Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I have two amendments in this group, which I will come to in a minute. I noticed that, in our discussion on the previous group of amendments, noble Lords declared interests. I do not think that we need to declare an interest at this stage because we are still in Committee, but because I am about to talk about rock-climbing interests I remind noble Lords of the interests that I declared at the start of Committee many weeks ago. My amendments would not do what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said they would do, but I will come to them in a moment. We are talking about the coastal margin: the access land associated with the route. One of the noble Lord’s amendments is about the safety and convenience of the coastal margin land rather than of the route. For a start, I do not quite understand the relevance of safety and convenience, particularly convenience, to coastal margin land. I understand the meaning of "convenience" when it relates to the route itself—where it goes, how easy it is to walk on it, how direct it is, how close it is to the coast, the views of the sea and so on—but I do not understand how that applies to the coastal margin. What on the coastal margin does the noble Lord think should be convenient? Secondly, on safety, I would be very concerned if safe access to cliffs, for example, had to be considered, because what is safe for one person who might be competent at climbing the cliffs might not be safe at all for other people who might not be competent at climbing the cliffs and might not have the proper equipment. The principle must be that people are responsible for their own safety on the coastal margin, and Natural England and the people who are associated with Natural England are responsible for providing information about what sort of land it is. They should not have a namby-pamby attitude and tell people, "You can’t go there because that cliff might fall on your head". As a climber, it is my responsibility to decide. The noble Lord also tabled an amendment to determine whether the coastal margin should be on the seaward side or the landward side. Clearly in many cases the seaward side will form most of the coastal margin, but to restrict it to the seaward side and not have it on the landward side would be ludicrous in many areas because land on the landward side will very clearly be coastal land; so we do not agree at all with that amendment. Amendment 358D could relate to wild birds. I understand why it has been tabled, but it is misguided for several reasons. If you are going to have restrictions on access for wild birds, 14 days will not be enough in many cases, so restricting the period to 14 days would not be appropriate. Many wild birds nest on cliffs and restrictions are necessary to prevent people from disturbing them, but statutory restrictions, as I have argued before in your Lordships’ House, are not the way forward. The way forward is to continue the existing extremely successful system, which protects birds on such cliffs and works through collaboration between conservation groups, particularly the RSPB and local RSPB people, the British Mountaineering Council, BMC representatives and local climbers. There is already an extremely comprehensive and sophisticated system to prevent climbers from disturbing wild birds when they must not be disturbed. I refer any Members of your Lordships’ House who might be interested in this matter to the BMC website: www.bmc.co.uk. Under "Crag Access" and "Nesting Restrictions", they can download a poster that shows more than 100 detailed restrictions that are in place for this year. For climbers, who are anarchic people, such a voluntary system works. If it has been negotiated by their colleagues and representatives, they not only abide by it but ensure that climbers in the vicinity who are not abiding by it do so. It is peer pressure, I suppose, which is a pun; I have stopped people climbing where they should not climb. A system such as this really does work, and when it works it should not be interfered with. It is also extremely flexible, because you cannot tell in advance when the birds are going to start nesting, when the chicks will hatch and fly away from the nests and when you can go back to the cliffs. The system works on a week-by-week, sometimes day-by-day, basis, and tells you when you can go and when you cannot. It works. Formal legislation is not the way forward, although there is formal legislation if it is necessary. So far, it has been found not to be necessary. My two amendments in this group are also, coincidentally, about climbers’ interests and climbing. Amendments A336D and A358E refer to circumstances in which a physical feature that marks the boundary of access land is a cliff or a rock face. I put this amendment down as a result of experience under existing CROW legislation. Reasonably, a cliff face is a boundary of existing access land, which has been mapped as such. The difficulty is whether that boundary—a cliff face, a crag—is accessible. There are instances where landowners and local authorities have taken the view that it is the boundary and that it is not accessible, where, clearly, under CROW legislation it counts as mountain, moor, heath or down because it is a rock face and is clearly included in the descriptions. Therefore, I am putting this matter forward simply to raise the existing problem and to ask not to have it on the coast. It is clear that the landward boundary of access land on the coast might be a rock face, on top of which is farmland. My proposition is that that rock face should be accessible on foot; that is, people should be able to climb it.