My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 48. These two amendments concern the inland waterways of England and Wales
and their position under the new planning regime. They are not concerned with the inland waterways of Scotland or Northern Ireland. I need to begin by apologising to the House for not having participated before in the consideration of the Bill. However, this issue came up only late in the day in the proceedings of this House, and long after the Bill had left the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, raised the issue in outline in Committee on Monday 4 February, reported in col. 51 of Hansard. Subsequently, the Canal & River Trust has been able to address the issue directly in the form of my two amendments. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for having put his name to them. I would also like to put on record my thanks to the Minister and her Bill team for having arranged a meeting in which the CRT was able to explain and discuss the concerns that these two amendments seek to address. With those preliminaries—to horse!
The development of the inland waterways provided a vital link in the progress of the Industrial Revolution in this country. For the first time in those days, before railways and before tarmacadam roads, it became possible to move large quantities of bought material long distances at reasonable cost. It was a truly epochal moment in this country’s history. It is probably not without significance that today we still refer to those who work on the roads with the slang description of “navvies”. We are, in fact, using a phrase that came down from the word “navigators”, the description given to the men who built the canals those many years ago.
This 2,000-mile network of canals—it is said that there are more miles of canal in Birmingham than in Venice—is a fantastic heritage asset. The network contains 2,756 listed structures, 130 scheduled ancient monuments and one world heritage site. After the Church of England and the National Trust, it is the largest owner of listed structures in the country. However, it is much more than just a heritage asset; it is also a huge leisure asset. Thousands of people holiday on canal boats or live on them permanently. Literally millions of our fellow citizens run or cycle along its towpaths. Further, its linear nature, stretching as it does in and through our inner cities, makes it a major environmental asset. Its embankments, culverts and reservoirs provide a habitat for a diverse range of wildlife. Of course there remains some commercial traffic.
Noble Lords will realise from my remarks that the waterways have always had to serve a diverse range of customers and purposes. For many years, the attempts by the British Waterways Board to move forward were affected by another presence: that of Her Majesty’s Treasury. The Treasury kept a beady eye on the British Waterways Board’s assets, seeking wherever possible to collect profits for the Government, or at the very least to ensure that the board was self-funding, including its pension fund liabilities, which, given its long record and historically large workforce, were substantial.
Therefore, the outlook for the waterways was at best mixed when the Government had a flash of inspiration. Beginning under the last Labour Government and completing under the present Administration, the
British waterways operations were taken over by a new body: the Canal & River Trust. The heritage assets of the old British Waterways Board—its canals, its towpaths and its associated structures such as bridges and reservoirs—were put into a new charity, the Waterways Infrastructure Trust, which holds them inalienably. Like the assets of the National Trust, they can be sold only with the express permission of the Secretary of State. Any straightforward commercial assets remain outside the charity. In July last year, the holding body, the Canal & River Trust, came into being.
Where, then, is the problem? As we are all aware, water is heavy stuff, so developments close to, alongside or over the canals carry risks. Embankments slip, bridge foundations move and tunnels crack. To date, the waterways’ position has been protected by the British Waterways Board’s status as a statutory body. This gave it access to the special parliamentary procedure of the Planning Act 1947. In the last resort, if an arrangement could not be reached with the developer in question, the board could invoke the SPP procedure, akin to a Private Bill. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has taken part in one of these and can talk far more knowledgably about it than I can. In all the 60 years since 1947, the British Waterways Board never used the SPP procedures, but it was a very useful backstop to ensure that this great national asset was not chipped away at by a series of individual local decisions.
The House will be aware that the statutory bodies protection under the SPP is to disappear under the provisions of this Bill. Further, of course, the new Canal & River Trust is no longer a statutory body, so it is now more vulnerable to attacks on its network. Strangely, while the Government have seen fit to reduce the planning protection for statutory boards and public open spaces, they have continued to provide a special position for the National Trust as laid out in paragraph 96 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill.
There must be a very strong argument that, given the nature of its operations, the Canal & River Trust can properly be described as a waterways national trust. Indeed, the Waterways Infrastructure Trust was created on terms that explicitly replicate the terms on which the National Trust holds land. It should therefore surely be given the same planning permission as the National Trust: no more, no less. That is what Amendments 47 and 48 aim to achieve.
I end with a few final points. Compared with the National Trust, a higher proportion of the Canal & River Trust assets are in urban areas. The waterways, after all, were built to link our industrial centres. They are linear. Both these factors combine to make them particularly vulnerable to development. Secondly, curiously the National Trust already owns one canal, the Wey and Godalming Navigations. This particular canal will continue to have special protection. Why should the rest of the network not be similarly protected? Thirdly, if my noble friend’s Bill team is encouraging her to resist this amendment on the grounds of creating a precedent, she should not worry. Google away as much as you like: there is no body of similar scale and status to the Canal & River Trust to pop up and say, “What about us?”.
Finally, local interest in canals is intense. Indeed, in the bad old days, most of the work of restoring and maintaining canals was done by volunteers at weekends and the holidays. For those who have an interest in this, there is a great BBC2 documentary on the work that was carried out at that time. The Canal & River Trust is building on this enthusiasm with the establishment of nine local partnerships. This is localism in action. We should protect and encourage it wherever we can.
To conclude, these amendments do not—I repeat not—seek special new privileges for the Canal & River Trust; they merely maintain the existing protections given to the British Waterways Board as a statutory body. These historic assets, which now also provide so many leisure facilities, deserve no less. I beg to move.