Land Use in England Committee Report

Thirdly, flood relief schemes are another modern output from land which could or should be well rewarded. I see localised ELMS as the most appropriate means of delivery here, via local authorities or maybe the Environment Agency, if that were properly funded.

Fourthly, as we all know, only 10% of England is covered in forestry, the lowest amount in Europe, and we need considerably more if we are to get to net zero, help our biodiversity, increase our leisure facilities, clean our air—it is not well known that trees are a great remover of particulates—and reduce our huge timber imports. We import some 90% of our timber, at a terrifying cost of £8.5 billion per annum. I have been quite impressed with Defra’s recent focus on trees and forestry. However, most farmers are nervous about growing trees: they will lose that flexibility of land use that is the key to long-term successful land management. Also, farmers know very little about growing trees; all they know is that they will not get much income from them for a very long time. But there is land—not our best land—where a farming family, in it for the long term, could be encouraged to grow more trees, so I hope that Defra can succeed with its plans.

Fifthly, we need more renewable energy, and it cannot all be done in the North Sea, so we need onshore wind farms and solar panels—but in the right place and not on productive agricultural land. I came across an interesting statistic the other day: if we were to triple our onshore wind energy, it would mean that wind farms would then occupy only one-fifth of the land currently used for golf courses. Wind farms are now becoming attractive to communities when the promoter is prepared to offer them electricity discounts or some share of the profits, but National Grid needs to get its act together to receive the power from these multiple sources of renewable energy.

Sixthly, since Covid, the demand for land for access has risen considerably in recent years. Our physical and mental health both depend on it, particularly near town centres. That output occupied quite a bit of our report, rightly, so I shall not repeat our messages here in this short speech.

Finally and seventhly, I am afraid that we undoubtedly need more land for good housing—but, again, in the right places. I said this yesterday in a debate: I believe that the political party that can provide a solution to this desperate shortage of affordable housing, to rent or to buy, in rural England, will win much of that vote at the next election.

Our committee believes that we can satisfy all these land use demands if we get the right sort of analysis, planning and frameworks in place. This is a whole new agenda for government to get to grips with. I stress that what we are looking for is a flexible framework of flexible encouragement, and definitely not a top-down, or even a bottom-up, dictatorial approach. It is not rocket science, and to me it is obvious: the changing pressures on land mean that we need now to really plan our land use on this our very small but densely populated island. The Government have already promised 1 million acres of new forestry, 1 million acres of new habitats, and 1.8 million acres of new national parks and AONBs. I should point out that 1 million acres would take up a county the size of Kent—so we have to ask: where are all these Kents coming from, without some sort of plan?

The key to such a plan, in our view, is multifunctionality. Where you have food production, you can also have biodiversity. With conservation headlands, you get minimal reduction in yield but a massive explosion in biodiversity. Where you have energy, you can mostly have food production as well, or you can also have biodiversity. On our family farm in Somerset, our FWAG officer declared that our field array of solar panels was one of the best wildlife sites in the county. Where you have woodland, you can also have access and biodiversity—et cetera. As I say, it is not rocket science.

All this is possible, but we need to constantly monitor what we have on the ground and plan, both from the top down, through a dedicated land-use commission, in our view, and the drawing-up of a national land-use framework, producing the statistics and advising all government departments on policies and the promotion of best practice locally on the ground, but also—this is really important—it is vital that we work from the bottom up, using local authorities and in particular the new local nature recovery strategies, the LNRSs. It is a great shame that we have lost the LNRS section of ELMS, because local authorities have absolutely no money to buy these services. I get the impression, from conversations that I have had, that if, as I have said, farmers are keen on this new multifaceted agenda, county councils are also enthusiastic about maximising the outputs from all the land in their public ownership, if only to set an example to other land managers—but they do need help with the data and the metrics.

Turning to the land-use commission issue, I know that Defra is not very keen on the idea and is trying instead to work, this year, alongside other relevant departments to bring together the necessary expertise, but my point, and the point of the committee, is that this is not a one-off. This plan or framework is not a “devise, report and finish” exercise; the project will be going on from year to year. It will have to include a constant, flexible analysis of the data, different aspects of which might have to be specifically commissioned in any given year. It will have to be flexible enough to adapt over the years to changing national and international circumstances and needs. For instance, just last week the Government added a whole raft of new land uses required by their Third National Climate Adaptation Programme. It is bound to be an ever-changing framework.

