I want to begin by saying, “There endeth the lesson”. Having sat here now for well over seven hours and heard virtually every speech, I am glad to have the brief opportunity to say a few words.
The Government must learn the lesson of the Second Reading. Time and again we have heard today from people who were excluded; I myself was one of the 22, or whatever the number was. If we had had a two-day debate on the Bill, I think we would have moved a little more expeditiously through Committee because a lot of Second Reading points have been made.
I urge my noble friend, for whom I have enormous regard, to discuss with his colleagues the inevitable extension of the Committee stage of the Bill. It will not get through in four sessions and, frankly, it should not.
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We are talking about access, but I prefer my definition. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, who talked sensibly about a definition. My definition is sharing and enjoying. Two things have happened during the Covid-19 crisis. Time and again, we heard people on the radio and television saying how marvellous it has been to hear the birds, rather than the planes; to have time to look at the blossom and to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. Then, every night after turning on the local television news in Lincolnshire, “Look North”, we would constantly see our screens defaced by the appalling litter that has been left by those who have been selfish in their possession, rather than grateful in their enjoyment.
My friend, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, gave a salutary speech about some of the problems he has faced. He is not alone. I was for 40 years the Member of a rural constituency and, particularly in the last decade of those 40 years, our local papers and television were constantly full of stories of fly-tipping and defacing the countryside. There has to be a pact between those who enjoy and those who provide the enjoyment.
It is important to recognise that the countryside that we all love has been made by centuries of farming. There have been villains from time to time—those who ripped out hedges in the 1960s and early 1970s to create prairies, and so on—but, on the whole, British farmers have behaved with a wonderful devotion to the land that they have tilled and farmed. We want that to be shared.
I was glad when—I call him my noble friend because we entered the House on the same day, in June 1970—the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, talked about forestry. Incidentally, I commend to your Lordships a book he has just written, A Lakeland Boyhood. I had the great pleasure of reading it and will have the great delight of reviewing it in due course. He knows about that wonderful part of the countryside and that 19 million visitors make it extremely difficult to preserve areas of
peace and quiet, where it is possible to get away from the honeypots and truly enjoy the beauty and majesty of that marvellous part of our country. We have to bear that word “honeypots” in mind, because we do not want to emerge from this Bill the creation of certain areas that are so pressed upon that they lose their beauty, where the people who go destroy the very thing they have gone to see.
The word “balance” has been used a lot in this debate and it is question of balance—balancing the rights of farmers, and they are rights. We are making it possible for those farmers who are particularly conscious of their environment to receive payment. That is right. Therefore, there is a public right of access, but it has to be controlled in a way that does not destroy the very thing that has brought us to this debate tonight. My noble friend Lord Gardiner is a judicious man. I hope he takes due note of what has been said, and the points made by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who said, in effect, that legislative diktat is not always the way forward.