Lord Haworth
Main Page: Lord Haworth (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Haworth
My Lords, I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for initiating this debate today and for the opportunity it gives to emphasise the benefits of outdoor activities to the health and well-being of the nation in so many important regards. It comes just a few days after the publication of a new report by the Mental Health Foundation to mark Mental Health Awareness Week and therefore it is particularly timely. I declare my interest in the great outdoors as the secretary of the All-Party Mountaineering Parliamentary Group and as one of three Members of your Lordships’ House to have climbed all the Munros, the other two being my noble friends Lord Elder and Lord Smith of Finsbury. I am sorry that my colleagues have not put their names down to speak in this debate because they are more eloquent than I and because I know that they share my enthusiasm for walking in the hills, and we are all fully aware of the health benefits—physical, mental and spiritual—that we derive from spending time in the hills.
All three of us will be on our way to Scotland this evening, by plane or sleeper, for the annual John Smith Memorial Walk. This event has been held most years since the tragic and untimely death of the leader of the Labour Party, 19 years ago now, and involves John’s family and friends and old colleagues from politics and wider Scottish life climbing a mountain and raising a glass to his memory. This year we will be on a Corbett in the far north-west of Scotland on Sunday, weather permitting.
Since neither of my noble friends is competing with me, perhaps I might add that I very much hope to be the first member of your Lordships’ House to complete what is known in the Scottish mountaineering world as the “full round”; that is, all summits over 3,000 feet, not just the principal peaks. The grand total is around 600 and I still have a small number to visit.
I am also the organiser of two rambling groups—the Radical Ramblers and the Wednesday Wanderers—and it is from the perspective of the first of these that I wish to make my brief contribution to this debate. The Radical Ramblers has been in existence for more than 30 years; we celebrated our 30th anniversary earlier this year, on the Sunday after the Eastleigh by-election, almost exactly 30 years after our first walk, which was on the Sunday after the Bermondsey by-election. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, remembers both those by-elections well. His party used to do well in parliamentary by-elections, and Bermondsey was certainly a landmark.
In the past 30 years, we have walked very extensively in southern England. Indeed, there is scarcely a long-distance footpath south of a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel that we have not walked. Some of the best walks have been along the coast. We have walked east from Gravesend on the Saxon Shore Way, turned right at Thanet and headed west along the south coast all the way from Dover to Dartmouth. That includes the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to Winchester and the South West Coast Path from Poole Harbour along the Dorset and Devon coasts, plus the bits in between through the New Forest and the surrounding countryside.
Much of this walking was done before the passage of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, on pre-existing paths, some of which were some distance from the actual coast. That Act was widely welcomed by the walking community, in particular for giving legislative underpinning to the inspiring notion that as far as practically possible the public should have a right to walk right round the coast of England and Wales. In Wales this aspiration has been fully met, thanks to the enthusiastic support of the Welsh Government. Recently published research has shown that the Wales Coast Path attracted nearly 3 million visitors over a 12-month period and was worth an estimated £16 million to the Welsh economy, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already mentioned.
In England the evidence on the ground is that significant improvements to the coastal footpath network are coming—but very slowly. Natural England has an important role to play in this regard, in co-operation with local authorities. I have to accept that in a time of austerity progress will be slower than one might like, but I hope that the Minister will recognise that progress needs to be steady and determined and that the Government have a role in ensuring that the momentum is maintained and the will of Parliament prevails.
Lots of figures are bandied about to emphasise the importance of walking to the economy. I have just mentioned one for Wales. Another, provided by the Ramblers, suggests that walkers in the English countryside spend around £6.14 billion a year, supporting almost 250,000 full-time jobs. Recently my group had a marvellous bank holiday weekend walking up the Suffolk Coast Path, taking it fairly easy over four days from Aldeburgh to Lowestoft. There were about 16 or 17 of us on that walk, including two other colleagues from your Lordships’ House. A rough, back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests that our little rambling group spent more than £3,000 in and around Southwold during those four days—on hotels and B&Bs, in pubs and restaurants et cetera. Why were we there? It was because of the coastal path.
The Government recognise that tourism is a cornerstone of growth. The Minister of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport spelt that out in the debate on outdoor pursuits which was held in the other place earlier this year. What is needed is gentle but firm encouragement for the rollout of the English coastal path
The Marine and Coastal Access Bill was subjected to intensive pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses in the spring of 2008, and I had the privilege and pleasure of serving on that pre-legislative scrutiny committee. I still have the report, which I have brought with me, and the voluminous evidence which we received.
One of the submissions that disappointed me most was from Essex County Council. Although its paper acknowledged that long-distance walkers would bring economic benefits—increased trade for bed-and-breakfast owners was specifically mentioned—the general tenor of the submission was quite negative towards the concept of a coastal footpath.
Essex has more coastline than any other county in England, more even than Cornwall. This may come as a surprise to those who are not acquainted with the convolutions of the many tidal estuaries which make up so much of the Essex coast. Much of it is low-lying and subject to erosion.
In some cases the sea walls are being breached deliberately in collaboration with the Environment Agency to provide additional intertidal habitats—Rigdon’s breach, on the south side of Hamford Water near Walton-on-the-Naze, comes to mind. Much work is ongoing but precious little, if any, seems to be related to promoting a long-distance coastal path. In fact, some of this work gives the impression of being done to thwart the development of a coastal path.
I hope that Essex County Council can be encouraged to see its extensive coastline as an economic opportunity, not merely as an expensive liability. If Sussex, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall can see the economic potential of encouraging walking along their shores, with the appropriate provision of car parks and access facilities, Essex might yet do the same. I sincerely hope so.
It will be too late for the Radical Ramblers, as we are all getting a bit long in the tooth, but future generations of walkers are coming after us. The Essex backwaters provide splendid habitats for overwintering birds and are rightly popular with ornithologists as well as wild fowlers. Access on foot to these hidden gems needs to be greatly enhanced for future generations of lovers of the great outdoors.