Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, I understand the noble Baroness’s point. My noble friend Lord Carter asked, without the CRC, who would monitor the rural-proofing activities of Defra, other government departments and local authorities. We agree with him: who else would do it? I have already spoken on costs but I will write to the noble Baroness with more detail. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, raised an important debate about conflict resolution, and other noble Lords joined in. Earlier I said that I wanted Natural England to be a trenchant champion of the environment. I hope that noble Lords will find it reassuring that the Sandford principle will continue to apply in national parks and that in nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest the strong presumption that biodiversity considerations takes precedence will continue. That is vital in those important areas, where the value of local biodiversity and landscape has been clearly identified through due process. However, Natural England’s remit extends outside those areas to cover England’s entire land mass. The general purpose gives Natural England the role of ensuring that the natural environment is conserved, enhanced and managed for the benefit of present and future generations. No one reading that purpose can doubt that Natural England is an environmental organisation. Natural England’s decision-making context will be sustainable development. Through its environmental work, Natural England will actively seek economic and social benefits. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, our aim is not to restrict the membership of Natural England to a narrow group of interests. I know that that matter concerns him. I told noble Lords that I would say something about byways, and I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I spend the rest of my time bringing them up to date with information that came to me after my opening speech. I said that I hoped shortly to be able to make an announcement on commencement of the rights of way provisions and how we intend to deal with outstanding claims for byways open to all traffic. I am pleased to say that we have completed our deliberations and to make the following announcement. We propose to commence the provisions at the date of Royal Assent. We intend to deal with any claims for byways open to all traffic submitted to local authorities before the commencement date as follows. Our aim is to prevent local authorities being inundated with byway claims to defeat the legislation. However, we must also take into account that there are byway claims outstanding simply because it takes an appreciable amount of time to process them. Also many have been outstanding for some time because some local authorities have not processed them as quickly as they might. Given those circumstances, we consider it fair and reasonable to limit the transitional provisions for byway claims so that only claims submitted prior to the Bill’s introduction, on 19 May 2005, will be preserved, apart from two exceptions. First, we think it reasonable to provide for byway claims made after 19 May to be preserved in cases where the local authority has already reached the stage of determining the claim and has made a definitive map modification order. We believe that few, if any, claims made after 19 May will have reached that stage. Secondly, not forgetting that the concern about the use of mechanically propelled vehicles on rights of way is about non-essential or recreational use, there is a strong argument for preserving claims where they are made by property owners seeking to establish a public right to their property to provide them with legal certainty. We recognise that those transitional provisions will leave a significant number of outstanding BOAT claims in some counties, particularly Wiltshire, Hampshire, Derbyshire and Somerset. There is no reason why traffic regulation orders cannot be put into effect before motor vehicular rights are established. Those authorities should look at how to make the best use of those powers to manage any problematical use of those byways while claims are being processed. That is our present intention. I have no doubt that the matter will be raised in Committee, where it would be appropriate to do so, but I hope that the House feels that it has up-to-date information. Once again, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this Second Reading. I look forward to meeting all of you, some of you, or maybe even more, in Committee in due course. I commend the Bill to the House. On Question, Bill read a second time.