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However, the organs of central government seem to have decided to abandon this terrain for reasons which are not altogether clear to me. Plans are being discussed to make a deliberate breach at Slaughden, which means goodbye to the Martello Tower, and to create a new tidal stream moving south towards Orford and Shingle Street against the incoming tide. The effect will surely be to silt up the river and that will lead to the loss of Havergate Island, a prized site owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which has contrived to persuade the avocet to make its home there. The avocet has been adopted by the RSPB as its national logo. Do the Government really want to have an open argument with the RSPB, which has millions of members who are very vocal?
I remind the Minister that Her Majesty's Government have given the National Trust £1 million in the past decade to preserve Orford Ness, particularly as a habitat for numerous rare birds. Another loss would be the Orford Ness Lighthouse, which would be damaged by the changing pattern of water in the estuary. I therefore consulted officials in Trinity House to see whether they were aware of the danger to this lighthouse and found—surprise, surprise—that no one in central government nor in the local authorities had troubled to inform them. Trinity House attaches importance to the continued existence of this lighthouse because of its role in guiding ships carrying oil from the northern isles to the Thames estuary.
I have derived the impression—I regret to say a clear one—that some government departments in London have little or no understanding of the AONB designation and its scientific importance. I venture to suggest to the Minister that the Cabinet Office might be invited to send round a letter to all departments at a fairly senior level to remind them of the existence and relevance of the AONBs. I find it frankly amazing that a team organised by Defra is now making plans which would destroy our AONB and cause it to be overcome by the sea. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for making it possible to have this short debate, and I rest my case.
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3.48 pm
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I am very glad to have the chance to follow my noble friend and neighbour in speaking on this subject and I take this occasion to pay a heartfelt tribute to his late wife, Rachel Bridges, who did an enormous amount to conserve and protect the Suffolk countryside.
I have been involved with AONBs for many years. First I was a member of Countryside Commission for 12 years from 1980 to 1992, and then I was chairman of CPRE from 1993 to 1998. Since 1997, I have been president of the Suffolk Preservation Society. I am also a farmer in Suffolk in a special landscape area adjacent to one of Suffolk’s two AONBs. I am therefore delighted that my noble friend Lord Renton has secured this debate. It has enabled us to have the esteemed presence of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is one of the most valued Members of the Government to the Government and of this House to this House.
The importance of the subject is obvious. We live on a small, crowded, but still very beautiful island. This means that we have to protect and, where possible, enhance the beauty of the countryside by every means that we can. With the growth of population, the pressures become ever greater. Our Select Committee on Economic Affairs in its excellent report, The Economic Impact of Immigration, published this week, states at paragraph 181:
“For example, the English countryside is an environmental amenity of great value and a substantial rise in population, however caused, is likely to diminish it. Rising population density will also increase the demand for infrastructure including roads and airports, decrease the ... living space available ... for public parks and green fields ... Different people will have different views about whether or not an increasingly crowded environment is desirable”.
I suspect that most of us here are of one view on that question. The committee points out that the present UK population of 61 million is now projected to grow to 71 million by 2031.
There can be few greater obligations on our generation than to hand on a beautiful countryside to our children and grandchildren. We cannot protect everything, which is why it has been crucial to have a hierarchy of landscape. Such a hierarchy, combined with the new planning system, the need for which had become so apparent between the wars, was established by the post-war Attlee Government. Together with the National Health Service, it was one of their two great legacies.
Today that hierarchy encompasses national parks, AONBs, heritage coasts, special landscape areas and conservation areas. All of these are crucial. In addition to the planning arrangements, one great bulwark for conservation is of course the National Trust which, with its gigantic 3.6 million membership, owns more than 600 miles of England’s most special coastline. It is attempting to acquire another 300 miles, because, frankly, the coastline is perhaps the most vulnerable of all parts of our island, and once it is gone, it is gone forever. I would not trust any owners in the way that I would trust the National Trust. At this stage, I should remember a former colleague of ours, Nick Ridley, who—ex cathedra,
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Perhaps the most urgent question on which I hope the Minister will shed some light is whether the planning Bill, which I assume will reach us in the summer, will invalidate in any way that crucial PPS 7 on sustainable development in rural areas or Section 85 of the CROW Act, to which my noble friend Lord Selborne referred. We cannot allow the protection given by that earlier legislation to be trumped by new planning Bill measures.
