Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DEPARTMENT FOR
ENVIRONMENT, FOOD
AND RURAL
AFFAIRS AND
NATURAL ENGLAND
22 NOVEMBER 2006
Q60 Mr Mitchell: What explanation
is there for the finding in the Report that—this is page
23 paragraph 3.3—"... at 70 of the 74 applicable sites
we could gain access to land without difficulty. At the remaining
four sites, we had problems gaining access due to impassable walls
or gates". Those are not things that suddenly emerged after
it is declared access land. Why was that not taken into account?
It is infuriating to go out on a walk on what you think is going
to be a planned route and then you suddenly come across a barbed
wire fence or a wall you cannot get over. Why was that? Why did
the people going on the walks find that?
Dr Phillips: I think the first
thing to note in paragraph 3.3 was that in 95% of the sites they
visited they had no problems with access.
Q61 Mr Mitchell: I always seem to
get on the 5%.
Dr Phillips: I totally agree with
you about the 5% but fortunately it is that way around. We have
got local access forums, which were a requirement of the CROW
Act, and each of the local authorities has a local access forum
for people who use the countryside well and know what the requirements
are to make it an enjoyable and indeed a continuous experience.
That is where the access management grant scheme is so important
as these issues are unearthed, to be able to take some quick action
to put them right.
Q62 Mr Mitchell: The barbed wire
is not something that suddenly emerged after access?
Dr Phillips: No, no.
Q63 Mr Mitchell: Okay, just one final
question. Coastal access, which is a marvelous idea, is that going
to be bug-free by the time you do it? Are you going to have a
pilot project there and test out the problems before you actually
rush in?
Dr Phillips: I think in the light
of the NAO Report and indeed the Agency's own Lessons Learnt
Report it will be very important that we apply everything that
we have learned from open access to coastal access. It is a bit
too soon to say which of the lessons will be most pertinent to
coastal access because, as we said to the Chairman earlier, we
have not yet given our advice to Ministers on the options that
he has asked us to evaluate or indeed indicate a preferred way
forward on the part of Natural England.
Q64 Mr Mitchell: Just one final question,
why are you called Natural England? It sounds like Health and
Efficiency!
Dr Phillips: When we were being
established we decided not to employ any expensive consultants
to dream up a name, so we asked a large number of staff and stakeholders,
and there were many suggestions (not all of them repeatable in
this room) and Natural England came to the fore. Somebody did
point out that there was not much natural about England but we
decided that Semi-Natural England would not be very desirable
either.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Mitchell.
David Curry?
Q65 Mr Curry: Since I represent a
significant part of the amount mapped on this in front of us,
it is perhaps not surprising that I tended to receive those at
the receiving end of this rather than those who thought they were
going to benefit. The farmers who said, "Have we really got
to have people walking past our kitchen windows?" of which
there were cases. It took a long time to sort out those problems,
I have to say, so it did not happen without difficulty. Mrs Ghosh,
you have used the expression "political imperative"
a lot. In fact, your very first words were that the pace of the
project was set by the political imperative. Would you put that
in a different sort of way that I can understand?
Mrs Ghosh: The right of access
was a very clear manifesto commitment on the part of the Labour
Party and having been elected ministers were extremely keen that
we put it into practice as quickly as possible.
Q66 Mr Curry: So the Government asked
for a deadline which did not necessarily take into account the
difficulties of achieving the project?
Mrs Ghosh: The deadline was effectively
set through the negotiations on PSA in 2001 and set up essentially
a four-year deadline for achievement.
Q67 Mr Curry: So it is part of government,
that is to say the Treasury?
Mrs Ghosh: Since I was not round
at the time, I am sure this issue was the result of a debate between
the Department and Treasury.
Q68 Mr Curry: This is a very important
point. The more you look at PSAs the more they seem to have militated
against good governance rather than for good governance. Do you
think that is an argument one can sustain?
Mrs Ghosh: I think that PSAs,
as with other targets set for government departments, represent
a balance between political judgment about what ministers wish
to achieve and the practical and operational difficulties of delivery.
Q69 Mr Curry: You see, that sounds
a very reasonable statement until you actually disembowel it,
so there is a compromise between what you want politically and
whether you can do it?
Mrs Ghosh: Deliver it.
Q70 Mr Curry: How do you have a compromise
as to whether you can deliver something or not? Surely the correct
procedure is to say how fast with reasonable certainty can we
deliver a particular programme? The Treasury is not very interested
in that, is it?
