable case, but he should consider the cost of granting that reasonable access to the countryside. I make this intervention because part of my constituency lies within the Peak park, which was referred to by my
Mr. Milburn:
The hon. Gentleman makes an important and telling point. If rights and responsibilities apply on one side of the argument they must apply on the other. We should certainly not condone behaviour in the countryside that causes damage to areas of outstanding natural beauty or creates additional costs for those who are responsible for looking after them. I hope that the Minister will take note of the hon. Gentleman's point about my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood having a reasonable case.
It is especially important that the right of public access should be guaranteed where it has been promised, because many of the lands covered by existing inheritance tax agreements lie in areas of outstanding natural beauty--the jewels in the crown of our countryside--but we do not even know where they are, so members of the public cannot properly enjoy them.
Conservative Members have been as concerned as Opposition Members about some of the issues that we have discussed this evening. The National Audit Office also expressed concern about the operation of the current inheritance tax regime, which the clause extends to lands under the habitat schemes.
An NAO report in 1992 said:
"if we care to ferret out the facts."--[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 27 February 1996; c. 555.]
It is not. In any case, the public should not have to ferret out information that should by right be theirs.
8.15 pm
"The Department should give further attention to the nature and frequency of the procedures to monitor owners' compliance with undertakings given in return for conditional exemption from inheritance tax on land, buildings and particularly chattels. They should also review the extent to which assurances on retention, maintenance and rights of access remain heavily dependent on owners themselves."
It is five years since the office produced that report. I understand that a Public Accounts Committee report produced the following year made similar recommendations.
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