Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

I hope that my noble friend will give these amendments serious consideration. It will be difficult to devise meaningful targets and it may take more time than the other four in this category, but it can be done with effort and good will. If he takes away one message tonight, it should be from the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Devon.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, as this is my first intervention in Committee, and for the purposes of all the stages of the Bill, I declare my interests as a retired farmer and landowner, chair of an internet travel business and chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology research.

Most of these amendments stress the importance of the Government taking seriously the planning of people’s enjoyment of nature and all that the countryside has to offer. Other noble Lords have outlined the advantages for people and their health, and indeed for nature itself. I am pleased to be following the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, with his knowledge and expertise in the subject.

I very much support the principle that the Government should get involved in the promotion of access, as it is no use leaving these things to chance. If it is worth a taxpayer paying land managers to produce a landscape or habitats of which we can be proud, it is vital that the same taxpayer should be enabled, and even encouraged, to enjoy the fruits of their spending. As Professor Dasgupta has indicated, our countryside and its wildlife are extremely valuable. I ask noble Lords: would an artist complete a wonderful painting without thinking about how they were going to display it? Would a drama company put on a play without thinking seriously about attracting an audience? In my view, the taxpayer deserves no less. The Government must set out how they are going to facilitate and improve the public enjoyment of our countryside and its nature.

I will add a note of caution to what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said. As the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, said, it is relevant that, while Scotland has a population density of 65 people per square kilometre, and Norway, another country that she mentioned, has 15 people per square kilometre, and the UK has 278 people per square kilometre, for England by itself the figure is actually 432 people per square kilometre. We are a very crowded country, and all land uses therefore have to be carefully planned, although I believe that where access is available it should be well-promoted.

I sat on the Glover review of the management and uses of our national parks and AONBs. We are still waiting for the Government’s response to it, although I am told that it is extremely imminent. I remain hopeful that that response will be a first step in the right direction of improving people’s enjoyment of our natural environment.

I turn to Amendment 58, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. The issue is an old chestnut that this House has touched on many times before, and indeed Governments and local authorities have skirted around it for decades without really resolving it. The NERC Act 2006 tried to put it to bed, as the noble Lord said, and partially succeeded, but the despoilation of green lanes remains a thorny issue. The problem, as he said, is that these lanes, made for use by horses, and by horses and carts and carriages, have become an attraction for four-wheel-drive vehicles, trail bikes and quad bikes. In some rare instances—I stress that they are rare because mostly coexistence works quite well—they have become so popular, and, frankly, so irresponsibly used, that parts of the green lane have become almost impassable mud baths. That often makes those sections impossible to pass for the very horses and carriages that they were originally intended for, and even sometimes for ramblers on foot. Some of the photographs that I have seen are not attractive.

There is also the problem of local farmers who have permitted rights over the green lanes, usually to feed their stock on the nearby hill. On rare occasions, even they have found it hard to get access to their stock because of the state of the green lane. It is not common, as I say, but it is a problem.

When the Select Committee looked at the NERC Act 12 years on, in 2018, we recognised the problems and the controversy between the various users and suggested that if the rules were clear, as well as easy and inexpensive to use, the small number of problem sections could be dealt with by local authorities imposing traffic regulation orders, or TROs. These TROs could either ban motorised vehicles altogether or limit them to summer months, or even just summer weekends, or whatever. But the point is that they have to be put in place cheaply and without bother by the local authorities, which do not have the money to put into them at the moment. Nor is the legal situation very clear. If these problems could be dealt with simply, firmly and, I hope, cheaply, and on a localised basis, that would be a successful result.

The Government’s response to our report was to ask the motor vehicle stakeholder group to produce recommendations for how the TRO process could be used more efficiently by highway authorities. The Government indicated that they would consider bringing forward legislative or regulatory changes in the light of the stakeholder group’s report. But as far as I know, no new enabling regulatory changes have been brought forward, and it would seem that the issue continues to be controversial. I am not sure whether a new consultation, as proposed by the amendment, would actually help the situation—I expect the views of the various participants are by now well known to all. As I say, in 2018, Defra was expecting to bring forward measures to simplify the TRO system very soon, and maybe now it should, frankly, just get on with it.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I put my name to Amendment 8, and it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves what that says given the debate that we have just had. It says

“public access to and enjoyment of the natural environment”,

but it does not say whether that should be urban or rural.

My noble friend Lady Scott emphasised small spaces, and I very much welcome the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who emphasised urban space and greenery, which is much more accessible to the majority of our population. That reminds us of something which has always been true: in the countryside, perhaps as well as in urban areas, once people are at the car park, or wherever they decide to park their car—in a national park, an area of outstanding natural beauty, or by a nature reserve—the amount of travel that they do from that point is extremely limited.

One of the key things about this is public health and social prescribing, which people have been talking about. I am not an expert in that area, but in my role as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, we have decided to work closely with the local health and well-being board to make sure that we have a combined aim and goal to improve people’s lives by their access to the environment and to green spaces, which needs to be frequent rather than occasional—small bites, rather than occasional large sorties into the countryside.

I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that access to the countryside tends to be fairly limited, but I have to agree with him: during last summer in particular, I saw pictures on television of improvised barbecues and camping on beaches and areas of Dartmoor National Park. That is clearly an issue. But when I think about that I wonder what the equivalent is in an urban area. Yes, there is probably equal aggravation from litter and barbecues in parks, or whatever, but the point is that, in urban contexts, normally there are people there, and there is a budget, to clear this up. In the countryside, national parks, and in particular areas of outstanding natural beauty, have very small budgets for rectifying these sorts of issues that are created by minorities.

As the noble Viscount said, there is an issue with fly-tipping; it is an increasing problem and I suspect that, last year, it was partly because tips—I have been told off for using that word, and should say public waste disposal facilities—were closed for quite a long period of time. There is a real need there. I identify entirely with farmers who find that there is waste-tipping on their land and suddenly it becomes their responsibility. We somehow need to transfer the way that it works in urban and suburban areas, where there is a community responsibility to put that fly-tipping right, to the countryside. Obviously, the most important thing is to try to prevent it in the first place.