Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I support my noble friends on our Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on Amendment No. 318A. The subject featured last week in ““The Archers”” and, if nothing else, that reflects the concern the issue has raised in the countryside. A number of respected off-road bodies have given undertakings, I am sure in good faith, that their members will behave responsibly on the BOATs for which they make application. But we must be realistic. We cannot expect there to be a marshal from one of these bodies posted at every threatened green lane site to ask if the rider can produce his membership card. The reply that they would get defies imagination. The fact is there is a vast body of opportunistic, off-roaders who will have nothing to do with any of these organisations. I am aware that the green lanes group and others would have preferred no exemptions from the measures proposed in the Bill and that would have avoided the disadvantages of arbitrary dates. Applications separated by only one day in the past would have received radically different treatments. However, I accept that the bodies representing the trail riders and off-roaders would feel a certain sense of injustice, real or imagined, if that line was adopted. Therefore, with some reservations I accept the spirit of government Amendment No. 318. My reservations are that Amendment No. 318 does not go far enough back in setting a cut-off date. However, Amendment No. 318A, in the names in the names of my noble friends Lady Byford and the Duke of Montrose, and the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Berkeley, goes further in taking the date as proposed in Clause 2(3)(a) in Amendment No. 318 back from 19 May 2005 to 9 December 2003—the date of publication of the consultation paper to which the noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred. I hope the Committee will appreciate that this is not simply an attempt to get, as it were, a larger slice of the cake. There is no doubt that certain interests deliberately flooded local authorities with applications once the discussion document was published so as to get under the wire, as it were. I understand that 1,000 applications were put in between the two dates. The date of 9 December 2003 has a logic—and I venture to say an equitable logic—behind it, and I very much support it.