Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I shall begin with Amendment No. 136, which is linked with Amendments Nos. 141, 142, 144 and 147, all of which are tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. In seeking to substitute ““Royal Assent”” for the word ““commencement”” wherever it occurs in Clause 65, the purpose of these amendments is to remove any flexibility that the Government would otherwise have in commencing this clause. This would have the effect of making it impossible for us to synchronise the commencement of this clause, Clause 65, with implementation of the restricted byway regulations and the associated commencement order for Sections 47 to 51 of the CROW Act. On day six in Committee, I attempted to explain to the Committee that before Part 6 of the Bill may be commenced, the restricted byways provisions in Sections 47 to 51 of the CROW Act 2000 will need to be in force. In order for the Bill’s rights of way provisions to work properly, regulations making amendments to other legislation are also necessary. The reason for this is that Clause 65 seeks to extinguish vehicular rights of way over restricted byways. Section 47 of CROW effectively reclassifies all RUPPs as restricted byways. If Section 47 of CROW has not been commenced before Clause 65 of this Bill takes effect, RUPPs will not be caught by the extinguishment, and any vehicular rights over them will remain, which I do not think is the intention of the majority of noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. This is particularly important in respect of commencement in Wales, where, because of administrative arrangements, it may not be possible to commence the restricted byway provisions quite as soon as in England. I am pleased to report that the restricted byways regulations were debated and approved in this House and in the other place last week. Because of the need to co-ordinate the commencement of both sets of legislation, the need to give two weeks’ notice of the commencement date in the restricted byway commencement order and the fact that we do not yet know on what the date the Bill will receive Royal Assent, the Government must have precise control over the date of commencement of Part 6. We can do this only by providing for a separate commencement order. When will that date of commencement be? It will be a matter of weeks after Royal Assent, at most. The key issue is the cut-off date, because all claims after that date will be determined under the new legislation. Government Amendment No. 173 restores the commencement clause to the way in which it was drafted before Report. As I have tried to explain, this is because we need to have control over the precise date of commencement of the Bill’s right of way provisions in order to synchronise this with the commencement of the restricted byways regulations and the commencement order for Sections 47 to 51 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. I assure the House that this is a purely technical matter of timetabling rather than any lack of intention on our part to bring these provisions into force at the earliest opportunity. The crux of the debate is Amendment No. 140, which seeks to replace the 19 May 2005 cut-off date for processing claims under the terms of the existing legislation with the date of 9 December 2003. I entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, says. There are great strengths of feeling in the country on both sides of the argument about this, even though the side of the argument that has been advanced in this amendment is the one that has the most support. The 9 December 2003 date is the date on which the Government first published the consultation proposals that eventually gave rise to the rights of way provisions in this Bill. We have established that we could in principle provide for all outstanding BOAT claims to be determined under the terms of the new legislation without that having retrospective effect, but the fact that there is no legal impediment to doing this does not, in our view, relieve us of the obligation to be fair and reasonable. Clearly, there are problems with the use of motor vehicles on rights of way that need to be addressed, and we believe that we are doing that in the Bill, but the House should not forget that government research into the use of motor vehicles on BOATs found that many byways are used by motor vehicles for recreation without any detriment to the character of the way or the enjoyment and safety of other users. Our response should therefore be proportionate, as well as fair and reasonable. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked about human rights issues—a very correct question, if I may respectfully say so. This is an issue not of human rights, but of possible retrospection. The date of 19 May 2005 is more acceptable than 9 December 2003 because the legislation was actually introduced on 19 May 2005, so there is less of an argument that there may be a legitimate expectation of claims being processed under the existing legislation. I repeat that the Government do not think that this is really a human rights issue; it is certainly not about the rights of one user of a right of way against another. The concern about human rights related to the rights of landowners and access to their property, and we hope that that issue has been dealt with in amendments that have already been made to the Bill. Frankly, it is a matter of fairness—I believe that this House always tries to be fair—to the genuine, good applications made since 2003. We would argue that the bulk of the bad applications came later and are covered by our date—19 May 2005. I am asked about figures. Let me do my best. I was asked about outstanding applications for byways open to all traffic, and whether those applications were single or multiple. Figures provided by local authorities for the whole of England tell us that some 497 applications for BOATs that were received before 9 December 2003 are still outstanding. We are still waiting for information from a very small number of authorities. The figure for applications for BOATs that are still outstanding and received before 20 January 2005—perhaps a significant date as it is the date on which the consultation ended—is 785. The figure for 19 May 2005 is 992. We do not know how many applications for byways open to all traffic have been submitted since 19 May last year. We have not made a tally of those claims because, of course, all claims between May and Royal Assent would be caught by the provision in any case. To carry out another tally would be, we believe—we may be right, we may be wrong—an unnecessary administrative burden on local authorities. As I say, applications submitted since 19 May will, under the transition arrangements set out in government Amendment No. 318 in Committee, be processed under the terms of the new legislation.