The question the Government have to ask themselves is whether it is better to have a commission, or whatever we want to call it—a panel, perhaps—with a few dedicated employees and part-time board members who become experienced in these various multidepartmental fields; or whether it is better to have to work hard to convene annual one-off get-togethers of people from different departments who, each year, will be struggling to keep up with the knowledge and data requirements which require a lot of work to manage. I have to say to the Government that having a dedicated interdepartmental body—or panel, if you like—must surely be the more efficient and also the cheaper answer.

I might add, in this respect, that in New Zealand, where they have far less pressure on the use of their land than in our very crowded England, they have a national Spatial Planning Policy Unit. This SPPU reports to an executive board, made up of politicians in their case, and it creates a unifying link with regional spatial planning bodies, providing the models of best regional practice, as proposed in our report. I do hope the Government can reconsider their view on a central land-use body, panel or commission. I beg to move.

I come now to the question of biodiversity net growth, a consequence of the Environment Act, I believe, which is going to come into force in October this year but is already being imposed by a number of local planning authorities in anticipation of that. Of course, the requirement for 10% biodiversity net growth as a result of development is a statutory minimum: there is encouragement to local authorities to ask for more. This has the effect, if it is delivered on site, which is the preferred outcome, of either reducing the land available for housing on site, logically, or, if it is to be off site, of sterilising land—sterilising is not the right word, but taking out of production land elsewhere that is to be used to accommodate the biodiversity growth that is needed to offset the development site. The result of this is that we heard evidence that housebuilders are already buying up land elsewhere in the country not for development purposes but with a view to closing down the farms that are operating on it in order to accommodate the offsetting measures needed either for nutrient neutrality mitigation or to accommodate biodiversity net growth.

We heard evidence that for six houses, one needs approximately a hectare of arable land. Of course, it would be a smaller amount of land if what you were closing down was a pig farm or a chicken farm, because they produce much more effluvium. While that figure of six houses per hectare is a very rough estimate, we have had confirmation from other witnesses of numbers broadly in that sphere. So I would not hold myself to it as a precise figure, but it is an indication of the scale of land set-aside needed for this purpose.

We also heard evidence—here I will perhaps anticipate a conclusion, but I think one we have all reached—that the Government have not got a proper grip of this across the piece, as they say, and that there is a degree of tension between Defra and DLUHC in achieving the ambitions both for the environment, on the one hand, and housebuilding and infrastructure development on the other.

I will now make a few remarks on my own account and am no longer speaking for the committee. In these circumstances, the idea of a land use plan or a land use commission might seem very attractive; it might seem that we need a large, centralised direction that can bring everything together and make sure that we get the right outcomes. However, I have my doubts.

First, we must remember that we are fortunate to live in a country where the vast majority of land is private property, and private property is the basis of our liberties. The notion that we can go around directing people what to do with their land in the national interest effectively puts us on a wartime footing economically—except, rather than for the duration of the war, in perpetuity. I worry about that. I am not comfortable with it. There must be a role for the market here if we are to find a solution to this.

Secondly, and finally—I make this point very tentatively—I am not wholly persuaded that the correct and immediate response to all this is an institutional one. It is easy to think that, if one sets up a committee and makes changes to the institutions of government, one will get the outcome one wants. Even the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, spoke of a commission that would need to be so fleet of foot in constantly adjusting and changing in the light of varying national and international demands. We do not know of any such body in government that is ever capable of being fleet of foot; we know of bodies which set rules that become almost impossible to change because they each generate their own vested interests which battle to keep things exactly as they are.

I think that there is a solution of sorts. Although my committee will struggle to find a compelling solution, I think we will come up with an approach, in September or October, when we publish our report, but it will probably be more along the lines of time, patience and prioritisation in what we seek to achieve, rather than wholesale or even modest institutional change. Those are the key elements that we will have to focus on. As I say, I am not here today to offer a solution to a difficulty which this committee has so successfully put its finger on, and which my committee, to some extent, only supplements.

If ever there was an orchestra of different and completely incompatible demands in need of a conductor, it is England’s land use at present. Some body needs to monitor and keep tabs on what is going on, and alert government and local authorities if the balance is moving dangerously out of kilter in one direction, or to give information, encouragement and advice, especially on innovation and to landowners and farmers, and to collate and broadcast that data.

It cannot just be Defra that devises and maintains such a framework; it must involve the other major government departments that need access to land to fulfil their remits. Some have already been mentioned: the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which has housing, local government and some industrial and commercial infrastructure within its remit; DCMS, which deals with access to nature and tourism; the Department for Transport, which deals with infrastructure; and the departments dealing with business, energy self-sufficiency and so on. Defra is only one part of government which needs to be involved in the creation and work of an effective land use framework.

