Huw
Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman is speaking a lot of
sense about the definitional difficulties with parks and gardens.
During the coastal access part of the Bill, we have had much debate on
the asks and on the implied trust in Natural England to carry out and
balance this fair duty to all persons, taking it forward in a fair,
considered and consultative way. However, does the hon. Gentleman agree
that there is an equal ask of large landowners to engage and get
involved in the spirit behind the legislation by opening up some of
those parks and gardens—that is not all I have to say: the
remaining 30 per cent. is not all parks and gardens—that
ramblers and others want access to, and that where there is no good
reason not to, landowners should engage through that sort of voluntary
approach to see what can be
done?
Mr.
Benyon: I always believe that the voluntary approach is
the better one. If that fails, we can have further discussions.
However, I also believe that there would be considerable financial
implications for smaller parks where access is provided and where the
capital value of the property would therefore depreciate. The
perception among possible purchasers of properties, therefore, is a
realistic factor in terms of those people’s needs. Privacy is a
concept that we need to engage with. I am not
standing here to make an impassioned defence against the impact on a
vast area of parkland. I think that we are talking about a very small
percentage of the 30 per cent., and a very small percentage of that is
areas where there will be or is conflict. The Bill as currently
drafted, with those exceptions, is the right way to proceed, and I hear
what the Minister says about revisiting the issue in
time.
Mr.
Swire: The issue is one of definition. I fundamentally
believe that there should be as much access to the coast as possible. I
believe that a voluntary agreement in some difficult places is better,
but for me the bottom line is that people should have access to the
coast where possible. However, I also believe in people’s
privacy and the rights of private ownership. Too often, we can neglect
people’s rights when we come to allowing access to all, because
with ownership comes responsibility. I do not see much in the Bill
other than the transference of responsibility to the farmer or
landowner, with not much financial or other
compensation. The
hon. Member for Southampton, Test referred to two places near his
constituency that he felt were blocking the extension of the coastal
path in his area. He alighted on one rather bad example, which is the
Beaulieu estate. I do not know it well, but I have been there. I would
have thought that it was one of the most commercially minded estates in
the country, what with the motor museum, which is a huge attraction for
tourists around the
world. My
hon. Friend the Member for Newbury referred to Buckler’s Hard,
which is a picturesque village in the Beaulieu estate. It has a public
right of way already, although it is difficult to stop people veering
off, and people are charged to look at the village.
“Appalling,” one might say. “How dare they charge
people to look at the village?” Why do they charge people to
look at the village? Because they put the money back into preserving
the uniqueness of the village. There are also surrounding issues, but I
do not want to stray too much into the
esoteric.
Dr.
Whitehead: To make it clear for the record, I have great
admiration for the public work of the Beaulieu estate, with its access
to Buckler’s Hard, the village of Beaulieu, the motor museum and
the area all around there. However, there are wider issues of access
abroad in the estate, which are unrelated to access to, for example,
Buckler’s Hard. I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman about how
that village may best be managed. It is the question of how the
furthest-flung areas of the estate and parkland comprising Beaulieu may
be accessed in a controlled, managed and agreed way. That is the
central issue, rather than the question of access to the central areas,
which is a matter of tourist management, which Beaulieu is adept at and
does
well.
Mr.
Swire: The hon. Gentleman makes an important
clarification. As I recall, there are issues that date way back
concerning access to the private beach on the Beaulieu estate, and
there is some resentment that it, too, is not open to the public.
However, that is private land and I agree that such issues can often be
resolved with the landowner, rather than by
legislation.
I have said
already that you would not allow me to veer off into the esoteric,
Mr. Pope, but we need to think carefully about that issue.
The CROW Act is interesting, and the hon. Member for Chatham and
Aylesford recognised the difficulty in defining what is a garden and
what is a park. Before we rush to legislate, I urge the Committee to
consider the uniqueness of what we have in this country: the manicured
landscape, the extraordinary buildings and the way they are married and
interact. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury mentioned Capability
Brown, and one could also mention Humphrey Repton, who was, with his
red book, perhaps as great a landscaper as Brown, although a little
later—in many ways he was his successor.
There is a
misunderstanding about the English landscape: that somehow it has
always been there and is natural, including the hill forts. But it is
not. It is there because landowners, farmers and the users of this land
over generations have planted copses, moved hills and created something
wonderful and unique in the world. The hon. Member for Telford, who
chairs the all-party group on world heritage sites, would undoubtedly
agree with that assertion.
When we talk
about access to parks, we must be careful what we say, because often a
park is, or is part of, a garden. When does it cease to be a park?
