| Countryside and Rights of Way Bill
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Mr. Gray: ``Vedettes'', is a French word meaning ``gate''. ``Cadet'' is a young soldier.
3.15 pmMr. Mullin: I stand corrected—I had difficulty with the hon. Gentleman's rich rural accent. As I was saying, I saw the odd red flag. There were no fences around large parts of the area. I walked all around the range and had no difficulty avoiding the guns—they are quite loud, apart from anything else. The military have been doing such things for a long time. A firing range crosses part of the coastal path close to where I live in Sunderland; the military just put up flags and people walk around the area. The problem is not difficult when one makes the effort. Mr. Heath: There is an oscillation in the Under-Secretary's argument between saying that having designated access points is a good idea, as is borne out in the national parks and in areas operated by the National Trust and others, and saying that the proposal is unnecessary. Not many members of the public will use the internet, telephone or whatever before going out to walk. When there is a closure, with a prospect of danger to people exercising what they believe to be their rights of access, whose responsibility is it to make them aware of a potential problem? Is the responsibility the landowner's, the countryside body's or their own? Where does the resource implication fall? Mr. Mullin: A balance must be struck but, in the first analysis, it is the walker's business to make sure. Like others, I normally check when I go walking whether the area is open and whether there is a reason not to go. When going to Farndale, near the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Ms McCafferty), I usually check whether the daffodils are out. It can be done, and facilities already exist. Bodies such as the National Trust have extensive experience of people walking on their land. They provide voluntary key access points to help with effective management of access. There is no reason why others should not follow the example. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire mentioned mapping. We would certainly encourage countryside bodies to provide information about agreed access points to Ordnance Survey and to others, especially when agreement has been reached, as it can be under chapter III. That already happens on Ordnance Survey maps in respect of land under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, but the access points are non-statutory, which is the difference. We are at one on the desirability of access, of mapping and of ensuring that information is available. We disagree on making the provision of access points statutory. Mr. Gray: The Under-Secretary is right on that, but is wrong on a particular point. Ministry of Defence access points are statutory—anyone walking on to British defence land other than through the vedettes may be removed by the Ministry of Defence police. Mr. Mullin: I did not see many police when I walked round the Otterburn military range. I used my common sense, which I found adequate for the purpose. Mr. Gray: Will the Under-Secretary give way? Mr. Mullin: We ought not get too bogged down in the matter. Mr. Gray: It is not a matter of getting too bogged down—we are dealing with the law. The Under-Secretary might get round the law when he walks on the MOD range at Otterburn, but he is required, by law, to go through the proper access points. If he does not, the police may remove him. Saying that he does not see any policemen is as about as potent as saying that he drives down the M4 at 100 mph because there are never any speed cops. It remains against the law. We are discussing putting into the law the precise provision that already applies to Ministry of Defence estates. How can he pooh-pooh the idea in that way? Mr. Mullin: The MOD has used Dartmoor, where there is no legal requirement to use access points. The system has worked perfectly well over a long period. We are looking for difficulties where none necessarily exist. Mr. Clifton-Brown: I participated on an armed forces scheme with the Royal Air Force and visited RNAS Culdrose, which each year rescues dozens of people, many of whom are seriously injured, from Snowdon and elsewhere. We are opening up a huge amount of dangerous mountain land to people who are less educated in countryside matters. I see the potential for innocent walkers getting into trouble as the danger is greatly increased. As other people will be listening to the Under-Secretary's reply to the debate, not least through the Pepper v. Hart mechanism, will he say that it should be an obligation on the countryside agencies and the mapping agencies at least to give an indication as to where the main information points will be for walkers in large areas where there are likely to be difficulties? Mr. Mullin: I fully expect that the countryside bodies will share with the mapping agencies information about access points and I encourage them to record the points for interested parties to see. There are many ways besides maps in which one can find out about access. In Scotland, there is de facto access to countryside. Mr. Clifton-Brown: And people get into difficulties. Mr. Mullin: Yes, they do, but not on the scale that the hon. Gentleman anticipates. People will always get into difficulties; but that is not a sufficiently strong reason for statutory access. However, there is not much of a difference between us on the desirability of information about access and of people using access points. It makes sense, especially for the many inexperienced walkers, to stick to designated access points, and I would certainly encourage them to do that. The hon. Member for Vale