While I give the Government full marks for recognising and accepting the need for such a framework, I am afraid I have to give them nul points for their response to this report so far. In paragraph 1 of their response, they said that

“it may be necessary to assemble a group of experts to oversee the application of the Land Use Framework once published”.

Surely you need the expertise first, before the framework is published, and not after Defra officials have drawn it up alone. If this framework is to be effective, it must be cross-departmental. It needs to be independent and set up in a way that reflects the concerns of each government department that needs to use land to fulfil its role. The Government have so far turned their face against creating a commission, as the report recommended. If it is seen merely as a small part of the portfolio of one Defra Minister, it will not be able properly to fulfil a much-needed role.

As I have said, I readily understand the reluctance to create another quango, but the evidence we heard about how well the Scottish Land Commission works and how well received it is by landowners, who readily seek its advice, shows that a cumbersome and costly body is not necessary to fulfil this important function.

Another of my fears was that a land use framework might dictate. I am pleased that the Government accept—I think they do; I hope for reassurance from the Minister on this—that it will not prescribe or tell people what must be done or not done and where, unlike Natural England does too often. I want it to be about gathering and publishing existing data, promulgating best practice, giving advice in an open and user-friendly way, and working closely with stakeholders—if it is to be effective, not just with landowners and managers and not just in a Defra silo but across departments—local authorities and the relevant public bodies, taking account of and responding to local conditions.

When changes are needed—they could well be needed urgently, for example in relation to food security; we have seen some of that already—that body must be ready to advise Governments and land managers on what needs to be done to encourage greater production. Where trees are being planted on highly productive farmland—for example, as unhappily I know, down in the West Country by the National Trust, and in Wales, as those who listened to “Farming Today” would have heard—if future adjustments need to be made to the ELM scheme to ensure the survival of small family farms, which I suspect will have to be done, an effective land use framework has a vital job to do in monitoring the trends, and on occasion, advising government on the incentives needed to meet changing needs, not to mention the encouragement of innovation. Could the Minister please give us reassurance that this framework will be truly cross-departmental? If not, I fear it will be a missed opportunity.

For that reason, I applaud the committee’s emphasis on multifunctionality. I am, however, somewhat concerned that, despite its breadth of aspiration, it has been somewhat blinkered as to the extent of land and land uses that it has considered—which leads me on to mud. I note that the report contains 70 references to “wood” and 46 references to “forest”, but only two references to “wetlands” and seven references to “marsh”—of which five references are to Dr Tim Marshall, who is a planner. I note my interests as a member of the Wetlands APPG, alongside the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, and I am therefore surprised that not more could be said by the committee about the potential of our internationally significant wetlands and marshlands.

Anyone present for yesterday’s climate change debate would have heard me beat the same drum and repeat yet again the concern I raised in debating what are now the Agriculture Act and the Environment Act—that the intertidal habitats around our island nation are ignored at our peril. They are the front line in our defence against the sea and storms, they are the most protein-abundant and biodiverse ecosystems, they have huge sequestration and water purification capacities, and they are accessible and often approximate to our large and needy urban populations. They are where we mostly go on holiday yet they are hugely vulnerable and repeatedly ignored, and the regulations that govern them are not fit for purpose. I will repeat the request that I made last night of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan: will the Minister please acknowledge the importance of intertidal habitats and undertake to consider how they are best regulated and managed for all our benefit?

Finally, on medieval land tenure, August is medieval month at Powderham so it is very much the theme of the month. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has set this up well by his reference to private property rights. Here I note my interests as someone whose property interests derive from medieval times—the period of feudal rights. That may sound archaic and somewhat eccentric, but a surprisingly vast proportion of UK land is owned by the descendants of William the Conqueror’s Norman invaders. At a time of debate over land use and access and the duty of private landowners to offer public goods, it is perhaps worth considering that fact afresh.

I note that I am working with the University of Exeter alongside the Duchy of Cornwall on a proposed research project entitled “Past Harvests”, looking at medieval sustainable land management practices to extract lessons for our future land management. The thing that struck me was that feudal barons owed clear and defined duties to their sovereign, arising from their title to the land. Those duties included the duty to protect the kingdom and to provide knights and soldiers, most famously, but also other public duties. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, references a war footing and, in this day and age, landowners are once more integral to the defence of the realm: this time, against the ravages of climate change. Does the Minister therefore agree that private land ownership could give rise, by its very nature, to a set of public duties to provide managed access to land, healthy, locally sourced food, carbon sequestration and water purification that could provide a fresh paradigm for considering in the context of the Government’s land use framework? I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts.

