---

Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I rise to speak to Amendment A357B. I have already declared my interest for the Committee stage of this Bill but if I was asked to choose a theme that I felt I most represented in this House it would probably be a vibrant rural economy. It is for that reason that I am generally in favour of access to the countryside, which brings billions of pounds every year into the rural economy. This was why foot and mouth was so disastrous. Although it was a tragedy for farmers, it was much more of a tragedy for those people and those businesses dependent upon visitors. It was extraordinary how wide that particular category turned out to be. As many of your Lordships know, farming has been through a tough time in the last 10 or 15 years. Every Minister of agriculture, every Secretary of State of Defra, and even myself in a lesser capacity, during those years have been encouraging farmers to look hard at their assets and to see how else they might be able to use them to create an income or, better still, to create employment in the countryside. As ever, the key to a healthy rural economy is diversity, flexibility and continuous response to the market place or even to government signals. Amendment A357B is aimed at catering for this. The Government have already virtually accepted this amendment. During our last session when we were discussing possible future port expansion, the Minister indicated that flexibility should be the name of the game and that when, and only when, a development or change of use was being proposed by a landowner, Natural England should look at its route to see what it could do and then change the route to safely accommodate that development. The Minister made the point that this would happen when the development was needed rather than at any time before; in other words, keeping the route flexible. I cannot see that there is any difference between a landowner, a developer who is a port authority, a hotelier or any other rural businessman, or even a farmer. Any proposed development will be subject to the planning process which will ensure that the development is appropriate. Owing to the mind-numbingly lengthy process that all planning applications go through, it will also give all parties months or possibly even years to set out sensible alternative solutions. However, the danger here—this is my main point—is that the current, in other words the first, coastal route, could easily be given a sacrosanct status in the minds of the planners, and the proposed development will be forced to accommodate the existing route, along with being forced to accommodate bats and badgers and great-crested newts. What should happen is that the coastal route should be adjusted to accommodate the development. Proposed land-use changes must be looked at with fresh, non-partisan eyes, without any prejudgment. That is why Amendment A357B is so important.