National Parks

Debate between Nick Boles and Simon Hart

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am an optimist and I think that such tensions can almost always be resolved positively, but my hon. Friend puts his finger on the potential tension between allowing modern life to take place so that these parks do not become theme parks, while preserving the very beauty that makes them so special in the first place, and makes people want to live and set up businesses there. That tension is real, but I am sure it can be resolved.

[Simon Hart]

On flexibility, does the Minister agree that there may sometimes be a situation where conservation has to trump economic activity, and that that is restrictive? Something that has a minimal impact on conservation might have a positive impact on economic development, but at the moment national parks are hamstrung when it comes to making a measured judgment on that. It should be more flexible.

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend had made this argument to me before in various settings—including a Westminster Hall debate that was almost equally lively—but I have not yet been persuaded by his argument. What is the point of a national park if conservation is not the prime duty? On the other hand, I do not think that that duty always trumps other arguments. Of course there are other responsibilities, and every national park authority that I have spoken to takes those other responsibilities seriously. It is reasonable, however, that in national parks a greater weight is placed on that fundamental duty to conserve the landscape than is true in the rest of the English countryside.