My Lords, whilst I can support reasonable extension to public access, as I said earlier it is indeed a double-edged sword. In those parts of the country where agricultural land is close to towns or cities, significant opening up of more footpaths, or increasing the numbers of people entering land used for agriculture, forestry or horticulture, may cause disturbance to birds and animals and exacerbate a littering problem that has got worse during the lockdown anyway.
It is likely that farmers, whose financial rewards are going to depend more on the quality and condition in which they maintain their land, are going to be reluctant to encourage more public access unless they are paid to provide it. They need to be paid because they will need to make good, or mitigate the damage to, the land, crops, fences, gates and wildlife habitats that will result from increased public access in those parts of the country near significant population centres.
Perhaps the amounts that farmers should be paid for public access would have to be more than is justified in terms of the numbers of people who would benefit. We should also remember that you do not need to have access to the improved environment in order to benefit from it in terms of better air quality, higher standards of food products and cleaner water in our rivers.
I sympathise with the intention of my noble friend Lord Lucas in Amendment 34, but I believe this is already covered by subsection (1)(b), whether the drafting of that is changed or not.
Amendment 59, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seeks to enhance public access not only to land but also to water. Would my noble friend the Minister not agree that farmers and riparian owners
would have to be compensated for the significant additional costs of this? Would he also concede that compensation should be paid to owners of fisheries whose catch numbers would be damaged by an increase in kayaking and boating on rivers and inland waterways?
Lastly, I slightly fear that too much path surfacing, signage and waymarking may make the countryside more like a cross between a golf course and a public park, which, in extremis, will urbanise the appearance of the countryside and remove its wildness, which is so valuable.
9.15 pm
I regret that I cannot support the noble Lord’s Amendment 99. I remind your Lordships that rivers are not located on agricultural land but are very often adjacent to it. Sometimes the riparian ownership is the same as the land ownership and sometimes not. Similarly, I believe that Amendment 72 seeks to put public access and recreational activities on the land on an equal footing with food production. Desirable though public access in a measured, safe and manageable way undoubtedly is, it must remain subordinate to the need to use our agricultural land in an efficient and sustainable manner for agricultural and related purposes.
I have sympathy with the intention of the noble Lord’s Amendment 88 to broaden the meaning of understanding the environment. I rather wish that the draftsman had made use of the phrase “natural capital”. I am not sure about the word “agroecology” and note that there is a slightly shorter accepted word “agricology” —but of course I accept that language changes to meet the needs of the times.
As I said, the extension of the Scottish right to roam to England and Wales would bring unintended negative consequences, although I certainly welcome my noble friend Lady Hodgson’s intention to encourage activities such as walking and horse riding.