Mrs Ghosh: I think there is a
responsibility on us as public servants which clearly, as the
Report demonstrates, we did not collectively across the Department
and the then Countryside Agency fulfil, which is, having been
given a time target, having an accurate view of the difficulties
of achieving it. After all, we were talking about something four
years hence which did not on the face of it appear unachievable,
but, as I was saying to your colleague, I think the Agency did
not at the stage when it, as it were, accepted, signed up, advised
ministers (whatever the precise sequence of events may have been)
as to the target, had an accurate understanding of what the implications
of all the procedures set out in the Act meant. That is the challenge
which faces us as public servants which is how you join up that
policy creation with realistic—
Q71 Mr Curry: Will there be a PSA
target for the coastal project?
Mrs Ghosh: We are a long way away
from that. As Helen said, we are awaiting the advice of Natural
England on the outcome of their analysis. There are different
approaches you might take to coastal access, including public
consultation. This will come to ministers and, precisely the point
you make, it will be then be for ministers to decide the appropriate
balance between costs, operationability and the political commitment
they have made to coastal access.
Q72 Mr Curry: Do ministers have the
option not to sign up to the PSA? If they cannot agree with the
Treasury, do they have the option to say, "We do not sign
up to this," and at the end of the day does the Treasury
impose it?
Mrs Ghosh: As you are well aware,
the agreement of PSAs is a process of deliberation and consultation
between a department and a Cabinet committee which represents
the whole range of departments, and decisions are made on that
collective basis.
Q73 Mr Curry: Dr Phillips, how much
of the land which has been brought into this scheme is privately
owned as a proportion?
Dr Phillips: I believe the majority
of it would be privately owned.
Q74 Mr Curry: Some common land as
well?
Dr Phillips: Common land as well—mountain,
moor, heath, down and common land.
Q75 Mr Curry: But the great majority
is privately owned?
Dr Phillips: Yes, I can certainly
let you have the figures.[4]
Q76 Mr Curry: If it is privately owned
why on earth should the Government have the faintest interest
as to whether the people who go there are black, blue, pink, lesbian,
gay, middle-aged, ancient, or whatever? Why on earth do you need
a diversity programme?
Dr Phillips: On the basis that
the outdoors is for all, whilst we are not insisting that anybody
belonging to any particular group or any particular affiliation
is required to go, the opportunity should be available for them
to go. So in the same way that people who have had those opportunities
made available to them particularly in childhood have that affinity
and that wherewithal and capability to make those choices, it
is about extending choice.
Q77 Mr Curry: What makes you think
they do not have that choice now? What makes you think you have
got to have a programme? I shudder when I hear about the diversity
plan. I think, "Here we go again." You do not have a
diversity plan for the number of people who are going to watch
James Bond tonight.
Dr Phillips: A lot of the research
for the consultation exercise we ran for Defra during the summer
showed just that; that for a lot of groups the countryside did
not feel like a welcoming place, in fact it felt quite hostile,
and some of the pilots we ran showed that where people were afforded
that opportunity and we made that link for them, not only did
they enjoy it but they returned and were repeat visitors. So there
is some quite compelling evidence.
Mrs Ghosh: David Miliband made
a point at the launch of Natural England which is to say it is
through access that we actually engage all people with the environment
more generally, and access is one way of getting the broadest
possible group of people engaged in climate change, biodiversity,
all those things, so it is a means to an end as well as an end
in itself.
Q78 Mr Curry: I am going to follow
up what Mr Khan has said. Perhaps you might like to come along
to Burnsall in my constituency. The Red Lion is an extremely good
pub, it is staffed entirely by people from Poland, so you could
witness several things in one go, it is very efficient as well.
You cannot move in Burnsall for cars. There is not a spot where
you can park in Burnsall. Burnsall is absolutely overwhelmed with
cars, all of which has not done the planet a huge amount of good
in them getting there. Do you not think that we need to keep some
sense of perspective in these things and do a bit of joined-up
thinking on these environmental issues?
Mrs Ghosh: Absolutely.
Q79 Mr Curry: There is no public
transport. The county council might run a bus once in a blue moon.
Mrs Ghosh: I think Helen explained
very clearly earlier on that yes, we need to take action on improving
public transport, in many cases on a voluntary sector/public sector
partnership basis. There are all sorts of other ways.
4 Note by witness: I am afraid that I am unable
to give a precise answer to Mr Curry's question about how much
CROW access land is privately owned. The Countryside Agency was
not required under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000
(CROW) to collect ownership information and did not do so as part
of its programme of mapping open country and registered common
land. Indeed there are no complete datasets of either public or
private land, ownership in England that would have enabled the
calculation of privately owned CROW access land to have been carried
out. Most of the large private landowners do not have any digital
map records and landowners such as the Crown Estates and the Ministry
of Defence do not make this information publicly available. I
understand that the Land Registry estimate that about 50% of England
is formally registered so even that would not have provided an
accurate figure. However we believe that it is safe to assume
that the vast majority of CROW access land is privately owned. Back
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