There have been times, in war for instance, when the majority of parks
in this country were ploughed up and turned over to agriculture. Does
it lose its status as parkland if it is ploughed, if animals are grazed
on it or if it is used for a different purpose, such as shooting, which
is an incredibly important sport in the west country and is worth
millions of pounds? Often in the south-west, and in other places around
this island, parkland can go down to an estuary or to the sea and is
the garden to the house. If, regardless of that, access to the land is
allowed as a right, with spreading room, that alters the relationship
between the landscape and the building that sits at its
heart. We
should, of course, look towards opening up our coastal paths, but we
must always bear in mind that there is something as important, and
perhaps more so: the unique relationship between the buildings of this
country, their parklands, the human beings who like to walk there and
occupy them and the future generations who will benefit from
them.
Andrew
George: On that last point, the hon. Member for East Devon
is absolutely right to highlight the relationship between buildings and
the parks and gardens, or curtilage, around them, particularly in the
larger country houses, of which we in the United Kingdom as a whole are
rightly proud. We have a proud heritage of impressive buildings, and
the context in which they are placed, with the parks and gardens that
surround them, is important. However, such a context is not in itself
undermined by allowing a public right of way across a small portion of
it. That is an issue that clearly needs to be resolved.
I am not sure
that the amendment, as drafted, is the best way to resolve the issue.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test, by bringing forward the debate,
which he was right to do, has articulated a concern that I do not have
much experience of. Speaking on behalf
of my own part of the world—west Cornwall and the Isles of
Scilly—I must say that we do not really have any of the type of
large estates that, as the hon. Gentleman said, exist in the Solent
area, so I have no experience of the type of scale that he is talking
about, in terms of ownership of very substantial areas of land. The
scale of those areas of land clearly has an impact upon the ability to
create coastal access of the kind that I think we are all keen to
establish. In the
example of the Solent way, a right of way would need to be diverted
many miles from the coast to satisfy the requirements of the Bill, as
the hon. Gentleman sees them, in terms of the definition of what might
constitute park land. That is clearly a matter of great concern. Until
he had raised this issue, I was not aware that such a diversion might
be necessary. Hence my intervention, to say that perhaps we need to
look again at the definition of park land.
We may come
up with a definition of park land that will satisfy the hon. Member for
East Devon and others, in terms of the description of what that land
might be, its context and, perhaps in some cases, the historic basis on
which it was originally created, possibly centuries ago. However, I
would have thought that the concept that we, as legislators, should
attempt to preserve is the integrity of that land; that is, the
integrity of the countryside itself and the associated buildings. I am
not sure that public access necessarily undermines that
integrity.
What is
perhaps most important is to protect privacy. Certainly, the booklet
prepared by Natural England on park land considers the issue within the
context of the provision on privacy. I would have thought that it is
privacy and potential damage—those two elements—that we
are trying to address here.
In coming up
with a satisfactory definition of park land for the purposes of the
Bill, the two concepts of proportionality and reasonableness should
also be applied. If one is talking about the scale of diversion that
the hon. Member for Southampton, Test described, we come back to a
theme that has underpinned a lot of the debate on this part of the
Bill, which is achieving a fair balance. I think that a fair balance
can be more effectively achieved if one also throws into the melting
pot the concept of what is proportionate. Clearly, a 5-mile diversion
away from the coastline is not proportionate. It is important to find a
tool that will give a proportionate response and giving that tool to
Natural England would clearly help in finding a resolution to this
problem. It is also important to find a reasonable solution.
Providing
Natural England with the tools to achieve a fair balance, in the
context of defining park land and trying to achieve the fundamental
objective of providing a continuous coastal footpath, is clearly what
we are trying to do. I would hope that we could, on Report, look at the
issue again. Perhaps the Government could come forward with an
amendment which would achieve that fair balance and satisfy the hon.
Member for Southampton,
Test. 3.15
pm
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I do not think that we need an amendment,
but I would like to begin this part of our deliberations by putting a
statement on record to see if any member of the Committee will demur
from it. If we proceed with our proposals on the coastal path, the
coastal margin and parks and gardens, which I am committed to, and any
future Secretary of State—whether it is the hon. Member for St.
Ives, the hon. Member for Newbury, or my hon. Friends the Members for
Reading, West and Southampton, Test—finds that no dialogue has
happened and that no additional land within what we can generally term
parks has been opened up, we will have failed.
Part of our
debate here is whether we can proceed in a way that is to do with
voluntarism, dialogue and consensus, and can look at those places,
where appropriate, where it does not damage habitat or the interface
that has been talked about between the fashioning of that particular
landscape and environment. There is a tradition of people straying on
to such environments. Traditionally, they were either known as
trespassers or poachers—myself not included, not that I would
admit to it. However, if we return here without having made progress on
this issue through constructive dialogue, we will have
failed.
