Agriculture Bill

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, we come to a rather more honed group of amendments. We are talking about access, inspired by

“supporting … access to and enjoyment of the countryside”

in Clause 1(1)(b). It is a pretty fundamental change here that you are getting finance for that purpose, and I believe we should take quite a long and hard look at this. It is changing everything that goes on inside the countryside, but it cannot sit by itself in agriculture. If you are talking about access, you are talking about getting access to activity going out there. We are going through a crisis caused by a disease which does not affect people with decent cardiovascular systems as badly. There is a public health element. There is a sports and recreation policy element here—it affects everything else. There is a tourism element here. If you have good footpaths, you can sell that weekend in a cottage. You can go on and on here, but I will not insult the intelligence of this Chamber by doing so at any great length. The fact is that access matters, both as a principle, as being of practical value to the rural economy and, I hope, to farmers directly now as well. If they are providing this access—the point I was trying to make earlier on—they deserve to get some payment, but we deserve something back for that activity. It is a two-way street. I hope that these amendments will open up a discussion that goes through.

I should also mention that these amendments were created in conjunction with the ramblers and the canoeists. There is a huge amount of activity on waterways which hits all those targets we are talking about: public health, access, enjoyment—it is all connected with the waterways. There are the canoeists—the paddlers—and the wild swimmers can be included here as well. That group’s activity probably becomes more attractive for most of us during the summer months, but it happens. We could have gone to other groups. I have some sympathy with the Minister, because these groups have a reputation for squabbling with each other. Anglers and canoeists are not traditionally the best of friends but they should get on together, and the defence of reasonableness that runs through British law should be applied to all of them. Those on scrambler bikes and those who might occasionally use a byway or a bridle path rather annoy those on horses. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, and my noble friend Lord Greaves on Amendment 100, as somebody who has, shall we say, a strong equestrian influence in my household—it was rather remiss of me not to bring them in. All these groups slightly compete for access, but they all have to get in there. However, to draw the Minister’s attention to some of the other amendments here, the idea of enhancing access runs through many of these amendments.

If you start talking about footpaths, you get the vision that a footpath is a path that runs across some countryside, often following a historical road. That does not fulfil many of the criteria I have been talking about. If you simply have a muddy path, it can become not easily used by many people incredibly quickly. Some of the amendments here are designed to reward farmers to make sure that these remain useful. There is the buggy and self-propelled wheelchair test—the buggy test is probably the most applicable one here. If there is a muddy path on a winter’s day, especially if it is on a route that people can get to, it will have a habit of getting holes and then puddles in it, which expand. That damages any land around it, either as regards its environmental or agricultural purposes. If you reward farmers for making sure that that has a toughened surface, it will take much more use and will cause less damage to the things around it.

Other people then sometimes contradict this. I remember we did it during the passage of the CROW Bill—my noble friend Lord Greaves, I think, has the scars from that—and we have not yet got anywhere near the number of amendments we had on that; I like to clang the death knell every now and again. There was a great deal of discussion then. People in motorised wheelchairs gained a great deal of traction, which was fair enough—they like access to the countryside—but their issues are not the same as those of a person with a slightly bad knee who needs that surface.

Where is it appropriate to use a gate as opposed to a stile? How do you maintain it? I have heard many a farmer say, “Yes, great, we could put a gate in there. Do you have any idea what they cost and how difficult they are to maintain, and about replacements?” The answer, of course, was that I did not at that time. We must make sure there is a structure here that rewards that sort of help, which will help everybody else here, too: if you need to get to a waterway, for example, you will have a path that is useful and allows access through. These amendments are not so draconian that they would say exactly what the enhancement must be. There will be somebody who lives on the Wiltshire-Berkshire border and somebody, like my noble friend Lord Greaves, who lives in the Pennines, where the hills are steeper and more formidable—he says they are not; he is being kind—but I come from East Anglia and the change was pretty substantial: there, a hill is an event. The point is that different bits of the countryside will need different practices going forward.

Part of the answer here plays into other areas. The Agriculture Bill may be predominantly about agriculture, but it must be aware of what else is going on. I hope the Minister will at the very least be able to give us an idea of how this important aspect of the Bill will be tied into other policy and enhanced. If we do not do this, we are missing a trick. I beg to move.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V]]

My Lords, like some other noble Lords, I fell victim to the Second Reading cull. Had I been able to speak at Second Reading, I would have focused entirely on the question of public access, so I am very pleased to have the opportunity this evening of supporting my noble friend Lord Addington’s amendments and saying a few words.

We are all agreed that the principle of reward for public good is the right one, and it feels to me as if public access is one of the most important public goods that we can put in the Bill. We know that open-air activity in the countryside—not just walking but all sorts of activity—has a huge contribution to make to individual health and well-being. I think it should sit alongside access to good-quality food as an important outcome of the Bill. I was very heartened to hear the Minister’s response to the last group amendments, when he talked about the importance of projects for well-being and partnership working with other departments.

