Earl of Caithness
Main Page: Earl of Caithness (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I am a great supporter of footpaths. I owe them a great debt of gratitude because they played an important part in my rehabilitation since my accident. I would say only that I am saddened by the condition of some footpaths and even more saddened by the amount of rubbish left on them by people who ought to follow the country code slightly better.
If you think it is taking a long time to get a definitive answer on Brexit, let us talk about rights of way. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on raising this. It is the 70th anniversary of the legislation to introduce a definitive map of rights of way and we are still arguing and debating about it. That is a nonsense. How right the Government were to bring forward a cut-off date when they did.
I will go off on a slight tangent. People must not get the impression that we are short of footpaths in this country. There are over 94,000 miles of footpaths here and that is being added to regularly. In particular, at the end of February, another 16 miles of new path was added to the English coastal path. I congratulate Natural England on the work it is doing and I look forward to seeing that path completed next year.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raises an important point. As I said, we must not lose sight of the fact that we have been battling on this for 70 years. I remember dealing with it as a land agent in the 1970s and it is a hugely complex, expensive and time-consuming task. The noble Lord was absolutely right to point out some of the difficulties. Councils are spending thousands of pounds and committing a lot of resources to try to solve the problem. On the other side of the coin, where there might be historical rights of way, landowners and involved parties have to defend situations that are not terribly relevant. When they end up in judicial review or in court, they are proved not to be rights of way. That is a waste of time and money.
As a footpath walker, I do not want to walk through somebody’s farmyard. It is bad for disease and bad for the farm. There can be hazards. If I am taking my grandchildren on a walk, I certainly do not want a tractor coming round the corner. We must be able to divert footpaths quicker. There is no doubt that some landowners have been harassed about this in the past.
Getting footpaths diverted is part of what the Government want to do under the new proposals. I ask my noble friend: when will these new proposals come in? When will the Deregulation Act 2015 be fully implemented? The whole system needs to be sped up; the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is absolutely right. I want to ask another question. Will my noble friend confirm that she will not accept bicycles being used on footpaths? There is a push by Cycling UK to open all footpaths to bicycles. Footpaths are footpaths; they are sometimes used by disabled or slightly disabled people such as me, and I do not want bicyclists running me over on a footpath. It is bad enough on a pavement. I hope she will be very firm on that.