My Lords, in moving Amendment 17, I will speak also to Amendments 37, 47 and 94, which are in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, who I am glad to see here—as good as her word—supporting the cause. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is really rather upset that he cannot be here but he has a long-standing commitment that he simply could not break. He wants to apologise to the House and say that in spirit and commitment he is very much here with us.
The national parks are a unique and precious national asset. They were created by social visionaries in the aftermath of the Second World War, who were determined to see a better, more creative—more spiritual, in some ways—life available for a far wider cross-section of the community. They have been sustained, very positively, by successive Administrations ever since. They are there for everyone to enjoy. As well as being priceless, beautiful landscapes, rich in biodiversity, they are crucial to people’s health and well-being, psychological as well as physical, and a rare opportunity for people to get away from the accumulated stresses of everyday life. Making sure that they are accessible to all, not just those with a private car, is therefore essential, and rural bus services are vital for both residents of and visitors to the national parks.
I really do welcome the Government’s aspiration to see more people benefit from the inspiration of the parks. Importantly, their 8-Point Plan for England’s National Parks also sets out the desire to encourage more diverse visitors to national parks. It states:
“We will also work with National Park Authorities to scale up projects to reach visitors from a diverse range of social groups, and to alleviate any barriers that stop more people from enjoying National Parks”.
As I reminded the House at Second Reading, at the launch of the Government’s national parks strategy, Rory Stewart said:
“I’d like to make sure that everyone in Britain and more visitors from around the world have the unique experience of going to our National Parks”.
That strategy has as its central objective increasing the diversity and number of visitors. It hopes to move from 90 million to 100 million people a year. These are great aspirations. How they are actually fulfilled is quite another thing.
As the Government highlight in their impact assessment for the Bill:
“People in the lowest income groups make three times as many trips on buses than those in the highest income groups”.
The assessment also states:
“People in the 17-20 and 70+ age groups make the most trips using the bus”.
The Campaign for National Parks has just concluded a three-year project which worked with more than 1,600 16 to 25 year-olds who live close to but not within national parks. These young people came from the more deprived areas and many had never visited a national park before. When asked, the most frequently mentioned barrier preventing these people visiting parks on their own was the lack of sufficient and affordable public transport to the parks.
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I will put just a little flesh, at this late hour, on the statistics of all this. I have frequently been struck by the experiences of those visiting parks. One vivid example that will remain with me for the rest of my life concerned a youth vacation centre by Lake Windermere. It was when I was president of the YMCA, which ran this centre. I was talking to a dedicated youth worker there who was anxious to tell me this story. A few days previously she had seen a young girl, probably about seven, eight, nine or something like that, who was looking animated. She asked the girl what she had been doing that day and the girl said with wide eyes, “I saw far”. A few days later, she saw this girl again looking even more animated and fulfilled and again asked her what she had done that day. She said, “I saw very far”. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that this kind of experience can have on those who are living sometimes in pretty grim physical environments and pretty grim general circumstances.
Improving the provision of rural bus services both to and within national parks is an important opportunity to alleviate one of the barriers that people currently face. Many of us are grateful to the Minister for his assurances at Second Reading that the proposed guidance will include references to the statutory duty on all public bodies to take account of national park purposes when taking any decisions that may affect them. I was glad to hear that, because I fear that too often this duty is overlooked. I also thank the Minister for having been so ready to receive the chief executive of the Campaign for National Parks and me to discuss some of the issues at stake. He and his officials had an open discussion with us. I am a vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks and a patron of the Friends of the Lake District, where I live.
Both the specific amendments to which I speak are about the importance of national park authorities being included in the Bill as relevant local authorities. This is to ensure that they are consulted by local transport authorities just as district councils would be when plans and schemes are being developed. National park authorities are not, of course, local transport authorities, so none of the measures in the Bill will apply to them directly. However, national park authorities have played a key role in delivering bus services, particularly in recent years, and have a good understanding of the travel needs of both visitors and those resident in the area. If the national park authorities remain excluded from the list of relevant local authorities, it could put at risk many bus services currently operating successfully in national parks.
I am convinced of the Minister’s intentions to ensure that there is good guidance, but it is not the same thing. I speak, although it was a long time ago, from ministerial experience. It is one thing to have things in guidance and another to have them in the Bill. With the best will in the world, over time things that are in guidance may slip in significance and it becomes quite important that a particular body is not on a specific list because it undermines its status in discussions. Indeed, on this point, I drew attention at Second Reading to the experience of the New Forest National Park, where the park authorities play a
tremendously active part. The material I quoted is there in the Second Reading debate for all to see.
Quite as important as all the other points I have been making is that it is critical to remember that the national park authorities are local planning authorities for their area: they lead the development of local plans, as do district councils. Through those plans, they set a vision and a framework for future development in the area and seek to address the needs and opportunities in relation to affordable housing, the economy and community facilities—all in the context of the purposes of the national park. If areas, whether national parks or not, are to thrive, spatial and transport planning needs have to be sufficiently integrated. This vision and framework for future development as set out in local plans needs to be considered at all costs when changes to bus services are being planned, to make sure that bus service proposals are sustainable and meet the needs of the local area. It is therefore essential that the national park authorities should be statutory consultees, just as district councils will be, and included in the Bill. I beg to move.