Countryside and Rights of Way Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 9:15 pm on 27 September 2000.

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Photo of Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Liberal Democrat 9:15, 27 September 2000

In moving this amendment, I wish to speak also to Amendment No. 102. The purpose of these two amendments is to put local access forums on the face of the Bill. The first amendment establishes a definition for them; the second amendment provides a mechanism by which they can be set up. The theme running through the Bill is that local people will be consulted. That is a wide definition of people. It will include not only landowners and users but also--unlike the amendments grouped with it, to which I am sure those who put them down will speak--climbers, wild life group interests where they have no de facto rights, riders with horses and so on. We would like to keep the definition of "local access forum" as wide as is suitable locally.

There is a definite need to set up these forums. I think that that has always been agreed by the Government, because when they published their proposals for improving access to the countryside in March 1999 they recognised that local access forums would play a key role. There has been no disagreement between these Benches and the Government on the importance of the role the forums would have to play. The difference has been that the Government have been hoping that the forums would be able to be non-statutory bodies. Of course at the back of that issue is the resources which would be made available to them because the Countryside Agency, when discussing its role in producing draft guidance, stated:

"The cost of setting up and running local countryside access forums will fall to the local and national park authorities responsible for them".

Further on in the same paper it said:

"The Agency will not be able to contribute to the development of local countryside access forums if additional funding is not provided by the Government".

As the Minister indicated earlier, the Government are beginning to think that these forums should be on the face of the Bill. I hope that that recognition will be reflected in providing the funding for them. The time and effort of setting them up will--and rightly should--fall on local authorities. They will be desperately needed if the Countryside Agency is not to be judge and jury at the same time on a number of issues, from the very initial stage of producing the draft map right through to how this will work in practice.

In its briefing of 4th September 2000 the Countryside Agency said:

"There is an opportunity for local forums to be used as part of local government's long term arrangements for liaison and consultation with local interests on the provision and mmanagement of recreation and access".

That is a very important point. They must be much wider than simply being a mechanism by which the legislation can be put in place. But that of course would be their first and very crucial role. These local forums need to be established rapidly if they are to play a useful role because of the speed with which the mapping will need to be started, a point touched on by the Minister and other noble Lords earlier this evening.

In the Commons Committee debate on 4th April, Mr Mullin said:

"In some cases, it might not even be necessary to have a forum"-- but I think that generally it is accepted that those moments have passed. He continued,

"but many areas will urgently require such a body".

When my friend David Heath pressed the point as to who would establish the local access forums Mr Mullin said:

"it is for the Countryside Agency to insist on the establishment of such bodies where they are thought to be desirable".--[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 4/4/2000; col. 97.]

However, without the mechanism in the Bill I think it would be very difficult for the Countryside Agency to insist that they should be established, especially where there are no resources to do so.

Contrary to the fears that may have been around initially that the access forums may be a mechanism by which the whole process would be slowed down, I think that they will play a key role in making the process workable and streamlining it locally. Clearly, if interests groups began to use them for those purposes that would be quite wrong. It is for those reasons that I have drafted all our amendments very carefully so that the access forums should be consulted. There is a duty on the agency to consult the access forums but there is not in my amendments a mechanism by which the access forums can bring the whole process to a grinding halt. I think that is right. I hope that the Minister will be able to elaborate on what he said earlier in terms of feeling that they are a very good idea now. I beg to move.