“they see so many missed opportunities for integrating more trees, more biodiversity, more play areas and more transport connections, cycle routes and so on”.

As we have heard, another word for this is “multifunctionality”. It applies just as much to urban areas as it does to rural ones. It is a vital principle of land use that any housing development should offer a happy, healthy environment for those who live in or near it.

The report makes clear that we need developments which are biodiverse with plenty of access to green space. Those are the developments which are good for the planet, for people’s physical and mental health, as we have heard, and for secure and productive communities. In Cumbria, there is of course huge potential for multifunctionality of this sort, with carbon sequestration, public access to green and open space, and biodiversity projects.

We are all acutely aware of the need to make decisions about appropriate land use in close consultation with local communities, acknowledging their particular history and culture, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out earlier. I hope that this too will be incorporated in any future land use framework. I should mention that the Church Commissioners are already working on a number of biodiversity-focused projects in close collaboration with several tenant farmers, offering a kind of example in this area.

I must also add my voice to the several calls we have already heard for such a framework to be cross-departmental. The report is very strong on this, and I think it is widely recognised that none of the land use challenges we face can be tackled by one government department alone. Only yesterday my right reverend friend the Bishop of Exeter spoke in your Lordships’ House about the need for a cross-cutting rural strategy. My hope—and I am not alone in hoping it—is that this approach could be dovetailed with the land use framework and duly incorporated into the brief of the proposed land use commission, should that ever come into being.

The Government may have rejected the report’s main conclusion, but that does not mean that they should or can reject the reasons the committee had for reaching it. They simply cannot say, “We’ll just muddle through; it’ll all turn out all right on the night”—because I do not think it will. I, and I expect the whole House, will be interested to hear what the Minister has to tell us, if anything, about all this.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the report is that I believe it starts in the right place—the breakdown of the post-war agricultural and rural policy settlement—and does not tilt at the windmill of the CAP, which really has remarkably little to do with it. We are now in a world where the aspiration for rural England is that of a “place”—I use that word in its contemporary, slightly changed, meaning—of a mosaic of differing, quite exactly defined, land uses, rather than that of a broad sweep of a narrow range of quasi-agricultural activities. Unfortunately, it seems to me that government policy appears principally to be focused on saving money and doing this on the cheap.

On 13 July, I happened to intervene at Question Time and asked the Minister at the Dispatch Box, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, whether he agreed that emissions trading schemes offered a very valuable opportunity for regions of both this country and elsewhere to generate some much-needed income and revenue. I am afraid that the response I got was:

“I understand the point that my noble friend is making. A happy by-product for the Treasury of the emissions trading scheme is the considerable revenue that it generates, and I am sure that it is spending all this money very wisely”.—[Official Report, 13/7/23; col. 1890.]

Frankly, I was horrified by that, and I hope your Lordships are too, because it amounts to saying that the Treasury intends to use emissions trading schemes as a cash cow for itself and not to enable rural and other areas to earn money from their own activities that they need to level up. I hope the Minister can confirm that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on that occasion were a slip of the tongue and that the revenues generated will go to the people in the places earning them and not elsewhere. I am equally interested— as I am sure the whole House is—to hear the thoughts of the Opposition Front Bench on the same point.

It is well known that, according to economic and social indicators, much of rural England is in need of levelling up, as are the more urban and northerly parts of the country. Indeed, there is quite a lot of overlap. Critics may say that there are millionaires in the countryside, and of course that is true. But equally, there are millionaires in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and so on, so that is deliberately missing the point, because much of the wealth now concentrated in the countryside comes from elsewhere. Rural England, as opposed to suburban or urban England in the countryside, needs, deserves and is entitled to expect that the countryside should be able to pay its own way and should not be a kind of neocolonial satrapy of urban Britain. Currently there is insufficient internally generated working capital, which inhibits the changes sought and the longer-term continuity and sustainability they require.

These days, the word “partnership” is on everyone’s lips, but it seems that there are at least two problems. First, there are many different visions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, already said, and there is need for at least a degree of agreement about what is needed. It is no good agreeing about what you do not want; it is necessary to have at least some consensus about what you do. The various arguments so often tend to be advanced by obsessives and extremists. What is required is an overall compromise to resolve mutually conflicting ideas, and intellectual rigour and flexibility are needed to effect acceptable compromise. I ask myself whether it is there.

