OPINION
After Labour’s row-back on access reform, campaigner Jon Moses argues for a bolder vision that recognises the potential of right to roam to bring people together
IN JANUARY, as we learned the last measly pocket of wild camping rights in England was due to be extinguished, the Labour Party capitalised on the mass public outrage by announcing its commitment to a Right to Roam Act. But what exactly did that mean?
Labour was cagey, but the signs were promising. Rights to access ‘woodlands, cliffs, rivers’ were mentioned. Policy would consider the ‘right to experience’, and the ‘right to explore’ as well as the mere ability to walk from A to B along a fixed route. We might see activities like swimming and camping – either prohibited or ignored by existing access policy – empowered with anew set of statutory guarantees.
Campaigners like ourselves were heartened when, in a parliamentary debate on access to nature, then-Shadow Minister for Nature Alex Sobel said: “Like in Scotland, Labour’s approach will be that our right to roam will offer access to high-quality green and blue spaces for the rest of Britain. We will replace the default of exclusion with a default of access, and ensure the restoration and protection of our natural environment.”
This was precisely what the Right to Roam campaign had been arguing for. Not a ‘free for all’ as some critics have it, nor a ‘right to trample’, but a default presumption of access in which exclusion had to be justified rather than assumed. It would finally put our access rights, long contoured around the landed interest, on a democratic footing. It would build on 20 years of successful experience in Scotland, allowing us to adapt and improve on its example.
Row-back
Yet, last week Labour rowed back on Alex Sobel’s comments, stating it was looking instead at extending the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act, rather than introducing a presumption of access and working backwards from there. This would still be welcome progress. But it’s a choice that risks sacrificing both principle and pragmatism on the altar of political expediency. Extending CRoW to incorporate more land designations (like woodlands and rivers) could be complicated – the original legislation in 2000 took five years to implement and involved a lot of costly mapping exercises –and might create a landscape of access islands without easy means of navigation to or between.
Spooked
Labour appears to have been spooked by the hostility of farmers and landowners. Farmers worry a default approach will see people popping up all over their farms willynilly, making moving livestock and heavy machinery more dangerous.
We shouldn’t dismis
