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Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): As you cannot do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should say that I recollect that the same problem arises in an area in your constituency, which I represented in local government in Suffolk.

Sir George Young: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. No doubt the debate will take place in an even more respectful atmosphere.

I raised the matter in a debate last year, in response to which the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), could not have been more helpful. He said:

The situation that the right hon. Gentleman has described seems, on the face of it, to be outrageous.

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He was kind enough to add:


Were our roles reversed, I might well have made a similar speech.

He went on to say that

although Bakewell may well have the letter of the law on its side, I wonder whether it is able to defend its position morally, as well as legally.

He agreed that

in some ways, common land law is ripe for review

and went on to suggest that

there may well be a case for placing some reasonable limit on the charge that the owner is entitled to make.

In connection with that, he said:

I shall watch with interest the level of charges that Bakewell imposes and compare them with the reasonable charges for similar access made by county councils and the National Trust.--[Official Report, 3 November 1999; Vol. 337, c. 271-74.]

In fairness to the Minister, although he said that the law was ripe for review, he made no commitment to legislation, but offered to meet me to discuss the matter further. I met him on 14 December, with members of the Newtown residents association, and again he could not have been more sympathetic. He made the valid point that any solution must deal with the problem not just at Newtown common, but elsewhere. He advised my constituents not to waste money on barristers at that stage because there was sufficient expertise in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions for free.

The Minister offered a further meeting with officials, which took place in my room at the House on 20 January. A number of possible amendments were discussed. We were told that he remained keen and sympathetic, but we got a clear message that options that involved no payment at all risked running foul of the European convention on human rights. That strikes me as a pessimistic interpretation of the ECHR, and one of my hon. Friends who knows more about the law than I do may develop the point.

Rights can of course be acquired by long usage. Generally, if a person uses a route to get to his house without the permission of the landowner for 20 years, he has an easement. The Court of Appeal case that stops that on commons was concerned not with protecting landowners' rights, but with enforcing the public law on commons. The partial reversal of the Hanning principle, which I propose, would allow normal land law principles to apply. It is not apparent that human rights problems will occur.

The discussion with officials was helpful and, without commitment, they identified a number of possible solutions, on which I and my constituents have done further work. As recently as 14 April, a senior official in the Minister's countryside division wrote to one of my constituents, Mrs. Ponting, saying:

In the meantime, you may like to be aware that, following discussions between Chris Mullin and Sir George Young, the department is investigating how we might curb the ability of landowners to make excessive charges for the grant of easements to allow vehicular access over common land.


We have identified a range of options which may achieve this objective, but have not reached any firm conclusions yet on the best way forward.

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Against that background, the House might hope that the Minister will smile on the amendments. However, more recently, the Department's tone has changed from, "How can we help?" to, "I am sorry, it is all too difficult." Less than a month after the letter from which I have quoted was written, the deal was off.

The Minister wrote to me on 10 May saying:

Given that the issues will be explored, in due course, in the context of the consultation paper on common land I do not propose to ask my officials to do any more work on the options at present, although they remain "on the table."

He went on to say that, although it was open to me to table an amendment to the Bill,

it would be misleading of me to suggest it is likely to receive Government support.

That is disappointing against the background of the supportive remarks that were made earlier. While the proposals remain on the table, my constituents remain on the rack. The consultation paper that the Minister refers to, in the words of a letter that he wrote to me on 17 February,

does not deal with the problems of vehicular access.

The negative message in the Minister's letter obscured some helpful passages, which indicated the sorts of solution that would be acceptable to him:

A reasonable capital charge would be no more than 5 per cent. of the value of the property.


Discounts for those who could show long use.


The option of payment now or at a time of sale.


Provision for those who could show financial hardship.


No question of vehicular access being denied whilst negotiations take place.

That forms the foundation of an acceptable solution to the problem, but we should tackle the problem here and now. The Bill already makes substantial changes to the law on commons: it provides a right of public access to rural commons; it amends provisions on vehicles on commons. The Minister wants me to wait, but Bills on commons are a rare species--rarer even than nature conservation Bills. There were only three in the past century. No way should my constituents have to wait for a legislative bird in the bush when there is one in the hand. Therefore, I want to build on the principles in his letter and to come to a legislative solution to the problem in the context of the Bill.

Amendment No. 135 simply restores the position to what it was thought to be before Hanning v. Top Deck Travel Group--in other words, nothing is payable and people have the right that they all thought they had. Amendment No. 136 adopts the conventional 20-year rule for establishing rights of access. From the date of my Adjournment debate, anyone who had been driving backwards and forwards would continue to have that right.

