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Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I listened to the introduction made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to this complicated group of amendments. He was extraordinarily succinct and comprehensive, and I agreed with everything that he said. There are examples of how these ancient rights of way, which were formed centuries ago in many cases, have been effectively abused. For example, we have all probably walked the Ridgeway and seen what an appalling state that has got into in some places. That brings it very much home to us that something has got to be done. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, gave chilling statistics of the ““opportunism””, as he called it, which has taken place since the initial discussions of about two years ago. That is very worrying, and therefore I am 100 per cent behind the 2003 date. That is extremely important. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, also referred to disabled access, and I think that there is an amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on it. This is a difficult problem, and I am quite interested to see where we will get to on that before long. My two instinctive reactions would be that one somehow should allow electric-type vehicles but not noisy motorised 4x4s and, if necessary, I would certainly be prepared to give up even that access if and when the time comes. I encourage the Government to listen to    and support the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that there should be discussions between now and a suitable later stage of the Bill to tie all that down. I suspect that there is not too much difference between us on the general thrust of what we are trying to achieve.