Countryside Commission (Wolds Way)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 19 June 1975.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Kevin McNamara Mr Kevin McNamara , Kingston upon Hull Central 12:00, 19 June 1975

I start the debate on the Countryside Commission and the Wolds Way by first declaring my interest. I am president of the East Riding and Derwent Ramblers' Association.

Any country lover must be concerned with the protection of the countryside and access to it—the two purposes enshrined in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and the Countryside Act 1968. I rise to assert that the power of the Countryside Commission, the guardian of these two purposes, has declined, is declining and should increase. Dangers to the countryside have never been greater, and the power to defend it has become correspondingly weaker.

More people than even before want access to this part of the national heritage, and quite rightly. The threats from mines, industry, the Armed Forces, reservoirs—although in many ways reservoirs can improve the nature of the landscape—alien installations on the coastline, television masts, roads and the unregulated cars of visitors are stark and obvious.

We condemn the way in which our Victorian forebears scarred the face of Britain. With much less excuse, but just as irredeemably, we are doing the same thing. It is not simply posterity which will condemn our failure to act. It is the articulate and growing amenity lobby, and the less articulate millions who visit the countryside and deplore the deterioration of its quality. They seek to ensure the retention of its many virtues.

These sombre reflections are the background to my comments on the Countryside Commission, a body which has uncomplainingly seen its own plans for coastal national heritage areas gravely weakened, which has faced both ways—at some potential risk—over the issue of bulls on public paths—which has allowed long-distance footpaths to be opened when still in an unfinished and unacceptable state, and which has compromised over the control and administration of national parks. In an article in the Observer on 9th February, Christopher Brasher, one of the best known figures in the outdoor world, wrote angrily about a proposed road in the heart of the Snowdonia National Park. Brasher commented: The Countryside Commission never challenged the basic concept of a road but merely confined itself, at officer level, to 'alleviating its visual impact' … One might imagine that the Countryside Commission is charged with the task of preserving natural beauty, but it has never had any bite and it is known not to use its bark. A debate took place in another place on 15th May 1973 on the commission's work and its rôle. All the peers who spoke, with the exception of the Minister, Lord Sandford, deplored the commission's lack of independence vis-à-vis the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley put his finger on the crux of the matter when he commented that the commission saw its work as being primarily "advisory and promotional". The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, who had been instrumental in setting up the commission in 1968, stressed that the intention of the Government had been to create an independent body with real power, while Lord Henley, chairman of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, pointed out that even under its existing powers the commission was able, if it wished, to adopt a forceful public rôle as guardian of the countryside.

Replying to that debate, the Minister made an important pronouncement. He declared: The Commission has an independent voice of its own which it is entirely at liberty to use and which is entirely right for it to use whenever it sees fit."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15th May 1973; c. 800.] The problem was then one of subservience of the commision to the Government, and this problem remains. It is vitally important that the commission should remain an independent body.

I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government said when he opened the commission's new premises and repeated Lord Sandford's assurance. This is not only a question, as my right hon. Friend has said, of the commission being an independent body. It is necessary that that message should also get home to the commission. But in many cases, and in the present case, which I shall use to illustrate my point shortly, the problem is one of subservience to landowners, a potentially even more alarming situation.

The failures of the Countryside Commission are all too typical, not only in its rôle as protector of the countryside but as guardian of access to it. The commission has recently spoken about our footpath network—a cherished amenity of our countryside—in a way totally inconsistent with its duty to improve access. In its publication "New Agricultural Landscapes", a report which it published last autumn concerning changing land usage in lowland areas. the commission went out of its way to ask farmers whether they were bothered by trespass and whether they wanted "reorganisation" of the footpaths. Does that mean what I fear in this case it means—reduction? Again, the Assistant Director of the commission, Mr. J. M. Davidson, speaking to a conference on the future of the countryside last December, replied to a speaker who complained about the ploughing up of footpaths that in his view not all footpaths were essential. What kind of friend of the countrygoer is this?

This brings me to the significant story which I wish to lay before the House, concerning the problem of the Wolds Way, the 70-mile long-distance footpath which, continuing the Cleveland Way in North Yorkshire, will one day run the length of the former East Riding of Yorkshire. The Yorkshire Wolds in my part of the country are attractive and unspoiled countryside, civilised by man over the ages, with a peculiar charm of their own, which are cherished by many walkers in my constituency and surrounding parts of Yorkshire and Humberside, but which are seriously deficient in footpaths and bridleways.

Creation of the Wolds Way is more than a minor matter. It is of more than considerable local importance, and it raises questions of principle affecting national policy as a whole. It is not too strong to say that the creation of the Wolds Way has been delayed and betrayed by the Countryside Commission, the body charged with bringing it into existence.

The plan for a long-distance footpath across the Yorkshire Wolds is an old one, and a famous Yorkshire writer, A. J. Brown, wrote more than 40 years ago of his own pilgrimage along the paths of the "Wolds Way". Its modern history began in 1968, when the Ramblers' Association, which has all along been the driving force behind the scheme, put forward a detailed plan for a Wolds Way. It found immediate favour with the public and the media and was given widespread publicity. The Ramblers' Association, the East Riding County Council and its successors in Humberside and North Yorkshire have received many requests for information about a plan which continues to excite a lively interest, outside as well as inside Yorkshire and Humberside—