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8.46 pm
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray). I am not sure whether I could be described as an extreme rambler, but I have certainly rambled at great length over many stretches of the Pennines and the lake district over many years. He commented on the language of new Labour, but he speaks the new Tory language that says that if the Bill is enacted it will be a charter for poachers, burglars, trespassers, drug addicts and hooligans of all kinds. I will tell my constituents with great pleasure this weekend how ramblers have been described by the official Opposition.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and his ministerial colleagues: the Bill will bring enormous pleasure to many millions of people. My constituents and members of our party and of the ramblers movement will all welcome it. I see it primarily not as a
piece of legislation with huge symbolic importance but as one with great practical importance, because it will open up the pleasures of the countryside, over time, to more and more people, at the same time as enhancing wildlife protection.
I want to reassure Opposition Members. I live in an area on the edge of the Pennines where we already have a well-established rights of way network and the right to roam over many thousands of acres, and in all the years I have lived there, I have experienced very little difficulty, other than with the occasional stray mountain biker or motorcyclist.
Every day of the week, ramblers walk past my front door and through the little bit of land at my back door, and I find great pleasure in seeing them enjoying the countryside. They are not urban hooligans. Most of the ramblers in the mid-Pennines are entirely responsible people who care for the countryside. With the additional access that the Bill will bring, they will continue to care for it and to promote conservation.
Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire):
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that pretty much everywhere--and certainly in Wales--landowners, too, behave in a responsible way and that they may regard the Bill as something of a sledgehammer to crack a nut?
Mr. Chaytor:
That may be so, but what is interesting about the official Opposition line is that it is in fact two lines. The Conservatives argue that there is no pent-up demand for access and that the Bill is unnecessary for that reason, and then they say that there is huge pent-up demand by drug dealers from the inner city to get into the landowners' estates and do their evil deeds. That is a completely contradictory argument from the Conservatives. We should not take any lessons on the countryside from the party which introduced BSE to the nation and enabled four supermarkets to control the nation's food supply and drive down the prices paid to farmers for milk and meat. The Conservatives cannot teach us any lessons about conserving or protecting the countryside.
My constituency is largely urban and suburban, although it contains some of the most attractive landscape in Greater Manchester and some very environmentally sensitive areas. I shall address one issue that is not in the Bill but which I passionately believe should be added to it. I welcome the extra protection given to SSSIs, but most people never visit one and do not know where their nearest one is. What we need to do is increase the attraction and the pleasure of the countryside and the quality of the environment for urban and suburban dwellers, so the Bill should include some protection for local wildlife sites. The vast majority of urban and suburban dwellers are unlikely to flood out into the countryside in hugely increasing numbers, now or in the future, but they need more access to green space and more experience of wildlife locally, in the towns and cities.
I pay tribute to the work of the wild life trusts across the country, especially the Lancashire wild life trusts. I pay special tribute to groups in my constituency which have worked hard to preserve important wildlife centres, such as Barracks Lodge, which is a large, important stretch of water that a local developer unfortunately wished to drain and build houses on. I pay tribute to the
work of people campaigning for the preservation of Chesham woods, a site that could easily have been turned into a golf course. I mention the work of the Holcombe Society, which has protected the landscape around Holcombe hill which, with its famous tower, is one of the most important landscapes in south-east Lancashire. I also pay tribute to those working to protect sites in the Hollins area of my constituency.
We must understand that most of our population--the 59 million now living in the United Kingdom--are urban and suburban dwellers, which is why we need better protection of the wildlife in the last green oases in our towns and suburbs. I also pay special tribute to three people in my constituency of Bury, North--Mr. Michael Wellock, Mr. Martin Prescott and Mr. David Bentley--who have campaigned vigorously in the past few years to preserve the last remaining green sites in the centre and fringes of the towns.
I understand that within the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions a review group has examined the issue of local wildlife sites. I understand that the group's report may be published in the near future, and I urge Ministers to consider seriously the recommendations that may be made and the possibility of giving statutory protection to local wildlife sites. That would mean giving local authorities the duty and responsibility to establish a network of local wildlife sites. It would also mean giving advice and information to owners of such sites about how best to preserve them, and it would mean protecting those sites through the unitary development plans and the planning process. And yes, it would also mean some investment in the preservation of wildlife in those areas.
As an adjunct, it is important, in the context of strengthening the statutory basis of wildlife protection, that statutory force be given to the UK biodiversity action plan, a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mrs. Brinton) and by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Not many hon. Members will have taken their copies of the biodiversity action plan from the Vote Office, but I have and I commend it to all hon. Members as a fascinating and invaluable document, especially if they have children currently studying GCSE or A-level biology or geography. If the marvellous work that went into the production of the biodiversity action plan is to have its full reward, it must have statutory force.
