WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH 1998

ANGELA EAGLE, MP and MR JOHN ROBERTS

  260.  Encourage then?

  (Angela Eagle)  Encourage, evangelise, but not compel.

  261.  I do agree with the Minister that I think it is for local authorities to decide how much to spend on allotments and what priority to give to them rather than for central government. You stated that allotments are an important part of leisure provision. Do you therefore have any view about the range of a council's budget that you might expect to be spent on allotments, a lower to an upper range?

  (Angela Eagle)  There are very strong statutory provisions in law. Local authorities need to spend the amount of money that they need to ensure that they are fulfilling their legal duties. We would like to see them more actively promoting allotments. We think that there is a role within local Agenda 21 and the new sustainable development policies for more creative use of this potential, but I am not going to sit here and start bandying percentages around for all of the local authorities throughout the country, all of whom are in very different positions. Some of them find themselves with large numbers of vacant allotment plots and the potential to evangelise a bit more; others virtually have a full house and might want to look at providing more in some instances. It is simply impossible to come up with a percentage figure of expenditure amidst all the variety that there is.

  262.  I agree. That is why I gave you the opportunity to go for a range rather than a specific percentage.

  (Angela Eagle)  I do not think that it is possible and I certainly do not intend to do it here.

  263.  On that last point that you made, in terms of the situation of the statutory obligation and statutory duties of local authorities, when was the last time that the Department called to book the local authorities for not providing a service against, say, vandalism, against some of the other elements that have come to our attention during the course of this inquiry? When was the last time, if ever, the government actually used the statutory obligations that are at its disposal to call in a local authority and say to them, "You are not undertaking your statutory obligations and responsibilities"?

  (Angela Eagle)  To our knowledge, there are no instances of the law being broken that we know about.

  264.  Therefore, the statutory obligations must be pretty low.

  (Angela Eagle)  No; they are very, very prescriptive, Mr Donohoe. If six people in an area want to be provided with an allotment, it has, unless it is utterly unreasonable, to be provided in law.

  265.  Where have we a standard that a local authority cannot fall below? Can they say, "There is a site over there" and that is for you to develop?

  (Angela Eagle)  It has to be reasonable.

  266.  If these six people do not believe it to be reasonable, have they recourse to your Department?

  (Angela Eagle)  They could always complain, yes, but it would come before the courts rather than my Department.

  267.  When was the last time any of that went to the courts?

  (Angela Eagle)  Off the top of my head, I could not tell you when the last legal action involving the Lottery's—the allotments legislation came before the courts, but I would be surprised if there had been one for a very long time.

  268.  It is very strange that you should mention the Lottery because I have just had an approach from the Lottery Board——

  (Angela Eagle)  It has been a long night, Mr Donohoe.

  269.  It has been for us all, but to suggest that they actually might look at allotments.

  (Angela Eagle)  I think that would be a very welcome development.

  270.  I wonder whether you could give us a note on this question of whether six people have actually been able to force a local authority to come up with an allotment?

  (Angela Eagle)  There would have to be no vacancies for that to come into effect and our information is that, except in a few very local circumstances, it is unlikely that the already existing allotment provision would be so full that they would go and actually be able to trigger that piece of legislation. The plain fact is there are more existing allotment sites than people who want to use them.

  271.  That is on the question of the actual allotment site itself. If six people believe that their allotment site is not up to standard——

  (Angela Eagle)  That is not what I said the law was. What I was trying to say was that the law, as it is currently written, says that local authorities have to provide allotment sites if six electors say they want them and there are not any existing ones.

  272.  What about the standards of the allotment site itself? Who sets the standard and what recourse is there of the individual allotment holder to ask for certain standards?

  (Angela Eagle)  There are various phrases in the various bits of legislation about it being reasonable land and that would have to be decided by the courts.

If some people who had been given an offer wanted to say that it was not reasonable, then they would have to take that to law in the end.

  273.  There is not any avenue open to them to come to the Department?

  (Angela Eagle)  No, because the legislation gives you immediate recourse to the law. It is a statutory provision.

  274.  The Committee would like an example, even if it does have to go back 100 years, of the use of those six people.

  (Angela Eagle)  An example of what?

  275.  An example of six people actually forcing a local authority to provide allotments.

  (Angela Eagle)  I will look but I think if you look at the way that allotments expanded during the war there was no reluctance. Since the 1.5 million allotment sites that we had during the war have been coming down now to a quarter of a million, we have been in a position of a surplus of allotment land in most places rather than a scarcity. It is only, I would have thought, in times of scarcity that that provision would actively come into effect. We will look but my guess is it probably has not been used for a very long time.

  276.  The next point is that there seems to be a little bit of dispute as to how many of the 47 or 51 sites really were built over, but I think the easiest thing for us is to——

  (Angela Eagle)  We will check that out for you.

  277.  Thank you very much. We have talked almost totally about public allotment sites. Have you had any discussion with Railtrack? They did announce something like 18 months ago that they were going to close all the allotments on Railtrack land. There was then a substantial outcry and they backed off from doing that. I just wondered whether you had had any further discussions with them about those sorts of areas for allotments?

  (Angela Eagle)  I think it is regrettable, if people have provided private allotment land—and that is the category that the example you have just used falls into—decide to withdraw it, but we have no right to prevent people who have provided privately owned land from withdrawing that offer. They do not come under the statutory provisions of the legislation. It is really a goodwill thing that has been issued. The only problem with attempting to prevent them behaving in that way is that you will discourage potential lenders of private land from allowing it to be used for those purposes, but I think it is regrettable that Railtrack did that and I am pleased that they are reconsidering. I have not personally talked to them about it.

  278.  Almost the whole of the thrust of your answers to us this morning really has been to encourage allotments and to say they are a good thing. Can we expect to see some ministers digging for Britain in the next few months?

  (Angela Eagle)  If we do not have to be up all night, maybe we will have a bit more leisure time at the weekends, maybe after the British presidency of the EU has freed us from some of our duties abroad.

Chairman:  On that note, can I thank you very much for your evidence.