Countryside and Rights of Way Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:15 pm on 27 September 2000.

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Photo of Lord Whitty Lord Whitty Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions) 7:15, 27 September 2000

This is a slightly disparate group of amendments and we are making quite a meal of it. Perhaps I may take the amendments in order. Amendment No. 13, which is the first one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, relates back to my recent exchange with the noble Earl, Lord Peel. This is a question of fast-track land where there is no highway approaching it--and "highway" is used in the broadest terms and could include the humblest footpath.

As I think the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, was hinting, it may well be that there are forms of access other than a formal right of way or a formal footpath or highway. Land tangential to it may well already be access land, either by law, by de facto access, there may be a permissive path at the discretion of the owner or there may already be wide access. Much of the Lake District would fall into that latter category. It is not only a question of a path or a road but of whether there is access around the area of what would otherwise be automatically designated as falling under the fast-track procedure. Defining access in terms of "highway" is wrong.

In addition there is the process to which I referred in my exchange with the noble Earl, Lord Peel. The process of restrictions and modifications may well include issues of access. Although I cannot give a guarantee that the outcome will always be that no land without a highway or other form of access to it would be so designated, that is the process for resolving that and other issues. I do not think that we need this amendment.

With the benefit of the geographical knowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, imparted to us earlier, one realises that the area of such land in England is relatively small. But there may be temporary and beguiling islands of access land. They will be relatively few and many will be contiguous to areas where there is already some form of access; others could be dealt with through negotiations on restrictions.