Mr.
Benyon: The Minister sets a very important challenge,
which should be listened to by all the interested parties that
represent landowning interests and walkers’ interests.
Accommodation can be found. The worst thing that we can do is legislate
for the lowest common denominator—the cartoon farmer who says
get off my land and is completely unapproachable in any form of
dialogue. However, the Minister puts a very important challenge down.
We can see how that goes and revisit it in the future. I entirely
accept his reasonable
approach.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I thank the hon. Gentleman. I suspect that
we have consensus across the Committee. We have to put this to the test
and see that it delivers—and see that it delivers, not if it
delivers—that it delivers. If it does not, as I will come to in
a moment, we might need to revisit that. I am grateful to my hon.
Friends the Members for Southampton, Test and for Reading West for
raising this important issue. I recognise the desire of individual
walkers and the Ramblers Association to try to obtain access to the
remaining 30 per cent. of the coast that there is still no access to.
There are some good reasons why we do not and will not have access to
100 per cent. of the coast. However, there are some parts that people
would look at and say that there seems to be no good reason for that,
only an unwillingness to enter into a dialogue.
As I have
noted in previous discussions, the Secretary of State may, by order,
modify the provisions of part 1 of the CROW Act in their application to
land which is coastal margin. Concerns and questions about what changes
may be made to the categories of accepted land, as they affect land
that is coastal
margin— 3.18
pm Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House. 3.33
pm
On
resuming—
The
Chairman: Obviously, it would be wholly wrong of me to
point out that the fast train from Euston to Preston leaves at 4.30
pm.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: Briefly, parks were considered by both the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee,
which were attended by a number of hon. Members. Both Committees made
recommendations: the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
agreed with the Government’s approach, but the Joint Committee
felt that the Government should give careful thought to what was
included in the parks and gardens exemption and noted that
Parliament might want to return to that issue with the
introduction of the Bill.
In response
to those two Committees, we said that we would give further detailed
consideration to the issue. We have done that, and I have heard a wide
range of views. Some say that the parkland should not be excepted in
any way where it is suitably described as a margin, and others dwell on
the continuity of the route. There are also arguments about privacy, as
we feared, and the amenity value related to parkland also needs to be
taken into account. They are all important points—it is a
complex issue. Let me make it clear that we do not want the coastal
route to take long and unnecessary inland detours. However, we also
understand the concerns of landowners. We have touched on the
definitional issues already. I believe that the problem is about a
small number of difficult cases, where land is not integral to the
privacy and enjoyment of the household, but presents a considerable
blockage to any coastal route. I do not want to use a heavy
sledgehammer to crack an albeit sometimes tough
nut.
Dr.
Whitehead: Should a voluntary approach be adopted, albeit
with the possibility of making a section 3A order, is it the case that
a landlord or a park owner may dedicate, outside the Bill, a strip of
land for coastal access or a right of way without incurring
arrangements under the
Bill?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: My hon. Friend is right. If people were to
dedicate a strip of land for the coastal path, or to allow a right of
way, it could form an integral part of the coastal path, and I welcome
that sort of approach.
What we have
talked about is the good will of landowners towards the public, who
wish to share the pleasures of a wonderful coastline. I am prepared to
give the good will a trial and see if we can find agreed ways for the
route to go through without having to legislate for the small number of
cases I mentioned. I believe that this Committee has unanimously made
clear that it wishes to see that good will be demonstrated by
landowners in discussions with Natural England. I propose that we give
the system a trial without making any changes to the excepted land
categories of parks and gardens. The trial should investigate how great
the problems are and how evident the good will is. I will ask Natural
England to try to resolve the problems by voluntary means, particularly
where it will lead to secure access along the route—perhaps
along the lines that my hon. Friend has suggested, for instance, by the
dedication of land for public access under the CROW Act
provisions. In
the case that the trial approach does not work, the Secretary of State
retains the powers to amend the excepted land provisions at a later
date by order, subject to affirmative resolution in both
Houses—we have talked
about the fact that it will be a pretty lively debate. In our response
to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report, we said
that Natural England will return to Parliament to report on progress
after 10 years. I suggest that Natural England should undertake an
earlier interim review and report to Parliament specifically on issues
that have arisen as a result of parks being excepted land, and on the
success of any voluntary agreements to ensure secure public access
along the route through parks. That report should take place within
five years of Royal
Assent. I
hope that that approach will meet with favour from the Committee, and
that my hon. Friend will withdraw his amendment with the assurance that
we will have the opportunity to review the matter and revisit the
decision, if
necessary.
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