I rise to speak to Amendments 8 and 56, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, to which I have attached my name, though I will also
offer my support to Amendment 9, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about connecting people with nature. It is clearly much connected to Amendments 8 and 56.
In introducing this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, focused on the need to win support for the Bill by allowing people to access nature. I will also focus on the public health elements, and the fact that we now have increasing awareness—with particular credit to many campaigners over the years, and to many researchers who have helped us understand this—that for the human microbiome, mental health or general well-being, exposure to, involvement in and being in nature is good for people’s health. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was talking about access to small spaces. I will talk much more broadly, and I fear that perhaps I will scare the horses a little here, but I want to draw noble Lords’ attention to the degree of the desire for access to nature that exists out there. I put it to your Lordships’ Committee that we very much need to create more space because there is a push for very great openness.
In talking about that, I will refer, and offer my support, to something known as the Right to Roam campaign. It highlights that, in England, 92% of the countryside and 97% of rivers are not accessible to the public. We often talk about “these overcrowded islands” and how difficult it is for people to get to open space. But some parts of these islands are not very crowded at all. The Right to Roam campaign is calling for an extension to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, so that people will have much broader and easier access to open space, including hundreds of thousands of acres of woodland, meadows, rivers and their banks. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 gave access to 8% of England. That is mountain, moorland, commons and some downland heath. By the very nature of those spaces, they tend to be very remote. They are not easy to access, particularly with our extraordinary lack of public transport in rural areas—in fact, they are almost totally inaccessible to people who do not have access to a car. There is a real postcode lottery, and a clear inequality and unfairness in our current arrangements.
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The proposal from the Right to Roam campaign is that all woodlands, all downland and all green belt be opened up, not just to walkers but to camping, kayaking, swimming and climbing. For those who might like to explore this idea further, I can strongly recommend The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, which sets out the case clearly.
You might think that this is the radical Greens saying radical Green ideas again, but what I am talking about exists, in Norway, in Sweden, in Estonia and in Scotland. It was a common law or long-established right, which has subsequently largely been codified in law. I stress that in all those countries these rights are contingent on responsibilities. Essentially, it is our countryside code extended to reflect whether people are making broader use of the extra responsibilities they need to keep the land safe, to protect nature, to protect other people and to protect other people’s privacy and rights.
It is important to see how this is not just a question of access but one of changing relationship. At the moment, for most people, visiting nature is like going to a museum. It is a special trip that you have to make a special place, often far away—something you cannot do very often. We are talking about embedding in people’s lives the opportunity to make nature part of their everyday life and part of the environment that is accessible to them.
As a Sheffield Green Party member, I have at this point to refer to the Kinder mass trespass that helped to create some of the basic rights that we have today. People were not granted those rights; they had to win them. I stress to your Lordships’ House that there is now a strong and growing campaign to get more rights. I suggest to the Minister that acknowledging that desire needs to be written into the Bill as a statutory responsibility of government. Then we can start negotiating how much is allowed. I am not expecting him to say, “Yes, I entirely accept everything that was just proposed”, but let us start the conversation.