Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for his comments and we mostly welcome this group of amendments. The Minister, and other hon. Members who have taken an interest in this part of the Bill, will know that it has probably caused the most angst, especially the issue of the date of commencement. I am the first to admit to an element of confusion earlier in the proceedings. Having read and reread the Committee and Report proceedings, my confusion appears to have been shared by everybody else, including the Minister. The hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) would probably agree. We were all saying the same thing based on what appears to have been a misunderstanding of the import of the Bill and the impact that it would have on what we believed to be some 2,000 outstanding applications for the creation of BOATs. Subsequently, I tabled a written question and I am grateful to the Minister for taking a great deal of care in answering it. He has surveyed all the highways authorities to find out how many applications were outstanding on three dates—the date on which the Government published their consultation in December 2003, the date on which they announced the conclusions of their consultation in January 2005 and the date on which the Bill was presented in May 2005. That elicited the fact that the number of applications outstanding was not 2,000, as we had been led to believe, but fractionally fewer than 1,000, of which almost exactly half predated the original consultation. Some 288 were lodged in the consultation period between December 2003 and January 2005, and another 200 or so were lodged between January and May. That demonstrates an increasing rate of applications, but the situation was not as bad as we thought it would be. The concern shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House was that the Bill would allow a long period in which those 2,000 applications could proceed. If that happened, the intention of closing off the loophole of previous use of byways by vehicles in BOAT applications would have been defeated. I am glad to say, for reasons that I will come to in a moment, that that possibility has been significantly diminished.