It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I speak not only as someone who supports the right to roam freely, but as a Sheffield MP standing in a long and proud tradition of Sheffielders who fought for the right to roam. Many constituents have contacted me about this issue, with 713 signing the petition and many others emailing me about today’s debate.
Our debate on the petition is well timed, although delayed. It takes place between two dates that are important to my city and my constituency, and which have significance for the whole country. The first date fell on Saturday 17 April, which marked the 70th anniversary of the Peak District national park, which was the first such park in the UK. The foundations of the park were built by my constituent Ethel Haythornthwaite, who was born in 1894. After falling in love with the beauty of the countryside surrounding our city, she founded the Sheffield Association for the Protection of Local Countryside, which would later become the Peak district and South Yorkshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Throughout her life, she directed a host of campaigns to defend the use by everyone of the green spaces in and around Sheffield.
The second important date is this Saturday, 24 April, which will be the 89th anniversary of the Kinder Scout mass trespass mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), one of many regular trespasses into moorland estates organised by workers from northern industrial towns and cities, such
as the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers. Before the founding of the national parks, these workers were forced to trespass because moorland estates were privately owned by the landed gentry. Their demand was simple: that everyone should be able to access the moors. In 1945, their efforts were recognised when a Government were elected who shared the views not only of Ethel but of the Kinder trespassers as well. Ethel was actually appointed to the National Parks Committee and helped the new Government to deliver the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.
Ministers now propose to turn back the clock and make trespass a criminal offence. They attack not only the right to roam but the right of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community to live as they wish. If the Government were serious about addressing unauthorised encampments, they would increase funding for more legal sites and more places to legally stop, not pass new laws that attack an already persecuted community and force more people into our criminal justice system. We should look to extend our right to green spaces, not deter people from accessing our precious countryside, nor should we criminalise those whose culture is based around the right to roam.
As a Sheffield MP, I am proud to stand on the shoulders of Ethel Haythornthwaite, the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers and the Kinder Scout trespassers in demanding that everyone should enjoy, as Ethel put it, the “peace, freedom, solitude, excitement” that comes with the escape into the clean air and the gradual return to nature.
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