The present position is wholly indefensible, as the Minister has conceded. A third party, using a loophole in the law, can claim part of the equity of someone else's house. That is feudal, with overtones of the sheriff of Nottingham. A Government who have abolished most of the hereditary peers should be able to take removal of that relic from the middle ages in their stride. They should certainly be able to back the many against the few.

My amendments are in order; they have been selected; they are urgent. We know that they have the Minister's sympathy. I am prepared to accept that they may not be

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the last word in technical perfection--they are from the do-it-yourself school of drafting, rather than the traditional parliamentary draftsman. I am prepared to consider withdrawing them and to share the credit for putting the anomaly right with the Minster in return for undertakings that the Government will come up with their own solution in another place. If the Government were able to do that, it would represent an acceptable outcome of today's debate, but, if no undertaking were given, I regret that I would feel obliged, out of commitment to my constituents, to divide the House.

Dr. David Clark (South Shields): I shall speak to amendments Nos. 304 and 305, which were so eloquently introduced by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter), but, first, I compliment the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young). He has raised an issue that has much wider ramifications than Ministers or even other Members realise. It is not confined to the leafy south. A major problem of that nature is emerging in the north of England, where, traditionally, village greens are surrounded by artisans' houses.

Often, there is a strip of green between the road that goes around the village green and the egress from the properties. The problem is that, although that has not been challenged for perhaps two or three centuries and although there is not the threat from commercial ventures, as there is in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency, there is now a legal problem. Lawyers are coming to people who are selling their houses and saying, "There is a problem. Do you realise that you have no vehicular right of access to your house? The two-yard stretch of green over which you and your predecessors have crossed for two or three centuries is not actually a right of way." That causes a great deal of difficulty. I assume that amendment No.135, which relates to common land, includes village greens, but that is a technical point that we need to consider.

4.45 pm

Anyway, the only way of getting round the problem is for the vendor to take out a large insurance bond to cover a future buyer in the light of the potential threat. The position is clearly not satisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that returning to the position that obtained before an earlier judicial decision would solve the problem. That is a simple solution, although I do not know whether the Bill is the right vehicle for it. Certainly, the right hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to a difficulty that is much more widespread than people realise, and is causing anguish throughout the country.

Let me return to amendments Nos. 304 and 305, which, as I have said, were presented elegantly by the hon. Member for Basingstoke. I join him in sending good wishes to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), whom I know would have liked to be here to move his amendment.

The amendments raise issues that have wide ramifications. The hon. Gentleman mentioned an incident that took place largely in his constituency, involving vehicular rights over various types of path covered in the Bill. As chair of the all-party national parks group, I plead with the Minister to see if there is any way of tackling the problem affecting national parks. By definition, they are special places where people go for quiet enjoyment.

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The Bill recognises that but it is far from perfect, as has been pointed out by the Association of National Park Authorities, which represents all the statutory national parks.

There is a particular difficulty in some of the busiest parks, which have already tried to address the problem of vehicular access to various country byways. The park authorities believe that the powers in the Bill are not sufficient to enable them to tackle the problem and to fulfil their remit. I know that they have met Ministers, and that Ministers have been concerned and conciliatory. They are trying to find a way to help, and we all appreciate that.

Amendments Nos. 304 and 305 raise the question whether further traffic regulation orders could be available to national park authorities, enabling them, for instance, to create zones within which such orders would apply to specific routes, and to erect barriers across routes subject to the orders or, perhaps, voluntary restraint agreements to facilitate effective management.

There might be a facility for the revising and designing of materials used for the erection of signs, acknowledging the existence of special landscape requirements on some of the routes involved. It could, perhaps, be recognised that bona fide users of those routes--mainly local people--may want vehicular access in order to go about their daily business. There might be a licence system giving specified users defined routes to use, subject to the traffic regulation orders and within defined traffic regulation zones.

Finally--I think the amendments try to lead us towards this--the Association of National Park Authorities could be empowered to make enforced traffic regulation orders in regard to unsealed, unclassified county roads and byways open to all traffic, roads for public paths, bridleways and footpaths.

The Minister may not be able to give us a definitive answer today, but there are real problems with which the Bill does not quite come to grips. I believe that the Minister and his officials are working on them, and that we are nearly there. If the Minister does not feel able to accept the amendments, perhaps he will seek ways in another place to meet the legitimate concerns of the national park authorities. Those authorities are trying to perform the difficult task of balancing people's wish to go to rural areas, especially national parks, for quiet recreation with the legitimate right of local people to go about their daily business.

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