My Lords, I put my name to these amendments for very much the reasons put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Clause 8 is really not necessary. I declare an interest as president of the Suffolk Preservation Society. I have some experience in this area, because I did 12 years on the Countryside Commission, under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, and was lucky enough to get to know the national parks very well during that time. In eight of those years, I was also on the Rural Development Commission under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Vinson. One saw then the importance and possibility of combining the conservation and protection of our finest countryside with economic development, which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, so rightly pointed out.
I have always regarded the planning system and, with it, the creation of the national parks, as one of the two great venerable icons of the Attlee Government—the other, of course, being the National Health Service. Over the years, it has worked extremely well. I have seen at close quarters how it works. Of course, it is necessary to have new technologies, and indeed they are to be welcomed. Indeed, the broadband technologies, which make new forms of economic enterprise possible in remote areas is one of the least intrusive.
There has been a lot of talk about undergrounding, and I have a bit of experience of that, too. I am very keen on undergrounding. For some years, I was a non-executive director of the Eastern Electricity Board, both before it was privatised and for a while afterwards, when it was taken over by Hanson. I persuaded my co-directors to start a scheme for undergrounding wires in designated areas, which worked extremely well. It is not wildly expensive. Of course, the 440 kilovolt pylons are hugely expensive to underground, but the network of wirescaping, which can so badly damage a landscape, is remarkably inexpensive to underground. We did it in some 30 designated conservation areas on the heritage coast. The first one was in my own village, and I was attacked by Paul Foot in Private Eye, on the grounds that I lived in the village, because I had banged on about it for about five years before they did it. But it is a perfectly good scheme to do things such as undergrounding. All this can be done very well under the existing arrangements. Broadband can and will come, and it is crucial that it should do so. However, absolutely no reason that I have heard of or read about justifies the necessity for introducing Clause 8 to give special treatment to broadband.
I do not believe that we should for one instant consider damaging the unique quality and status of these most precious landscapes by weakening control over them. I believe it is unlikely that this Government would seek to do so, but if they were to do so, it is most unlikely that your Lordships’ House would agree to it.