The funding of AONBs has been mentioned by several noble Lords, particularly by my noble friend Lord Plumb. We must not forget that the funding provided for national parks includes an element to cope with the recreational role of the parks. That was one of the functions for which the parks were created. The noble Lord, Lord Bragg, spoke very beautifully about that most beautiful of all areas. Only this morning I was listening to a lecture from him on Newtonian physics. I understood his speech better than I understood the Newtonian physics.
AONBs, however, were created solely on their landscape merit. There are now increasing recreational demands on AONBs and this certainly applies to Dedham Vale in Suffolk—Constable country. These demands must be welcomed, but their management must be funded. At present, some 75 per cent of AONB funding comes from Natural England. As the Minister knows, DEFRA has cut the Natural England budget.
Europe also has a part to play. I am glad that the Government last year ratified the European Landscape Convention. I hope that one day it will be converted into a directive, given the great contribution that the habitats directive has played in conservation. We in the United Kingdom have a great deal to teach our European neighbours about the protection and conservation of the countryside. Of course, the United States was at the forefront, inventing national parks in 1908 or even earlier, about 50 years before we did. Americans look after their national parks wonderfully well, but unfortunately seem to regard the rest of the landscape as largely expendable and are doing some pretty awful things to it. On this relatively small globe, no landscape is expendable.
I mention a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, about the threat to our coastline. The view of the Environment Agency seems to be that everything should be abandoned to the sea. It is out of touch and out of date. First, we are moving into a period of world food shortage, which is being greatly exacerbated by turning over much agricultural land to the production of biofuels. This is separate from the threat of global warming, which I discount quite heavily.
Secondly, some of our most precious landscape would be lost without coastal defences, which need a much longer planning horizon. This is nothing to do with global warming or climate change, which of course does exist. Coastal defences need a much longer time horizon than any political or planning timescale. Somebody told me today, when I was discussing this debate, that we should think in terms
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Suffolk is aiming to be England’s greenest county. Apart from protecting our wonderful countryside—and I join in the tributes to Suffolk County Council—I hope that our particular contribution will be to welcome two new nuclear power stations at Sizewell. I am at one with the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, in recognising and welcoming the huge importance of nuclear power in filling a gap that will otherwise turn out the lights. I am afraid that playing around with renewables such as wind power is, to a significant extent, political tokenism that cannot begin to deal with the problem. The Government have left the launch of a new nuclear programme almost too late. Others, especially China, are making great demands on a limited nuclear construction capability and Britain must book a place in the queue.
A special quality of our AONBs should be tranquillity. Noise, like light, can be immensely polluting. Neither is as long term—and certainly not as irreversible—as pollution by concrete. None the less, they counter quiet enjoyment, which is one of the aims of AONB designation. We all recognise that the military has to have low-flying training for war operations and we should play our part in that with pride. However, civil aviation is another matter. We in Suffolk worry about the expanded air-stacking area that is expected to be part of the expansion of Stansted. I ask the Minister to consider the possibility of stacking aircraft over the sea, rather than over land—in our case, that would be the North Sea.
Finally, I should like to add to what my noble friend Lord Selborne said about the crucial contribution made to AONBs by the world of volunteering. Many of them, for example, have volunteer wardens, and the Government should demonstrate their appreciation of this by supporting AONBs in every way they can.
Those of us who are very privileged to be lifetime stewards to small pieces of England’s countryside have an obligation, through hedge-planting, tree-planting, digging ponds, the sensitive conversion of redundant farm buildings and housing and so on, to see that when we depart from our patch, it is more beautiful than when we arrived.
As I said at the start, the Labour Party can claim proud parentage of much of our conservation legislation. It would be sad indeed if during the last couple of years of its present period in office, it were to renege on our national heritage. However, that is a subject for wider debate and I have a lot of confidence in the Minister.
