Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for commencing this afternoon’s proceedings with what I might call a bit of a climbdown, because he will remember that he opposed the amendment when it was tabled by the Liberal Democrats in Committee. To be fair, he said, as he has just repeated, that he wanted national parks to have the tools but he was not at that stage prepared to give them the powers. Now he is doing so and he is doing that correctly. I also want to express my gratitude to the Minister for informing those of us who were involved with the Bill, early in the recess, that this was his plan, and for making similar comments about other things. I only hope that this presages a useful next four-and-a-half hours of proceedings and that there will be other measures on which we can agree, but clearly it is sensible that national parks authorities should have the opportunity to issue traffic regulation orders. We shall return to traffic regulation orders later this evening, but the fact that the Government are seeing fit to give national parks authorities the power to issue TROs is an important step forward, not just because of national parks but also because of the principle of using TROs to deal with some of the negative effects that mechanised vehicles can have on byways that are open to all traffic. We need not repeat at this stage all the damage that can be done—members of the Committee and many other Members of the House are well aware of it—but it is very serious, and giving national parks authorities the opportunity to issue TROs takes us a long way forward. It still leaves the rest of the country and we shall return to that in a later group of amendments, but I appreciate the Minister’s concession on this new clause and welcome it.