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59 Marine and Coastal Access Bill 26 OCTOBER 2009 Marine and Coastal Access Bill 60
[Lords]
[Lords]
[Dr. Alan Whitehead]
The aim of the Bill as regards the coast is clear and
explicit. It states—no parties to this discussion have
demurred from this definition:
“The first objective is that there is a route for the whole of the
English coast which…consists of one or more long-distance
routes along which the public are enabled to make recreational
journeys on foot or by ferry”.
Although it is true that most people will access only a part
of that coast, the fact that a continuous path is aimed for
underpins the whole nature of the access provided. The
Bill sets out that ambition well—which, of course, the
public understand cannot be fully achieved in all
circumstances. In my area of the country, the public do
not expect coastal access to mean that they can charge
through berths 101, 102 and 103 of Southampton port,
then transfer across to the car-handling facilities on the
eastern docks, and then take a detour along the gravel
extraction wharves further up the river. Neither do they
expect to tramp through people’s gardens and private
property in the way that has been outlined in Committee
and elsewhere. However, they have a reasonable expectation
that the aim to ensure a continuous path will be achieved
as far as is reasonably possible. That will be done, in the
first instance, largely through negotiation and discussion
and on a voluntary basis, and that is right.
Mr. Benyon: The hon. Gentleman was a thoughtful
member of the Public Bill Committee, and I respect his
views. When the matter was raised in Committee, the
Minister said that he would much prefer to see how
things progressed, and he issued a challenge to any
areas that were holding out against greater public access.
In my tours around coastal Britain, the message has got
home. If the hon. Gentleman were able to trust elements
of rural Britain in coastal areas to pursue the matter, he
might get what he wants without this rather top-down
proposal. I was working on voluntary access agreements
long before anyone thought of the Countryside and
Rights of Way Act 2000, and I know that they can be
made to work best when they are agreed locally. Is that
not the best way forward? Can we not work in that way
first before trying to impose a measure from above?
Dr. Whitehead: The hon. Gentleman makes a strong
case, with which I wholeheartedly agree, that the best
way to achieve a continuous path with sensible and
reasonable exceptions has to be negotiation and discussion.
The purpose of amendment 40 is to act on the basis of
trust with a purpose. It is clear from our discussions in
Committee that Natural England, landowners and various
other people will need to get together to ensure that
there is a voluntary agreement. That is important and I
welcome it, but that is in the context of a Bill that states
that as far as possible, there should be a continuous
coastal path.
We hope and believe that those negotiations will
work, and I am reassured that most people have a clear
understanding of what voluntary agreement means and
what arrangements can be reached to ensure coastal
access. However, if those negotiations do not work, the
amendment says not that there should be top-down
legislation but that the House ought to know about it.
The House should know what has gone well and what
has gone badly, which voluntary agreements have worked
and which have not and whether there are serious
shortcomings compared with the ambition behind the
Bill and our discussions in Committee. If there are, the
Secretary of State’s report may need to point out what
remedies are available.
In some instances remedies may be available by order
and, in others, more detailed remedies may be necessary,
but I am not saying that an enormous 16-tonne weight
should come down upon the heads of all those who
have not conformed to the extent that we might like.
Instead, a measured response and a consideration of
how well we have done with voluntary agreements
should be brought to the attention of the House, and
there should be measured thought about what remedies
are necessary. If the voluntary arrangements work as
well as I hope and believe they will, the report may well
be literally about three lines long. However, we must
respect the ultimate aim of the Bill and consider how it
should be achieved.
I set out in amendment 40 a number of things on
which the report might concentrate. The “voluntary
inclusion of parkland”, as we all know from the CROW
Act 2000, is a difficult matter, because of the difficulty
of easily conceding unimpeded access across any area
of inland parkland to ramblers when that may cause a
problem with a number of functions of that parkland.
However, that is not an exact parallel with the question
of coastal access, when access would necessarily be
along the fringes of parkland. Provided one has a clear
definition of privacy and proper safeguards for access,
the problem should be resolvable.
The Isle of Wight, which is not included in the
arrangements, is accessed by ferry, which goes from the
doorstep of my constituency on a regular and reliable
basis all year round—people can get to the island
without any problem at all. In previous years, there was,
I believe, a party called the Vectis Nationalist party,
which was in favour of independence for the Isle of
Wight, but everyone else will agree that the island is
very much an essential and beautiful part of the English
coastline. The fact that it is an island accessible by
ferries should make its inclusion by order in the provisions
a reasonably straightforward thing to achieve.
That leads to the question whether further islands
that are accessible reliably and regularly by ferry ought
to be included in the scope of the legislation and the
question that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield,
Hillsborough (Ms Smith) has already asked; namely,
what happens when seasonal ferries do not run. Does
plan B come into operation in that situation, or does
plan A mean that access would be possible only during
certain times of the year and not at others?
Those issues can all be resolved within the overall
aim of the legislation by negotiation, but I do not want
to face, in several years’ time, a similar situation to that
in, for example, the New Forest, where the Solent way,
parts of which are 6 miles from the coast, continues to
be called a coastal path.
Andrew George: I shall take the hon. Gentleman back
slightly to when he mentioned the accessibility of island
communities by ferry. Would he apply the same principle
to clause 302, which provides for a very specific exemption
for the Isles of Scilly? I must inform him, as I did in
Committee, that the council of the Isles of Scilly is very
content with the arrangements because there is full
coastal access throughout the islands, and it fears the
consequences of formalising that.