4 pm
Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Renton for initiating this debate. He, like other noble Lords who have spoken, has hands-on experience in the structure and management of AONBs.
My noble friend Lord Marlesford reminded us just how overcrowded this island is. It is the most densely
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The East Devon AONB management has a scheme called Parishscapes. This is a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to digitise all the tithe maps covering the AONBs so as to improve public access. The project works with local schools and includes the creation of oral accounts of landscape change through local community contacts. It has taken two years to develop, originally with the help of the former English Heritage. It is, in short, a scheme that will benefit young and old alike.
The funding structure is typical of many AONBs—a three-year commitment by the local authority and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Without the help of Natural England funding, however, the project is in danger of failing. The local NE officers—the unfortunate messengers in all this—are just not in a position to give a definitive answer about this year’s funding, commencing this month, and the funding will in any case be for only one year. Not unnaturally, that has unsettled the local authorities, which not unreasonably are looking for a longer-term commitment from Natural England.
Perhaps I may give an example from another part of the country. The North Pennines AONB has two major projects. The Peatscape project involves the blocking of 200 kilometres of moorland drains—or, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, will correct me, “grips”, as they are known up there. Incidentally, that will be done with dams built by dry-stone walling apprentices, thus fostering and encouraging a precious north of England craft, although I have to acknowledge that my noble friend Lord Plumb also referred to a similar craft, and indeed training, in the Cotswolds. These dams will keep the peatlands as functioning wetland ecosystems, allowing them to store carbon, reduce the impact of downstream flooding, conserve biodiversity and reduce water colour, so there are a good many ticks in boxes there. It is estimated that the peat, which would otherwise have dried out, would have released carbon equivalent to 72 years of emissions from the Drax power station. That is the degree to which the wetlands will contribute to the saving of carbon emissions.
Another example is the Hay Time project, which is doing valuable work in restoring upland hay meadows. On a technical note, I should add that both these projects, funded by Natural England through the AONB bodies, meet PSA targets that Natural England itself could not—and this must apply to
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My third example has international dimensions. South East Protected Landscapes has been working with Kent Downs AONB—the AONB has a particular problem because it has five urban projects within its area—to develop a truly international partnership with the parc naturel around Paris and its equivalent regional organisation, Ile de France; with two universities, Kingston in England and Versailles in France; with protected landscapes around the German capital; and with the South East England Development Agency and Natural England. The strong educational element qualified it to call on the SDF, which will be crucial in applying for matched funding elsewhere to build a strong international tertiary sector.
The comments of this project’s leaders speak for many. They complain about the uncertain level of funding, its short-term, annual nature and, once again, how late in the year the current budget is announced. As with East Devon, there was no official confirmation of the 2008-09 funding for the Kent project at the end of March, a point to which my noble friend Lord Renton has drawn attention.
These are but three examples of the work of AONBs. I hasten to add that I have seen many more submissions from managers up and down the country. Time does not permit me to mention them all, but I have chosen three that give an example of the wide—and, if I may say so, heart-warming—diversity of projects, which were conceived with imagination and dedication, in virtually every case on shoestring budgets, and, as many noble Lords have pointed out, with that devoted band of volunteers without whom they could not continue.
This all leads back to Natural England’s funding difficulties, but, sadly, it goes further back than that—to Defra. One has only to mention the list of disasters that have had an effect on Defra’s ability to fund: the disastrous overspend on the Rural Payments Agency, the Pirbright foot and mouth scandal and the fiasco over the single farm payment scheme, which resulted in an EU fine of £63 million. A cash-strapped AONB manager does not have to be a cynic to reflect that, had it not been for that fine, he might have had some of that money. Natural England, together with the AONB projects that it supports, is but one of the sufferers of all this mismanagement.
It is said that there are no votes in prison building. Sadly, there are precious few votes in conserving and cherishing our AONBs. However, I urge the Government to reverse some of the decisions that threaten further to undermine the quality of our rural infrastructure and natural environment.
