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Mr. Gray: Does not my hon. Friend find it odd that the Countryside Agency, which is, after all, a Government body, is sending briefing to hon. Members headed: "Countryside Amenity and Conservation Bill: Parliamentary briefing on AONBs"? Apparently, AONBs were included in the Bill until a very recent stage, when the agency printed its briefing.
Mr. Norman: My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is interesting to note that the Countryside Agency is advocating the inclusion of greater protection for AONBs in the Bill. That protection seems to be conspicuously absent.
The Bill provided an opportunity to shift once and for all the balance of protection from intrusive development, particularly house building on the countryside, and to facilitate new partnerships between farmers and people wanting access. By its draconian measures, it has obviated those partnerships and made it more difficult and less likely for them to happen. By all those measures, the Bill comprehensively fails. It is likely to disappoint and to anger in equal part.
More important, the Bill is significant for what it excludes. True conservation depends on the health of the rural economy, which the Bill can only damage. It is a time of crisis for the countryside. It is important that the Bill be seen in the context of what is happening to the rural economy.
Farm incomes have fallen 75 per cent. since the Government came to power. Hill farm incomes are down to an average of £4,500 per annum, which is well below a living income. Moreover, according to the National Farmers Union, the Government are cutting support further by £80 million in the next five years.
The threats to the rural environment are greater than ever. It is ironic that the Bill is being considered within two weeks of the Deputy Prime Minister's announcement
that 900,000 new houses will be imposed on the south-east--on the countryside of Sussex, Kent, Surrey and other home counties, which will be irrevocably lost--often on land that is directly adjacent to many areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest, which the Bill was designed to protect. Independent surveys--it is not only our claim--state that 50 per cent. or more of those 900,000 new houses will be built on green fields. That is the consequence of the Deputy Prime Minister's announcement. The damage to the environment and to conservation in that one stroke--in that one announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister--will be far greater than the damage that the Bill is designed to redress.
The proliferation of visual damage to the countryside is accelerating, unhindered by the Government. Ministers are not providing the necessary support and legislation to restrict the growth of visual intrusion, of which mobile telephone masts are only one example. Although the number of such masts is expected to triple in the next 10 years, the Bill contains no provision to prevent, as Opposition Members have advocated, the unsightly siting of mobile telephone masts. The masts are eroding the countryside and reducing the value of the access that the Bill is designed to introduce.
More broadly, the Bill has been introduced in the context of a failure to deal with the consequences of agricultural intensity and the common agricultural policy. It is significant that, this week, the Prime Minister is going to Lisbon to negotiate at a summit at which agriculture will be conspicuously left off the agenda, despite the fact that we are now contemplating a historic enlargement of the European Union, bringing in the agricultural economies of Hungary and Poland to compete with our own. There are intended to be no changes to the CAP's provisions, which are doing more damage to the countryside than any of the other matters that we have discussed today.
The Bill should be seen against the background of a crisis in the rural economy, which the Bill fails to deal with in any fundamental respect. Nor does it go far enough in the spheres of conservation that really matter. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) mentioned AONBs. The Council for the Protection of Rural England stated:
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle):
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, in seven years under the previous, Conservative Government, 158,000 km of hedgerows were grubbed up? Who was responsible for that?
Mr. Norman:
The hon. Gentleman knows that we are more than fully aware of the problems facing the countryside and the grubbing up of hedgerows. Opposition Members have frequently argued for measures to ensure that that grubbing up ceases.
The Bill not only fails to provide at all for AONBs or protection for hedgerows, but underestimates all the costs of its provisions--the cost to landowners and farmers and that to local authorities, when council tax is already rising at three times the inflation rate. According to the Countryside Agency, it will cost £30 million per annum just to deal with the backlog of work on rights of way. According to English Nature, it will cost £20 million per annum to protect wildlife sites. According to the CLA, it will cost £8 million per annum to operate open access.
Mr. Bennett:
If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about areas of outstanding natural beauty, does he accept that he could strike a deal now across the Chamber that agreed measures could be added to the Bill, which he would facilitate in Committee? He could get his friends in the other place also to facilitate such measures. How about it?
Mr. Norman:
The hon. Gentleman will know that in the past we have offered to include such provisions in a narrower protection Bill. I shall refer to the aspects of the Bill that are a great deal more objectionable than those to which I have referred. I take the opportunity to welcome a representative of MAFF to the Chamber--the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Let us not pretend that the Bill solves the problems of conservation or access. It does neither, after three years of waiting. It delivers a little when much is needed. It is swimming against the tide of housing and development that has been unleashed by the Deputy Prime Minister, who is absent from the Chamber. It is a piecemeal attempt to address a systemic problem, and it is a sadly missed opportunity.
I move on to the right to roam and open access. Worse than the absence of true protectionist and conservationist measures, the parts of the Bill that we have welcomed are the sugar coating around the damaging provisions of the right to roam. We believe that the right to roam raises a fundamental issue of principle, which is that the state should not confiscate the property rights of individuals without compensation or without regard to the costs to, or the livelihoods of, those who are affected.
It is easy for the Minister to try to characterise those who will be affected as wealthy landowners. He will know that in reality many of these people are small sheep farmers--they are often tenant farmers, not even landowners--and conservationists. These are people who have worked and saved hard to do the right thing for the countryside, for wildlife and for the farming community.
These people, too, have rights. It is for Conservatives to stand up for minorities, whether rich or poor. Conservation is about providing incentives for all who are involved, and not only introducing regulations for the few.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, especially as the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) has skedaddled. Perhaps he did not want to ask a question after all.
My hon. Friend will know that all Conservative Members are accused of being landowners and standing up for the big toffs who are similarly landowners. I own less than 0.1 of an acre of this country, so I do not think that I can be accused of being a big landowner. Does he
agree that the right to roam is really the delivery of a promise to the old-style socialists, those who envy the fact that someone might have some property that he wishes to protect? Since the inception of the Labour movement, it has always been argued that we must drive away all property. The Minister accused the Tory party of representing landowners, and in so doing he represented the old-style envy of the socialists.
Mr. Norman:
My hon. Friend makes his point with characteristic potency. I am sure that no one on either side of the House would accuse him of being a toff.
We are concerned that the Bill is a missed opportunity to deliver on numerous Government commitments to secure much needed improvements to the protection and management of England's valuable hedgerows, landscape features and AONBs.
That sentiment has been echoed by the Country Landowners Association, the Countryside Agency and other environmentalist groups.
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