Secondly, when government is involved in partnerships, too often it imposes its ideas and does not accord genuine engagement with others’ opinions. In this context, as was hinted at earlier, it seems that the current Government’s and the Administration’s understanding and appreciation of the realities of rural England are, shall we say, not strong.

Furthermore—again, this has been touched on—hearts and minds have to be captured. If that does not happen, it cannot work, and things cannot be achieved, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, only by the “big battalions” or the substance of the command economy. Private property, frequently in small units, is the essential characteristic and building block of the countryside, and that and the role of SMEs and microbusinesses are at the heart of solving these problems.

As well as the obvious physical characteristics of the land itself and what is happening on it, two further essentials are not really touched on in the report. The first is tax. A lawyer I know who specialises in these matters recently commented that it is now simply not clear how either capital gains tax or stamp duty land tax affect conservation covenants. If they do, they will probably render the whole idea more or less useless, and without clarity and certainty there can be no significant progress. The same principle applies right across the board. As I intimated earlier, in the real world, unless it is worth people’s while to implement these new ideas, things simply will not happen.

Secondly, at least as important albeit perhaps more esoteric is the legal character of the rights and processes needed to bring this about. For example, how do conservation covenants relate to instruments involved with carbon capture or food production? Can payments be stacked or are they mutually incompatible?

A century ago, the complications of traditional English land law and the manorial system were comprehensively reduced by the impact of the property legislation of 1925. There is a real risk that what may now come into being, with all its attendant cost, delay and obfuscating, could recreate much of what I might call the Dickensian law that was swept away at that point—again, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, touched on that point. Perhaps that might be a matter for the Law Commission.

In conclusion, when I was a boy, I remember enjoying Aesop’s Fables, one of which your Lordships will recall was “Belling the Cat”. A convention of mice concluded that their safety and well-being would be enhanced if one of them tied a bell around the cat’s neck. A volunteer was sought but none was forthcoming. It was a good idea but a bad plan because it could not be put into effect sensibly. There is a real possibility that the same may be true here.

On livestock farming, we need a better evidence base for assessing the contribution to carbon emissions. Our grasslands maintain a really important store of carbon that is maintained on behalf of the nation by our livestock farmers, who are often vilified in the climate change debate. Rather than replacing meat and dairy in our diets, we should encourage the food chain to access more of its meat and dairy products from sustainable sources domestically rather than from other parts of the globe with a poorer carbon story.

We also need to review the way in which we use designations. The recent designation of the West Penwith Moors and Downs SSSI is a case in point. Drawing a regulatory line on the map will not improve the capacity of landowners, tenants and public bodies to deal with any of the environmental issues identified as being of concern. Better ways of producing collegiate solutions need to be found. Natural England needs to be more of a facilitator than a regulator in that context. The situation in Dartmoor is another case in point. Everybody agrees that many of the SSSIs there are in poor condition, but that is after having followed the mantra of stock reduction followed by Natural England and its predecessor bodies for 25 years. If it has not worked over the past quarter of a century, why is more of the same going to work now? I therefore welcome the review to be carried out by David Fursdon and hope that a more practical, collegiate outcome can be achieved.

To deliver productivity and environmental outcomes from our land, tenant farmers need greater security of tenure over tenanted land. The recent CAAV land occupation survey, which came out last month, records that the average length of term on new farmed tenancies is only 3.66 years. Eighty-five per cent of all new farm business tenancies are let for five years or less. How can a tenant farmer contribute effectively to our nation’s food security and environmental ambitions when they have so little security themselves for the future use of their tenanted land?

I welcomed the Treasury’s consultation as part of the Spring Budget to look at restricting agricultural property relief to those landlords letting for the longest terms: eight years or more, as recommended by the Rock review. I now encourage the Treasury to set out a road map for implementing this change to press forward with more secure tenancies.

As the committee has already said, we have challenging and often conflicting demands on our land. Any approach to a land use framework must be flexible to meet the needs of housing, agriculture, food security and the environment.

There is of course much to gain from an approach to ELM with public access at its heart, but there have been reports of a review of the plans which have caused concern. The Government have stated that they are looking at the frameworks for regulation, innovation and investment that impact farmers and land managers to make sure that their policies are best placed to both boost food production and protect the environment. Could the Minister in his response say whether this or any other review will include looking at public access, and if so with what purpose in mind?

