National Parks

Debate between Julian Lewis and Sarah Wollaston

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour from Dartmoor for making that point. The change I would like to see would give our national parks and AONBs the ability to opt out of the arrangements as they stand in allowing automatic permitted development rights. I would like a change in the wording so that they have more powers to lever in land for affordable housing developments, because that is what we crucially need for our communities. My hon. Friend will know about the effect whereby we lose young people and families from rural communities, which might mean that we cannot find nurses who will work in a community hospital or, on the coast, we find that there are not enough people to man the lifeboats.

It is really important that young people and families are able to live, work and volunteer within our local communities. I would love to see whether the Minister can bring in any measures to make that easier so that we can genuinely get affordable housing rather than asking for a change to no housing. We must recognise that our national parks and AONBs need our protection; they do not need unrestricted permitted development rights. I hope that the Minister will give some encouragement to the national parks and all those who love them that there will be a change to the wording.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In order to cheer my hon. Friend up a bit, may I ask my hon. Friend whether she thinks that the Government are exercising a degree of expectation management? The proposal that national parks such as the New Forest should be open to this sort of unregulated development is so preposterous that I cannot help wondering whether it has been put up as a kite so that the Government can then dismiss it and make a great concession by doing the obvious thing, which is to exclude places like the New Forest and Dartmoor from these ridiculous provisions. I wonder whether she agrees with the New Forest National Park Authority, which says:

“It will make a mockery of our planning rules when a resident in Southampton will still need planning permission for a dormer window, but three houses can be built in the middle of the New Forest National Park”

without any such permission?

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank my hon. Friend. His final point is very pertinent, but I do not share his cynicism, because I know that the Minister is absolutely committed to the important aspiration for people to be able to have access to housing. Having lived on Dartmoor for a long time and seen the pressures that people are under, I feel that there are genuinely some unintended consequences that I hope he will encourage us to address.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Debate between Julian Lewis and Sarah Wollaston

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend will find that I am coming to that very point. There are two models according to which the New Forest can be run. There is the old model, with many sources of power intermixing, interacting and influencing each other, and there is the overarching model, with some authority in place to which everything else is subservient. My dear and hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) was right when he said that we stood shoulder to shoulder to battle against the national park authority being imposed on us, because we felt that that was an overarching model rather than an interacting model of different organisations.

That is where I fear my Front-Bench team has lost its way. It is not as if the Forestry Commission has, or ever has had, overall control. The Forestry Commission is one of a number of bodies in this universe, along with the verderers, the New Forest Commoners Defence Association, and voluntary bodies such as the New Forest Association, all of which have to work together and persuade each other before they can go forward. The Forestry Commission is not just about commerce or timber; it is also about conservation and disease control.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that when phytophthora ramorum, otherwise known as sudden oak death, is starting to devastate large forests and mixed woodland, it is not the right time to do something that might put at risk measures to control it?

[Dr Lewis]

I share that concern. It comes back to the exchange that I had with the Secretary of State during her initial contribution. There is a deficit in the running of the New Forest, and there is a good reason why there is a deficit. It is precisely because the Forestry Commission has duties, such as trying to address matters concerning disease and matters concerning conservation, as well as trying to make what profit it can from the commercial management of the timber industry.

When we consider what the future holds, we are told not to worry because either the Government will be convinced that a new or existing charitable trust will be able to take on the burden, or they will not give up the forest and it will remain in public ownership. This is not dissent; this is me participating in the consultation. Here is my answer: do not give up the forest or give it to a charity, either a new one or an old one, because they will be unable to take on the £2.9 million deficit. If the Government say, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay for that,” why the heck are they bothering to make the change? We really do not need this.

There is particular concern about the Public Bodies Bill. The New Forest has traditionally always been governed by its own legislation, which is laid out in the New Forest Acts, but there are provisions in the Public Bodies Bill that look as though they will take precedence over those Acts. If I seek any assurances at all from those on the Government Front Bench, it is an assurance that no provision in that Bill will have supremacy over the provisions of the New Forest Acts. It is terribly important that we have a constellation of organisations and that the verderers are able to say no. We need a sort of mixed economy, with neither statism on the one side, nor total privatisation, or hand-over to a private organisation or charity, on the other.