But it goes much further. There is, of course, an economic development argument, with people coming to visit farm shops, cafés and pubs, but it is even more fundamental than that. One thing that has troubled many of us is the real disconnect between people, the food they eat and the way that it is produced. Noble Lords have tabled a number of amendments later in the Bill to deal with that. Regular access to the countryside is one important way of helping to stimulate this interest in and understanding of the way that our food is produced. It is also a way of exciting young people into thinking, potentially, about careers in agriculture, land management or forestry—individuals who come from towns, not necessarily just country dwellers. The same can be said about biodiversity, landscape, animal welfare—the more access people have to the countryside, the more committed they will be to those things.

For a decade, I chaired a rights of way committee in Suffolk. I know that some landowners are more accommodating than others and that some users do not behave in ways that we might like them to, but this stand-off really does need to end, because going forward, the link between individual taxpayers and farmers will be much clearer than it was in the days of the CAP. If people have a perception that they are somehow not welcome in the countryside, they will ask, “Why should my tax money support you?” I think that it would be in everyone’s interests to begin to think much more carefully about public access.

In the interests of time, I will not go through the amendments, but there are two categories. There are the ones that seek to make sure that nothing in the Bill makes the situation any worse. An example is the important question of cross-compliance: making sure that we do not pay for farmers and landowners who do not even comply with their duties under the Highways Act. Nor should we be using taxpayers’ money to help them to do what they should be doing anyway. So we have one set of amendments that are negative in focus, but then the much more positive ones which talk about enhancement and all the things we do to improve public access—not just public footpaths and rights of way, but access more generally, and particularly how we should think about getting people from towns and cities out into the countryside that we all enjoy. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson [V]]

Many of the amendments to which I have added my name cover issues around water. I welcome the comments of the Minister when he summed up on the earlier group and the discussion about how we could be more creative. I was also delighted to hear many noble Lords raise the issue of social prescribing.

I would like to declare an interest in that my daughter is a kayaker and has previously been on a British Canoeing junior development programme. Because of that, as an individual I have spent countless hours trying to get better access to the countryside and to water which, as a wheelchair user, is not easy. Indeed, it is often not easy for disabled people to access anything much beyond a car park—if they are lucky enough to find somewhere to park. So I welcome all the amendments that seek to offer financial assistance to help increase and improve access for everyone.

Although I have not specifically raised the issue of disability access in any amendments, it needs far more consideration. I have said previously that too many barriers have been put in place which stop wheelchair users getting around. I have been discussing this with the all-party group on cycling and I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for widening the issue out to discuss scooters and families with buggies. I should also like to thank British Canoeing and the Ramblers for helping to clarify some of the points that I wish to raise.

I believe that it would advantageous to define the term “waters” within the Bill so as to be clear about what is or is not included. There is a lack of clarity in the scope that may lead to inconsistencies in how the text is interpreted. There could be an assumption that public access and enjoyment should be supported only on land. The definition should be broad enough to ensure that financial support can be given to the widest range of farmers and landowners who are seeking to improve the use and maintenance of or access to the water that falls within their land.

The annual waterways survey estimates that around 2.1 million people go paddling every year, 35,000 of whom have direct contact with British Canoeing. However, a similar number of people swim outdoors and the 2018 survey showed that 50% of them had experienced conflict around access and 84% of that was on rivers. Of the 42,700 miles of inland waterways, only 1,400 miles are uncontested. So less than 4% of all rivers have a statutory right of access. This can be a huge barrier to participation, so I believe that there is scope for the Bill to support farmers in making more space for nature and for people.

I also believe that wider contact with an environment that is rich in wildlife will help to increase understanding of the need to protect it and it will increase people’s ability to be physically active, but it is necessary to support farmers and landowners to do that. I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who talked about access in the previous group. England may be more densely populated than Scotland, but we have to educate walkers, paddlers and anyone who is accessing the countryside to not damage or disturb wildlife.

With regard to water, I would argue that it is more damaging to restrict people to using just a tiny amount of water. If we could spread that use out, the burden on existing pressure points would surely be eased. It goes without saying, however, that those who use these spaces need to be respectful. I know from my daughter’s experience that people are taught about the environment and flooding, as well as how to look after an area, clean up litter and report things that they see along the way. They would want to protect certain areas, for example where fish are spawning, and not cause damage.

With improved access to and along waterways, we need to be looking at places to launch and land, and access around dangerous obstacles, such as weirs. We should not forget that through our communities, our towns and cities, we are perhaps more disconnected from water than we have ever been. Including these amendments will be a crucial stepping stone for the Government to meet their objectives in the Defra 25-year plan and be part of a green recovery. I believe the Government can help farmers and landowners to make this happen.