My Lords, yes, there have been fires on Pennine moors during the hot weather and lockdown, almost certainly caused by barbecues. I am one of the people pressing the Government to ban the use of mobile barbecues on open spaces. The sooner it happens the better.
I have been musing on the fact that I cut my teeth in the House of Lords on the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill almost exactly 20 years ago. At least three of us here in this debate are survivors of the all-night sitting we had in Committee—one of 11 Committee sessions. The Opposition at that time, the Conservatives, wanted 23 if I remember rightly. It was negotiated down to 11. If Members here think that they are hard done by, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
At that time there was also a pretty strong anti-access lobby in the House of Lords that was vociferous and quite angry. It is interesting that that has almost entirely disappeared and even those who raise questions are now reasonable and polite about it, which was not always the case at that time. That is a result of the success of the legislation that the then Labour Government brought in 20 years ago, which I was very proud to have been associated with in a very minor way.
I got together a speech to make today about how important access and recreation in the countryside are, but it is not necessary any more because it is generally accepted that that is the case. The value of recreation in the countryside for mental as well as physical health is generally accepted and that argument has been won.
As my noble friend Lady Scott said, we are talking about trying to make sure that things do not get worse and that they get better. Better small-scale facilities such as signposts and stiles that you can get over without demolishing dry stone walls in the process—I have done that twice in my life, simply because the facilities had deteriorated and it was a little-used footpath—help proper use and help land managers and farmers to cope with people walking across their land. It is win-win.
I am particularly supportive of Amendment 59, which is about enhancing access infrastructure. I am very fortunate to live in Pendle, on the edge of the town, with access to wonderful Pennine countryside, up on the Yorkshire border with Lancashire. Over the years, a huge amount of work had been done there on providing this kind of access. It is now beginning to fall apart a little, partly because the county council
does not have the funding for it and partly because the schemes under which the work was done are not there anymore. It is very important indeed that the replacement and maintenance of facilities is part of what we are talking about.
I want to say something about the work that is going on in the Mendips by the Trails Trust, which the Minister will know about, as part of one of the trials looking at the provision of better and improved access. Will the Minister comment on that and tell us whether that kind of thing is going on in other areas? The trust is finding a lot of new bridleways, and those will be highly valuable. Indeed, I signed my name to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, about better bridleways.
One thing that is forgotten about is cycleways. Cycleways are not just urban things—they can be rural. They can be combined with horse riding and walking on local byways; indeed, you can cycle on a bridleway, but very often the surface is not all that good for cycling. They are not part of the rights of way legislation, because, at the time when that was based, cycles did not exist—they had not been invented. This is something that should be looked at now.
I ask the Government to look specifically at the problems raised by my noble friend Lady Scott concerning the ending of cross-compliance. Rights of way authorities have found cross-compliance requiring landowners to adhere to the Highways Act 1980 valuable, basically because they could threaten them for not doing it if they were getting grants. If that is removed, will a cross-compliance-type ruling be automatic, particularly in tier 1 grants and schemes, insisting that cross-compliance on rights of way on the land continues to exist—it would not be called “cross-compliance” but it would be the same thing—as a condition for getting the grant? Even if the grant does not cover rights of way at all, will landowners still be required to adhere to cross-compliance?
Finally, I come back to rights of way improvement plans, which I mentioned at Second Reading, and which the access authorities are supposed to have in place. Very often, the enthusiasm that went into these plans has gone, because rights of way departments have shrunk under the cuts to local authority budgets. The Environmental Land Management Policy Discussion Document, published in February, says that tier 2 outcomes are
“locally targeted environmental outcomes”
with
“some form of spatial targeting and local planning”.
This seems to be ideally suited to rights of way improvement plans across an area. Is that the kind of thing that the Government will look at and consider favourably? Will they encourage rights of way improvement authorities to put forward plans and try to integrate them into the new environmental land management system?