Dartmoor National Park (Access)

Richard Foord Excerpts

1st reading
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I do not intend to divide the House this afternoon, but I wish to speak against leave being given to bring forward such a Bill. I will set out my strong opposition to the terms set out by the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), relating first to so-called enhanced access, secondly to land ownership and thirdly to incentives. I also refer Members to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests. They will see that I do not have any interests with a bearing on Dartmoor, but as a child I took part in the Dartmoor Ten Tors. I also did the Duke of Edinburgh award on Dartmoor, and I would like to pay tribute to the young people from across east and mid-Devon who will take part in that gruelling exercise at the end of next week and to the others who will participate in the jubilee challenge.

John Dower wrote in 1945 in a report arguing for the creation of national parks such as Dartmoor that

“there can be few national purposes which, at so modest a cost, offer so large a prospect of health-giving happiness for the people”.

With that in mind, I wish to outline why a Bill such as the one the hon. Gentleman has outlined is not the route that we should be taking. First, on enhanced access, the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 already confers on the public a right to walk or ride a horse on the commons. There are around 450 miles of public rights of way on Dartmoor and many miles of permitted footpaths and bridleways. I am sure that most Members would agree that in addition to rights we should also think about responsibilities. Rather than talking solely about public rights of way, we might like to think about public responsibilities of way. The people I know who walk on Dartmoor and other farmlands certainly think in those terms and have nothing but disdain for the small proportion of visitors who leave litter or cause fires through the irresponsible use of disposable barbecues.

The hon. Member for Totnes’s proposal refers to enhanced access, yet much of Dartmoor is already designated as access land. This means that it remains privately owned but has no restrictions on where walkers can explore. To put this into context, it is worth looking at some examples of who owns land on Dartmoor. Fifteen landowners own nearly half of the land on Dartmoor. Only 1.4% of the land is owned directly by the Dartmoor national park Authority, while around 37% of Dartmoor is designated as common land.

South West Water owns more than 5,000 acres of land on Dartmoor. This is a company that paid £45 million in dividends in 2022 and whose chief executive has a remuneration package worth £1.6 million, all while sewage continues to be discharged into our rivers, including the River Dart. South West Water has not been short of incentives from this Government, but for many of the wrong behaviours.

Another part of the moor, Brent moor, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, is currently up for sale. It was reported in the press earlier this year that Brent moor was owned by the Saudi businessman Sheikh Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim. The estate agent Knight Frank lists Brent Moor as

“2,763 acres of freehold land, with sporting rights in hand, sold subject to various rights, including common grazing rights and public rights of way”.

More than a third of the Dartmoor national park is private land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. The current Prince of Wales, whom I admire sincerely, chooses to use a substantial proportion of his income from the Duchy estate to meet the cost of his public and charitable work. I do not suppose that he would want to be subject to so-called incentives to permit enhanced access on the Duchy estate.

Lastly, on this principle of proposed incentives, I am concerned that there is a suggestion here that the public should continue to enjoy the rugged beauty of Dartmoor in exchange for incentives, and specifically incentives for some of the landowners I have referred to. I worry about the precedent that this might set for other national parks. The Glover report recommended that the number of visitors should be only one criterion for how core funding should be delivered through a national landscapes service.

I also worry about other examples of where this Government have sought to incentivise landowners with respect to public goods. Look at the glacial roll-out of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ environmental land management scheme. I would not even trust this Government to properly incentivise young farmers with a knees-up in a brewery. Farmers were promised a more generous and far less cumbersome, less bureaucratic set of incentives than those that the Government have landed on them. It is little wonder that sign-up to some tiers of ELMS is currently running at about 10%.

The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) said in 2020:

“It makes no sense to subsidise land ownership and tenure where the largest subsidy payments too often go to the wealthiest landowners.”

But then last autumn he said in relation to the Australia and New Zealand trade deal negotiated by the Government of which he had been a part that it

“gave away far too much for far too little in return.”—[Official Report, 14 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 424.]

I think we might expect the Government to do the same in any new scheme for so-called enhanced access.

For all these reasons, I urge that leave should not be given to bring in such a Bill. In 1909, Liberals sang “The Land”. I will save the House from a rendition with the melody, but it included words that remain true today, more than a century later:

“ ’Twas God who gave the land. God gave the land to the people.”

Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Anthony Mangnall, Kevin Foster, Simon Jupp, Sir Gary Streeter, Sir Geoffrey Cox, Anne Marie Morris, Luke Pollard and Selaine Saxby present the Bill.

Anthony Mangnall accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time Friday 24 November, and to be printed (Bill 293).