In the time remaining to me, I should like to mention another concern that needs addressing more fully by the Bill. I refer to invasive species. I am all in favour of letting 1,000 flowers bloom. The difficulty is that two or three of them then tend to take over the rest. A remarkable feature of suburban areas in recent years has been the huge developments in gardens--the rapid growth of small ponds and water courses, the massive increase in all things aquatic and the growth of garden centres. People's understandable desire to increase and improve the biodiversity in their own back yards has led, unfortunately, to the import of a large number of invasive species. I should like to mention the 10 most dangerous species, which threaten the biodiversity of other species. They are--and as time is short, I shall not mention the full Latin botanical names--the Australian swamp stonecrop, also known as the New Zealand pigmyweed,
parrot's feather, floating pennywort, Indian balsam, water fern, water lettuce, giant salvinia, water hyacinth and water chestnut.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York):
I am delighted to speak in the debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), although I shall not be mentioning the list of weeds to which he referred.
I wish to speak in favour of the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, and to commend it to the House. The amendment puts a new light on "roaming in the gloaming". I believe that the amendment, rather than the Bill, sums up the delicate balance that must be reached between the various interest groups. In doing so, I wish to declare an interest. I am the half owner of a smallholding--and when I say smallholding, I mean a small holding--with two fields in Teesdale, County Durham. My brother is the co-owner. It is opposite and across the river from the Pennine way, the part of the country where I was brought up, so I am very aware of the problems of access to such popular walks as the Pennine way.
I was amazed, a number of years ago, that Teesdale district council chose to use local residents' money, through the community charge--as it then was--to tarmac part of the Pennine way, accessing one of the area's well-known beauty spots, High Force. My husband and I chose to marry and hold our reception at High Force hotel. I should have thought that the money could have been better used building a swimming pool for the use of all those living in Middleton and Teesdale and in the villages up and down the dale. We all wish to improve access to the countryside, but I argue, as the reasoned amendment argues, that there are other and better ways of doing so than those set out in the Bill.
I am proud to say that we have at least two sites of special scientific interest in the Vale of York which I am going to visit in the next month. I am sure that Yorkshire wildlife trust would welcome ways of improving access to and protection of such sites. I believe, however, that a better and more appropriate way forward would have been through a voluntary, non-legislative and non-binding approach. Positive co-operation could be encouraged between all those involved, such as the wildlife trusts, English Nature and the landowners, whom Labour Members seem often to forget. The Bill does not adequately fund, on the basis of positive management agreements, adequate access to and protection of such sites of special scientific interest.
The House should consider the consequences of opening up, in the comparatively densely populated region of England and Wales, the blanket access over 4 million acres that the Bill proposes. The Minister and I are becoming familiar to one another; he gave a courteous response to my Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall last week. Will he explain the extent to which rural
development grants, under the revised EU structural funds, could be allocated to reimburse the costs to landowners of meeting the Bill's requirements for open access to the countryside? I realise that the matter may not be one for his Department; it might be more appropriately dealt with by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
It is right and proper that landowners should be encouraged to diversify and to move away from food production. That has been agreed and strengthened under the Agenda 2000 provisions. Will the Government consider whether they could properly apply rural development funds for those purposes?
It is important for the Government to address the question of costs, because they will inevitably increase for landowners. I offer the House a local example, from my constituency, in which rights of way have not been properly resolved under the present arrangements. I was contacted by a lady who had recently been widowed and who felt especially vulnerable when she wrote to me. She and her husband bought their field and property in 1953; they lived and worked there for 45 years. On 1 October last year, she wrote:
The lady's neighbour, happily, was minded to agree to reroute the path through her own property. That neighbour is Mrs. Blair--I assure the House that she is no relation to the parliamentarian of the same name. The land at Asenby, near Thirsk, has been farmed by her husband for several years. He discovered that 11 of the 13 fields have footpaths running through them.
The Blairs farm corn and keep a suckler herd; the farm is wholly managed by Mr. Blair. He is personally responsible for erecting stiles in 11 fields, for which he receives no help or financial support. In Mrs. Blair's view, that makes it extremely difficult for him to continue farming--especially at certain times of the year, such as just before and after calving, when the animals need to be undisturbed. I am sure that I do not need to tell you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, how upset a cow can be when she has a young calf.
If we added that example to the many others that hon. Members could cite from their constituencies, we would regrettably realise that such rights of way problems are not resolved by the measure. Indeed, the Bill would make the situation worse; it would be much more harmful to the farming community. The Government give the impression that they have no understanding of farming, or of the continuous crisis in the countryside. The Bill fails to provide sufficient improvements to the rights of way network. It brings no hope to people such as my constituents, the Blairs, in the Vale of York.
The rights of way network is an important and appropriate vehicle for improving access for most people, and I believe that the Government will have the opportunity in Committee to resolve that situation. I urgently beg them to do so.
I have learnt recently that the proposed path goes by my back door, by the garage, then a further few yards by the workshop, then a few more yards past a free-range poultry house to the adjoining farmer's land.
I live outside the main residential area of the village. Walkers would have to come some distance to even begin the path. Many people walk their dogs on the quiet bye lanes of Asenby.
In the present climate this problem is causing me great distress, knowing of local burglaries, vandalism, etc. I have recently been widowed and feel very, very vulnerable.
Please consider my peace of mind and look fully into this case: To have the "path" stopped; To have the "path" rerouted.
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