of York referred to 4x4 vehicles. Part I is not about such vehicles—it is about walkers. The use of a motor vehicle off the road is an offence under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Only a couple of weeks ago, I encountered the problem of people using 4x4s off the road in North Yorkshire. The problem is often one of enforcement, but it is not relevant to this part of the Bill. Miss McIntosh: How do walkers get to those areas if they do not go by 4x4 vehicles? Mr. Mullin: Most of the walkers that I know do not own such vehicles. The ones that I know who do own one tend to go no further than the Asda car park. It is possible to reach all sorts of access points on the north Yorkshire moors—an area familiar to both the hon. Lady and I—without a 4x4 vehicle. I am sure that she knows that and does not need me to go into any more detail. Miss McIntosh: The point that I am trying to make, perhaps in a somewhat frivolous manner, is that the Minister identified a problem with 4x4 vehicles. I realise that those vehicles are covered by other legislation, but there is a plea from the national parks that they should be brought within the remit of the Bill, or at least excluded from night access. Mr. Mullin: There might be an opportunity to discuss that in relation to another clause, but it does not relate to this part of the Bill. People value the opportunity to explore more widely areas of beautiful countryside that have been off limits for generations, and I can see the benefits in encouraging people to go to particular points to pick up information. However, that is entirely different from forcing them to enter or leave land at what might be few or remote points. Unless there are legitimate reasons to restrict access—there are some, and they are provided for in the Bill—people should be able to enter and walk across access land. Therefore, I hope that the amendments will be withdrawn. Mr. Paice: I welcome the Minister's general approach, including taking seriously the points that we have raised, and I accept his remark that there is little difference between us on the issue. However, I fear that some of his arguments are seriously flawed. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire said that we favoured managed access but that we had lost the argument. I would argue that we lost the vote, which is not synonymous with losing the argument. However, we accept that there will be freedom of access, and we are now considering the wider issue of how that should be managed in everyone's interests. The Minister said that there might be too few access points, which might be remote or used by landowners as a means of restricting access to land, but I made it clear that we want to discuss the principle of the matter. We are not considering where the access points should be—I replied to the somewhat frivolous point raised by the hon. Member for Pendle—we are simply considering the principle. We can discuss the detail later. We shall consider the role of the local access forum in relation to the next group of amendments. I have never suggested that it should be up to the landowner to decide where the access points should be; the local access forum or the Countryside Agency could do that, but those are details and we are considering the principle. The Minister said that that situation already exists in significant parts of the country, but the genesis of this part of the Bill is that, somewhere out there, there is demand for increased access. Therefore, one assumes that there will be a significant increase in the number of people walking and, as he suggested, many of them will be novices who lack information. Although I welcome the Minister's acknowledgement that they would be wise to start out from access points so that they are fully informed, I doubt whether they will. I have made it clear that I am all in favour of people walking in the countryside. The issue is not whether, but where they walk. The Under-Secretary referred to his own experiences of walking. He said that he had been out walking in areas where people were shooting and had seen red flags and signs, but, excluding military activities, when there is a linear path—he used the phrase ``on a footpath''—the landowner or sporting tenant knows where to put the signs and red flags or where to post a man to say: ``Don't go over there for the next hour because we are shooting.''
3.30 pmThe freedom to roam means that walkers could emerge from any part of a territory and find themselves in the middle of a grouse drive or between a shooter and a red deer that was being stalked. There is no opportunity for the landowner or whoever is responsible to inform the walkers that a moor is out of bounds. Although the Under-Secretary said that he could always find that information, I do not understand where the average walker—which he might not be—would find or even think of finding information on deerstalking. In many areas, there is deerstalking nearly every day for about four months. Stalkers start with stags early in the season. The culling of hinds, which is prescribed by the Red Deer Commission in Scotland and other bodies in England—they determine how many have to be culled to keep the population under control—can take place nearly every day in November, December and January. Walker safety is a serious issue. How will walkers be informed to stay away from an area on a particular day? I am concerned not about closure for 28 days, but about when in the calendar one of those days might occur. I want the Under-Secretary to respond to those important points. I would not dream of saying that he has not understood them, but he has not assuaged my concerns.
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