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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I rise to support these amendments, particularly Amendment A357A. I consider an appeals system to be the key to successful implementation of the Bill. As I made clear in my previous interventions, I very much favour greater access to our countryside. It has enormous benefits for the mental and physical health of our nation. With one or two exceptions, which I touched on when discussing dogs, it is not as harmful to land managers as many of them might think. Indeed, in creating greater understanding of our countryside by outsiders and bringing much needed money into the rural economy, it can be said to bring great benefit to landowners and land managers. That is my view; I accept that I am probably considered rather "unreliable" by many of my fellow landowners on this issue. I turn to Amendment A357A. Being a natural enthusiast, I am well aware of the dangers of enthusiasm and of thinking that what you are trying to achieve must be as important to everyone else as it is to you. If you are a member of Natural England’s staff spending all your working hours trying to plan this very worthy coastal access, whatever anyone might say to the contrary and however professional you might be—the team working for Natural England is highly professional—you will inevitably tip the scales of your decision a little, making the processes favour optimum access as against other priorities of land managers which may involve protecting wildlife or their families’ farming income. Natural England staff, supported by Defra and its Ministers, will undertake the extremely difficult task of trying to juggle some obvious and some not-so obvious sections of potential pathways to create a continuous coastal access around our shores. In pursuit of this complicated objective it would not be surprising if Natural England, Defra and even its Ministers were not prone to interpreting the legislation in favour of their purposes rather than other valid objectives. As I said, I do not say this in any way as a criticism of the professionalism of those involved but, even if they have their enthusiasm well under control, it is vital that justice must be seen to be done. I am aware that the Countryside Agency, of which I was a chair, was accused of spending too much time and too much money conscientiously mapping the land designated under the CROW Act. There were rules and fairly firm definitions involved but the appeals process was vindicated in that case because 75 per cent of appeals were successful. You do not really need to say very much more than that. An appeals process is essential here so that justice can be seen to be done and this very worthwhile initiative sets off on the right foot, if noble Lords will excuse the pun.