Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

A work permit system needs to ensure that people are able to work in the UK if there is a demand for them, and that those people are working legally. It is not only farmers in the rural section of my constituency who demand this. Horse traders, for example, are demanding the ability to bring in jockeys from Mauritius, but they have been barred from doing so by the Home Office. The trainers’ case is that there are not enough small men in England to train the future Derby and Grand National winners, for example. There should be a board to examine the pay and conditions of such people to ensure that they are here legally and properly remunerated. That may go beyond the scope of the Bill, but I am sure that there will be the opportunity to consider such matters in greater detail in Committee. I am more confident that the Government will be prepared to examine that issue than the next matter that I raise, which is land ownership. I spent a rather pleasant three days in the Brecon Beacons. I am not sure whether I was in the constituency of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). I saw his rather garish orange-bedecked office while I was there. During more pleasant times in the past few days, I took the opportunity legally to trample on some of the land now open to us mere commoners. I noted that some of the routes that have historic rights, which could previously be walked, were the coffin roads. These roads took people from the collieries of south Wales back to agricultural lands. These were the bodies of people who died in the early days of the mining industry. They worked in terrible conditions. In my constituency, the dukeries had many such collieries. There were the four dukes who owned, and still own, most of the land. They profited greatly. A modest contribution that the Government could contemplate would be to take the ethos of private ownership and emancipation a stage further by allowing tenant farmers, who for centuries have farmed the land in my area, the opportunity to buy the land—for a modest, reasonable and perhaps peppercorn price—that they and their families have farmed so that they may become farmer owners rather than farmer tenants. In some ways, that was a demand of the original Labour party in its early days and going back to the 1890s. The third-term Labour Government have an opportunity to examine issues of land ownership and to show that our party is the friend of the farmer, particularly the tenant farmer. Such people should be given the opportunity of ownership and entrepreneurship. Their land should not able to be disposed of by the diktat of a landowner; they should be able to benefit their families by bequeathing their land—not just the tenancy—from father to son or father to daughter. Judging by the nods I see from Opposition Back Benchers, I am sure that such a proposal would have all-party support. It seems to me that there could be no more populist cry from all quarters of the House than the right to gas. In my four years in Parliament, I have been amazed that the House has not promoted the right to gas more strongly. We know much about the subject—4.5 million of our constituents across Britain do not have a gas supply. I hope that the Labour party will have the wisdom to include such a right in our next election manifesto, if it cannot be squeezed into the Bill or some other measure. To give people in all parts of the country, and particularly in areas such as mine, the right to gas would be a very popular move, especially in rural communities and mining villages that do not have access to a gas supply. It is clear that suppliers in the so-called competitive gas market are not interested in extending their supply to more remote villages, but are content merely to compete in areas that already have a supply or new estates. We should give the whole population the right to gas. Part 6 deals with an issue that I have raised many times. Many right hon. and hon. Members signed my early-day motion on the subject—[Interruption.]—and I am sure that the hon. Members heckling me were among the first to sign it when I resubmitted it in this Parliament. It urges the Government to tackle the menace of motor bikes and quad bikes on our bridleways and footpaths. We raised the problem in an unsuccessful ten-minute Bill in the last Parliament, early-day motions, Adjournment debates and contributions to other debates. I spoke about it on many occasions and raised it privately with Ministers. We have to deal with the legal anomaly that has allowed organised groups—in particular, the Trail Riders Fellowship and the Land Access and Recreation Association—to submit thousands of applications to upgrade a bridleway or footpath to a byway open to all traffic, based merely on the existence of an historical right for horses and carts to use them. In the Littleborough area of my constituency, that historical right is based on the route of a Roman road. If such a right is deemed to exist, an application can lead to a route being upgraded automatically, with no other factors—opposition to the application, environmental damage, present land use, other uses of the footpath or bridleway, or changes in the built environment—being taken into consideration. After such an upgrade, any motorised vehicle can be used on the route. That loophole needs to be closed and I am pleased to see that action is being taken. I hope that the Standing Committee will examine the matter in minute detail to ensure that in closing one loophole, we do not open another. The problems do not arise from nowhere. Highly organised groups are involved. Their websites contain clear advice from solicitors and others on how to submit an application or applications to cover every part of an area. In some areas in my constituency, 20 or 30 applications have been made in respect of land that completely surrounds a village. That has happened before many of the historical maps have been fully examined; the applications submitted so far are the easy ones. The public meetings that I held in my constituency during the election campaign and will continue to hold attracted mass turnouts and strong views were expressed—people are demanding action. Horse riders told of their horses being spooked by a quad bike, motor bike or four-wheel drive vehicle. The idea that the drivers of such vehicles are present in the area at random is false. My investigations in the Warsop area in my constituency—a group of mining villages plagued by the problem—revealed an organised competitive sport. White vans appear, motor bikes and scrambling bikes without number plates are taken out and raced around for an hour or two, then they are put back in the van and off they go. People are paying to be taken to my constituency and elsewhere to conduct their activities. I urge caution regarding the concept of organised places for such activities. In my experience, people who want to go off road do not want to go to organised sites. In Nottinghamshire, we have the desert—an organised site for driving quad bike and 4x4s. The problem is the illegal activity that takes place in an 80-mile radius around the desert. People might dip into the legal or semi-legal site, but then they leave it.