In England and Wales, excluding inner London, the right of way is a legally protected right of the public to pass and repass on specific paths. The rights of way exist only where they are so designated, or are able to be designated if not already so. Definitive maps of public rights of way have been compiled for all of England and Wales, except inner London, as a result of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. There are currently some 140,000 miles of footpaths, bridleways and byways which are public rights of way.

The Ramblers organisation says that, thanks to support from members of the public, it is aware of some 49,000 miles of potentially lost paths across England, these being paths that are not legally recorded but which have been historically used as a right of way and which could be lost unless successful evidence-based applications are made to add them to official records.

In February 2022, the Government announced that they were committed to abolishing the 2026 deadline to get the lost paths legally recognised. The Government now appear to have broken that commitment to abolishing the deadline for saving lost paths and have reinstated a deadline which I believe will come into effect in 2031. A right for many to access and enjoy the outdoors has been placed in jeopardy in respect of these lost paths—another reason to query the strength of the Government’s commitment to enhancing public access to our countryside.

Can the Government say why they changed their stance on abolishing the deadline date, and whether, as appears to be the case, they would be quite happy to see potentially thousands of miles of paths lost? Is that an unsaid part of this Government’s land use strategy. Following representations from which organisations did the Government reinstate a deadline, this time of 2031? We should surely be improving opportunities for communities to get outdoors and connect with nature, not reducing them. While members of the public who are volunteers are putting in the time to do the research required to save the potentially 49,000 miles of paths that are missing from the definitive map in England, and submitting the necessary applications to do just this, local highways authorities appear underresourced to deal with the workload.

I have been given a figure of more than 4,000 applications waiting to be processed. Can the Government say in their reply to this debate whether they agree with that figure and, if not, what their figure is for the backlog of such applications? The Government must have sought that figure before deciding to reinstate a deadline; otherwise, how could they have been satisfied that the necessary funding would be in place to make it possible for paths to be researched, applied for and processed within the time limit they have now imposed?

On top of that, there is the issue of whether local authorities should not be taking the lead in doing the research into these paths, which are missing from the map within their area. But, as we all know, local authorities have been ravaged by this Government over the last 13 years and in many cases no longer, it seems, have the staffing levels even to ensure that proper access to existing paths is maintained—another reason to question the strength of the Government’s stated commitment to enhance public access to our countryside.

In 2000, through the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, the then Government introduced the freedom to roam across 3 million acres of open access mountain, moor, heath and downland in England and Wales, with a very substantial percentage of these acres being in national parks such as the Lake District, Peak District and Yorkshire Dales.

The freedom to roam gives the right to walk without fear of trespassing, but at present it covers only 8% of England and is not evenly distributed. The freedom to roam is not just about remote mountains or a relative wilderness. It is also about places right on our doorsteps, closer to our homes. The freedom to explore places off-path is an important part of many people’s enjoyment of the outdoors. But millions of people do not have the opportunity close to home. Freedom to roam needs to be extended to woodland, watersides and more grassland so that it is more equally accessible and better connected to our footpath network and to our towns and cities. Opening access to woodland, for example, would more than double the coverage of freedom to roam in England.

In some areas of England there is very little open access land. For example, only 0.6% of land in Kent is open access, compared with 72% of the Peak District. There is also little open access land in the areas surrounding our towns and cities, meaning that much of the English population, in particular, has limited opportunity to explore freely near to where they live.

Legal rights to walk in the countryside must be preferable to relying on landowners giving permission to walk, because where rights are legally secure the public can be sure about where they can go and can have the confidence to explore freely. However, exploring freely also must be done responsibly and not in a way that damages landowner property, harms livestock or jeopardises livelihoods. We can have no time for the small minority of people who do that—not only for the obvious reason, but because by their actions they increase opposition to the strong case for greater access rights to our countryside.

I have expressed my concerns about the weight that the views of the many, who want greater access to our countryside and the proper maintenance and protection of existing rights of way, have within government in general and Defra in particular, compared with other interest groups, when it comes to land use issues. I noticed that in his letter of 19 July, which we have just received, with its list of actions since the Environmental Improvement Plan was launched, the Minister appears not to have included a great deal about improving access and freedom to roam. Even the reference to the England coastal path completely glossed over the apparent continuing delay in the full opening of that path. Is there a government commitment to extending freedom to roam, or is the Government’s silence on the potential implications for access rights of the recent court case involving land on Dartmoor another reason to doubt the strength of the Government’s commitment to enhancing public access to our countryside?

I await the Minister’s response with interest—including his answers to the questions I have asked.