Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I support the sentiment of the amendment if not its exact terms; it could do with a little additional clarity. I speak from my background as the president of a wildlife trust, as president of the British Trust for Ornithology and the vice president of the RSPB. The five basic elements of Natural England’s general purpose as laid out in Clause 2(2) are very important. Noble Lords will recall the slightly bad tempered debate that we had last time in Committee; there was some loose talk in the Lobby afterwards that we should perhaps just abandon Clause 2(2), since it would remove many of the amendments that had up until then been put forward, because of the disagreements about the fine grain of its wording. It is an important elaboration of the role of Natural England. Indeed, with one of my other hats on as chief executive of the Environment Agency, I would be extremely grieved if it disappeared, since it would then be creating a body that appeared to have very similar purposes to the Environment Agency. The five elements of the elaboration are important, and in most cases I suspect that they will not come into direct conflict. One of the important roles of Natural England will be to find cunning ways to deliver on all the objectives in an integrated way. There is no doubt that conflict can occur; I say that as a former chairman of English Nature. On many occasions we were faced with propositions where we had to make extremely difficult decisions about balancing the much more limited purposes of English Nature for biodiversity and conservation in the face of real pressure for economic development, increased access and increased recreational development. Considerable work has been done in the past few years on the research base and the evidence of the impacts on wildlife and landscape of access and recreational development. I draw the Minister’s attention to some examples that were given in the briefing from the Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, the Woodland Trust and the Council for the Protection of Rural England. The RSPB has collated all the research on issues where there is a conflict between access and birds, and the British Ornithologists’ Union held an extremely important and definitive conference last year on disturbance and its impact on bird population trends. The report on that conference will shortly be published, and I will provide the Minister with my references, because that publication will demonstrate that in some circumstances recreation has a real impact on conservation. It is not only what I would call quiet access. Natural England will also come under pressure from all quarters for increased recreational and economic development, particularly as the drying-up of other sources of income in the countryside increases the need for landowners to diversify. There will also be pressure for recreational facilities to back up the increased housing development that we will see in the countryside. We will see holiday developments and golf courses and developments of the Jeremy Clarkson style, if I may designate them like that, such as jet skis and war games. The pressure will be pervasive, and we must seek to ensure that the sorts of tourism and leisure developments that depend heavily on the abundance of wildlife and the natural beauty of the area do not in fact undermine that very wildlife and that very beauty in seeking to deliver social and economic benefits. I hesitate to give examples, because in many cases I have been involved in them. There are two where I was only on the periphery and mercifully they are outside England and Wales. The funicular up the Cairngorm was a highly unnecessary development, which is a blot on the landscape. There is also the much lamented visitor centre in the Burren in Ireland which, at the end of the day as a result of a European edict, was quite rightly demolished, having been built inappropriately in a highly sensitive area. I was quite taken aback by the Natural England partnership briefing for our Committee stage. It tried to assure us that the open access provisions of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 have not resulted in irreconcilable conflict with biodiversity. I gently challenge that position; it is too early to judge the real impact of further open access. Indeed, that open access in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act was to wide open spaces; to mountain and moorland, upland and downland. The research evidence is indicating that linear access in restricted areas—such as along riverbanks or coasts—disturbs wildlife the most. I am not saying that it is universal. There are many rivers and coastal areas that can be opened up to access, but in those sensitive areas where the concentration of people, wildlife, plants and animals in narrow strips is of particular importance, biodiversity really must be predominant. So, pressure on Natural England further to expand open access provisions will, from time to time and on rare occasions, result in more significant and irreconcilable conflicts between its purposes. I take the points of the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Judd, that the amendment possibly needs a little tightening up and clarification. Personally, I would add the words ““significant and irreconcilable”” to demonstrate that we are talking only of extreme occasions. But on those occasions, Natural England needs a clear steer from Government, to support it in doing the right thing when facing that sort of pressure and significant or irreconcilable conflicts between elements of its purposes. The Minister may well say, as he did at Second Reading, that adequate assurances have already been given that Natural England will be a trenchant champion for the environment. There have also been assurances, as already mentioned, in another place that biodiversity and landscape will take priority in national parks, SSSIs and nature reserves. I welcome those assurances but, as has already been said, there are elements of biodiversity and landscape outside protected areas that nevertheless need to be considered. I am sure that the Minister will also say that it is self-evident from Clause 2(1), on general purpose, that conservation of the natural environment is pre-eminent. If that is indeed self-evident from the Bill, and already sufficiently clear in his view, I would welcome the Minister saying so on the record tonight. That would mean he was supporting the view that—if your Lordships will pardon the technical term—if push comes to shove, biodiversity and landscape will take priority in those rare instances where increased access, recreation or economic development cannot be accommodated without significant and irreconcilable risk to them. That signal from Government is vital to help Natural England deal with the pressure that it will face. If that is not to be in the Bill, we need clear assurances on the record from the Minister—and, I believe, we also need to incorporate this provision in the ministerial guidance to be given to Natural England. I will give way to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, if he insists. However, I am about to finish; perhaps the noble Lord would like to wait.