Deregulation Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I have interests to declare as a landowner with rights of way over my land, as a veteran of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act open access provisions and as a chartered surveyor who occasionally has to deal with people who are affected by rights of way problems—both public and private rights of way. I am also the chairman of the Rights of Way Review Committee, which is the parallel body that brings together a large number of different interests of landowners and users. The Minister’s own department is represented on it. I pay tribute to the professionalism that goes into that, which I know is also a hallmark of the stakeholder working group. For one more day I am also president of the National Association of Local Councils, a CLA member and a vice-president of the LGA. That completes my declarations of interest.

A huge amount of consensus has been teased out between the parties, but it serves to underline some sharp philosophical differences on either side and one must try to recognise that. The consensus, such as it is, depends hugely on the Government continuing to commit to a 2026 cut-off date on the one hand and to the resourcing of the investigation of unrecorded ways on the other. There is no consensus if the Government do not commit or they falter between now and that end date. The entire thing could easily fall apart. A lot of personal commitment and reputational capital is tied up in this.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to resources. Yes, indeed. In local government terms, this is one of those services that is regularly being bled dry because it is not a priority commitment in the context of unparalleled spending cuts. Would that the cost and uncertainty and sheer bother that is occasioned to owners of land on the one hand and the resources and activity that is put in by rights of way groups on the other—and the demands made on the public purse to try to broker these things—were actually put into the improvement of the fundamental rights of way system rather than going all round the houses trying to decide who was right and who was wrong.

The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, introduced me some time ago to two people who had particular problems with the way in which public rights of way can impact so appallingly on individual property rights. They are not the only ones. I have met with others and tried to help professionally a third category. I know very well of an example of a couple who live on the Sussex Downs. A footpath runs immediately in front of their front door. Their garden lawn is in the front because the slope rises up behind them and there is effectively no private garden behind. They provided me with incontrovertible evidence, some of which I saw myself, of groups of walkers simply deciding that they would sit down on the green area that was the front lawn. I was also shown incontrovertible evidence of people peering in through the front window of this property. That is as unacceptable in my terms as someone who barricades land that is subject to lawful rights. They are both at the extremes, and those extremes must be excised from our deliberations. The more we can build that consensus in the middle, the less likely it is that those extremes will consider themselves at liberty to perpetrate some quite anti-social acts which are to the detriment of everybody—users and landowners alike.

At Second Reading I encouraged the Minister not to overlook the ongoing needs of the public rights of way system, and I am glad that the Bill contains many valuable measures. The Bill represents a snapshot in time—it had to be compiled at a particular date in order to get the material in there—yet dialogue within the stakeholder working group and the Rights of Way Review Committee is ongoing. The Country Land and Business Association told me—and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has repeated it—that several things agreed within the stakeholder working group are not reflected in the Bill. The implication I am getting from others is that these were not actually agreed and should not go in. I do not know the answer. The Minister and his valiant departmental staff—and they are valiant—must somehow decide who is right and who is wrong. I am not in a position to say.

I conclude by saying that if the stakeholder working group came out with measures that could reasonably be included in the Bill as a matter of agreement, there would be no reason not to accept them. I do not say that with regard to the specifics of the amendments of either the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, or the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. It is just a general comment. If the next legislative opportunity is six, seven or eight years down the road, we will be well on the way to 2026, and I would be pretty worried about whether this was actually going to get done. Therefore, the entire premise of this whole set of provisions is jeopardised.

The Government have a pivotal role in this situation—that of an honest broker, assuming that they act as such and do not decide that this is in the “too hot to handle” box and do nothing, and assuming that resources are made available. There has to be a lasting settlement so that the parties on either side of the rights of way argument cease to be hostages to legal, administrative, legislative, political and financial fortune and we can look to a public rights of way system that is ultimately fit for the 21st century, rather than something that enriches consultants and lawyers.

Therefore, if the Minister’s department has, of necessity, been selective about what it has taken into the Bill from the stakeholder working group, the Minister might give us an explanation of that—or, if not, he might confirm that the Bill represents the composite nature of what needs to be in there. In that case, my view would be that no change is better than change that would put us on a slippery slope that would unseat and unsettle the consensus that we have already arrived at—a consensus which I firmly believe we can build on—and that we can progress matters to our mutual benefit across the piece.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am a patron of Friends of the Lake District and vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks, but what I want to say now is very personal. If I have come to any conclusion working in those areas, it is that the management of the countryside and the enjoyment of it by the maximum possible number of people, which entails access, is best handled by what both the noble Lords, Lord Plumb and Lord Greaves, were emphasising: reasonableness and common sense. There has to be give and take, and compromise. What matters is that everyone sees clearly that it is about reaching sensible arrangements between people with their own needs for privacy, as I have. The coast-to-coast cycle track goes down a lane beside my house right by the window of one of my rooms—it is not a bathroom; it is a study—so I understand that there are issues in this area, but it is handled sensibly. It is a long-established lane going way back into history before most of the cottages and hamlets were built. Reaching consensus is therefore terribly important.

We have had a special working group working in this area and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, rightly said, we do not want to start unpicking it because we just do not know what that might lead to. The amendments that have been put forward have a lot in them to be taken very seriously. It is not at all a matter of dismissing them out of hand; rather, it is about listening to those arguments and seeing how we can meet them in that context of reasonableness and common sense. I say to those who have tabled these amendments in good faith—and I have a lot of respect for some of them—that, in the Scottish phrase in law, the case is not proven. However, it is a case that cannot just be dismissed; it should be taken seriously and, if it were ever to be pursued, it would be good if it had more hard statistical evidence at its disposal. It is not just about principles; it is about what, in quantitative terms, the effect of all this is and how big a problem it really is.