My Lords, I start by asking my noble friend the Minister whether, in his mind, the definition in the Bill of the countryside, farmland and woodland excludes water. One would think that water would be included in that, but obviously the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would like to have it added to the Bill.
It is quite useful that the Bill is to support the provision of access. Presumably it allows the land occupier to direct the access where they can cope with it, if necessary with access to water. My noble friend Lord Trenchard just mentioned the Scottish attitude to right to roam. I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, lives far enough away not to have ready access to the Scottish right to roam. In many ways it conjures up a nightmare for most landowners, in that people can go anywhere they like other than the curtilage of a dwelling house. As my noble friend Lord Trenchard mentioned, the pressures in Scotland are not as great as they are down south, although I happen to live by Loch Lomond and the pressures there are certainly equal to any other area in the country—so much so that the national park has brought in a prohibition on drinking alcohol on one side of the loch, because the public were wont to make a nonsense of that.
One aspect of this power in the Bill is that nowadays farmers are almost necessitated to have an element of diversification in what they do. Very often it is a question of having some feature that the public will come to and offer payment for. The powers that the Government are providing will be taken up with enthusiasm by these people, because it will give them a more attractive way to have people come and visit them and enjoy what they have to offer.
However, like my noble friend Lord Trenchard, I have considerable reservations regarding all that is contained in the descriptive Amendment 99. It seems to conjure up access even to ditches or anything with a bit of water in the bottom of it and then to ask for access even to the banks of those. That makes a bit of a mockery of the remaining legislation in England that access must only be by an approved route so that all the interests in establishing the route can be considered.