Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I have before explained my interests to the Committee and I shall not bore the Committee by going over them again. Frankly, I believe that this amendment is very unfortunate—and I am sorry to say so but, as the hour is late, I shall be blunt. Why are we conserving or protecting? We are doing it so that our people can enjoy what is there to be protected. In any way to suggest that somehow we are going to put it in a glass cage, which people can look at from a distance but in which they cannot participate—when they cannot feel the joys of what is being preserved—would be a very retrograde and sad step. The Government have got the balance, and the purposes that have been spelt out, absolutely right. Therefore, I suggest that the amendment is not one to be endorsed.