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Mr. Gordon Prentice: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Green: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall make progress. He has had several goes.
Amendments Nos. 105 and 83 deal with the control of dogs. Livestock and the wildlife of moors must be protected from unmanaged access, particularly with dogs. Farmers, moorland owners, the Game Conservancy Trust, English Nature, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and others have all said that there is an extreme risk from dogs, unless they are kept properly under control. Amendment No. 105 extends for a further month, until the end of July, the period during which dogs must be on leads. I shall not go into the discursive discussion that took place in Committee about which species will be helped by the amendment, but I know that the Minister is aware that there are some species, some of them rare, that will be breeding during that period. Dogs off leads could be extremely dangerous and damaging to them.
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Amendment No. 83 deals with controls on rights of way crossing access land. It, too, is a practical measure.
The three areas covered by the amendments are controversial, but extremely important. If the Government cannot offer any concessions on any of them, they will be producing a Bill that will be unnecessarily damaging to wildlife and to other important aspects of life in the countryside.
Mr. Bennett: I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments in terms of dogs. If people want to take dogs on to access land, they should have them on a lead all the time.
The proposed night restrictions are ridiculous. The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) said that other countries in Europe had such restrictions. As I understand it, Denmark is the only one. The British Mountaineering Council says that, in the past, the Czech Republic had these restrictions when it was communist. It appears that that regime had something in common with the Opposition Front Bench.
Many people go out on to access land at night, and cause no problems. When people were trying to get access to areas such as Kinder in the 1930s, they either went on a mass trespass or went on a moonlight walk. That was done repeatedly. It is pleasant to go out at night--particularly in moonlight--and walk over access land. Problems will not be caused by doing so. The Opposition, however, will be causing many problems if they say to walkers that they can be on such land for an hour before a certain time and an hour afterwards. In mountain areas,
there must be a margin of safety. In effect, we would be saying, "You must be off at least an hour before the time limit in case something crops up that is difficult."One of the most important features of mountain safety is to teach people to map read safely in difficult conditions. People can be up in a fog during the daytime, but one of the ways of teaching people to map read in difficult circumstances is to let them go up a mountain at night with a compass to try to work out the way that they should go across it.
Damage would also be done to many long-distance walks that people try to complete, perhaps crazily, in 24 hours or within another certain time limit. One of the best ones--
Mr. Green: These are things that happen now. They happen on suitable land where landowners give voluntary access. The very fact that they are happening now means that they cannot be prayed in aid in argument for land that is not now used for them.
Mr. Bennett: A nice example is to try to walk, within the area of Snowdon, all the 3,000-footers. For most of the year, that cannot be done within normal daylight hours. If someone is very fit, he might get round at this time of year. However, for most of the year, it is necessary to start or finish in the dark.
Snowdon rocks are quite difficult to walk in the dark, but it is easy to finish the walk on the Carneddau in the dark. None of the tops of the Carneddau has public rights of way. Historically, however, there is access to those areas. Such access has been by virtue of the good will of the landowners. If that works there, people should be able to go for long walks in places such as Bowland and other areas to which we would like to have access.
Mr. Simon Thomas: Speaking as someone who learned to read a map and a compass at night on the mountains above Aberdare, no doubt on private land, may I point out that the fact that access to the Carneddau already exists undermines the hon. Gentleman's point? The 3,000-footers in Wales can already be climbed under current legislation and arrangements. Why should there be night-time access to private land, much of it comprising remote hill farms?
Mr. Bennett: That right exists de facto on the Carneddau, so why should it not exist on the Arans in Wales and in Bowland?
Mr. Levitt: My hon. Friend speaks with due reverence of Kinder in my constituency, but is it not the case that a night-time walk, avoiding land that is currently not open access land, but which would become so under the Act, could be more dangerous than such a walk under the Act when open access will apply to a greater area?
Mr. Bennett: Yes, I accept that point, but I am keen to follow the Whip's instructions and keep my remarks as brief as possible. I simply say that criminal sanctions would be wrong--both from the Whips and in the legislation. We do not want too much litigation in this area; we want co-operation and consent. The Government have got it right, and I hope that they will make it clear
now that there will be no concessions on limiting night-time access and that no criminal sanctions will be applied on these issues.
Mr. David Heath: The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) said that Amendment No. 27 was more draconian than the Conservatives' approach. We have come to expect a certain wishy-washy attitude to the Bill from the Conservatives. In fact, the hon. Gentleman is wrong because, although the amendment suggests a higher penalty, it is on a narrow ground. I reject the view that there should be criminalisation of all those who find themselves at fault on the generality of the restrictions in the legislation because they could easily do so unintentionally or through ignorance. I want people to stick to the rules of the game, but I suspect that some will find themselves out of kilter with those rules and I do not want them to be turned into criminals as a result.
However, a penalty is required in the narrow area of a conservation closure to protect our most valuable conservation land, which will be clearly labelled and signposted. We need some sort of sanction in law to ensure that people take that seriously. They must realise that there is a total impediment to destroying what may be a precious habitat and that they do not have unimpeded rights of access. I hope that there will never be circumstances in which someone falls foul of such a sanction, but we need such a penalty to make a clear distinction between the most precious habitats that are protected in that way and the generality of land where such a penalty would be inappropriate. One can argue about whether the penalty should be at level 1, 2 or 3--I have no difficulty with that--but I simply say that it is something that the Government should consider.
I entirely agree with the view on dogs expressed by the hon. Member for Ashford. Current arrangements are weak and I expect them to be strengthened, if not today then at some future stage in our consideration.
We had a long discussion in Committee on night-time access. I do not propose to repeat that, not least because there is enormous scope for people to postulate various hypotheses. I do not necessarily accept that there should be a right of access at night. However, I hope that there will be access at night by agreement. Mountaineers and others have made a good case by rightly pointing out that there is a safety aspect to their activity. They may often find that they have to stay in a place overnight to be safe. I am confused by the Government's attitude. The absolute ban on camping overnight is a barrier to mountain safety. That should be reconsidered.
Mr. Grieve: On Second Reading, I thought that it was extraordinarily odd that the Bill would effectively criminalise such activity, which has been carried out with minimal disturbance for generations. The measure will create problems for those who go walking and climbing.
Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman is not entirely right to say that the Bill criminalises the activity; it discourages it. Nothing in the Bill prevents any activity about which there is agreement under existing legislation. That is crucial. However, mountaineers who gain access to mountains through the Bill will find that, unless they have premeditated an overnight stay, they will not be able to camp. That is a difficulty.
The main problem with a right of access at night is that it removes the ability to challenge a person who is on private access land at night without good reason. I do not refer to legitimate walkers and ramblers. The measure would mean that those who were there for nefarious purposes had a built-in, cast-iron excuse for loitering outside a property at night in the middle of nowhere. The Association of Chief Police Officers perceives that as a problem.
I want to comment on the general penalty of the removal of access rights in the 24-hour period. The current position is nonsense. In Committee, I challenged the idea of the same ownership. How on earth are walkers supposed to know exactly what land belongs to whom without access to a land register? The penalty is unenforceable in its current form. For that reason, and because the penalty is very slight, it is meaningless. We could either improve its ability to be enforced or make it a realistic sanction so that people at least thought twice before disregarding the rules under the schedule. The amendment is not perfect, but if it stresses to the Government that the matter should be reconsidered, I shall support the hon. Member for Ashford in the Lobby and advise my hon. Friends accordingly.
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