4.08 pm
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I should first declare that I am president of Friends of the Ridgeway and of the CPRE in Oxfordshire and that I live right on the boundary of the Chilterns AONB.
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I will talk about national trails. These have not been mentioned in the debate so far, but there is work going on to consider their future. They are the long footpaths that traverse much of the AONB land. They are the network that should be at the heart of our strategy to encourage the public at large peacefully to enjoy the countryside. They should be the gateway through which people have access to the countryside and what it has to offer, be it nature, history or healthy recreation. They should represent the best walking routes in the country through a good cross-section of different terrain, to which many noble Lords have referred this afternoon.
I will not labour the benefits of national trails—the health benefits, the climate benefits, the educational benefits, the economic benefits and the social benefits. There is a tremendous opportunity to increase the use of these trails. Many noble Lords have referred to the fact that this is a very crowded island. I could lay £5 on the table and say, “I can take you to a place on the Ridgeway where you can see for miles in any direction and there will be nobody else there”. Why is there nobody else there? Partly because access to that network is extremely difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, said that you could take a bus from Brighton and walk four or five miles through the AONB and catch another bus back. I am afraid that the Ridgeway runs through parts of the country where a bus is something of a rarity and certainly does not offer any sort of regular service that people could plan to use. In any long-term strategy, we must look at access. People want to get out of towns but they need to be able to; if they come in a car or on a bike or whatever, there must be somewhere for them to leave it.
The threat to the national trails is almost entirely a question of funding. There is a huge body of volunteers. Friends of the Ridgeway is one such body; it does enormous work to publicise the place and improve it. I pay tremendous tribute to the Government and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for the work done in this House to rid the Ridgeway of almost all mechanically propelled vehicles, which were almost destroying it. The joint efforts made in that respect were a manifestation of what can be done without spending a huge amount more money; it was a question of changing the law and a bit of enforcement. That was much helped by volunteers.
Whatever the amount of money the Government put in, local authorities, trusts and people will put in money to match, and it will grow. We are asking the Government more about putting down the seedcorn than about harvesting the crop. There are national trails officers who effectively manage the trails, but such people are extremely thin on the ground. We have to address how much the existence of national trails and their advantages—and the advantages of the things looked after by English Heritage, the National Trust and the AONBs—are in the tourist literature. Do we encourage the people who come here, or those who live in cities, to know about these areas and visit them? Despite what is said about the island being terribly overcrowded and about pouring concrete over the whole of England, that is not the case in large areas of England.
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My second point is about noise. Noble Lords have probably seen the maps that the CPRE has produced over the years showing ever shrinking green areas; they are quiet areas or tranquil areas, as I believe it calls them. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has already referred to the fact that people in, I believe, Suffolk are concerned about the expansion of Stansted and the rerouteing of aircraft approach paths over Suffolk to Heathrow. The threat of aircraft noise is substantial. It would be devastating in the Chilterns AONB. NATS, in its wisdom and in its efforts to get more aircraft into Heathrow Airport, seems to be almost oblivious to the areas that aircraft are flying over. I have asked Written Questions about the extent to which direction is given to NATS to avoid certain areas. I have more or less been told that NATS has to make the best judgments, that space is limited and so on. I would rather like to see a positive direction given to NATS to try hard to avoid certain areas; flight paths across the country should avoid those areas. I am afraid that some of that loss of tranquillity is due to the growth of recreational aviation taking people on holiday. Both the climate change and noise issues that we face must come smack up against the issue of how much cheap flying we can afford without tremendous detriment to the area around. The question of new runway capacity at Heathrow will be a cause célèbre and it will bring a great deal of protest about noise.
I now want to jump to the A30 in Devon. I do not know whether the Minister in his various travels has driven from the Salisbury area to the Exeter area. The noise from that road is horrendous. It is not just the noise that one hears on the road; one can go two or three miles to either side and the noise is continuous and horrendous. There are remedies for that. The surfaces of roads can be treated with what I believe in the trade is called “whisper asphalt”. In fact, a piece of the A34 north of Oxford, which was also a concrete road like the A30, has been treated with whisper asphalt and the noise has been reduced substantially.
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