My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that we are blessed with very special national parks, each one unique in its own way. As we have heard from the contributions, everybody has their favourite and the particular one that they are a cheerleader for. We sometimes take the national parks for granted, but the experience over the last 18 months has ensured that they are back in the front line and are rightly seen as the national treasures that they really are. They have played an important part in people’s sanity, and mental health, over the last period.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that the national parks have to be integrated into the work of the Agriculture Act—an issue that we addressed earlier when we talked about joined-up policies—and it is important that they play a rightful role in the rollout of ELMS. We welcome the Government’s proposals for farming in protected landscapes and the additional investment that will come from that, because the farming community in the national parks has to work in a way that is properly sympathetic to the landscape that we are hoping to develop there. There are special challenges, but also great benefits if we get this right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the South Downs ambition of 33% to protect our landscapes. I agree that we should be ambitious: every national park is unique and will have different constraints. South Downs has an awful lot of people living there and a lot of businesses already operating there. Obviously, we need to push to the limits of our capacity in order to make sure that nature recovery takes place in the widest possible area. We will obviously do that.
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The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, reminded us of the two duties of conservation and recreation in the parks. He rightly raised the issue of housing: again, this has this been touched on by several noble Lords. I can assure him that it is not a dead zone. There is sympathetic housing construction taking place in the national parks, but I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that we need to deliver more affordable homes in that area and that really needs to be the challenge. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, was absolutely right that what we do not want are huge estates in the national parks, or even on the edge of the parks. That is because—as we know, because we have debated this several times—one of the issues is the challenge to the Knepp estate: it is not actually in a national park but it is very close to it and it is threatened with a huge housing estate on its borders, which would not be beneficial to anyone.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, had his own list of concerns about the national parks. In my experience, the national parks have not always worked in consultation with all of the public bodies around, and in particular with the farming communities. I would hate him to think that they just ride roughshod over the farming community: that has not been my experience. Of course, there are economic activities in the national parks. They are very much at the heart of everything that we do. Again, they are not dead zones just for nature: we want them to be living and thriving communities. The local businesses and people who live there are very much part of that, so we need to have thriving economic activity to keep those places alive and provide jobs for people. We have to be careful, however, about loading too much on to the national parks. There are other bodies that have a primary responsibility for economic activities, and we should not necessarily place a major new layer of responsibility on the shoulders of the national parks.
Finally, I welcome the Minister’s response and the news that those draft proposals will be later this year—I think she was explicit about that. We obviously look forward to seeing the detail of that. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to the Minister to understand a little bit more about what is intended with the consultation, so I will take her up on that offer. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.