George Monbiot on Tory Enclosure: Public Land & Rights of Way under threat

Tue Jun 24 19:57:10 BST 2014

Beware the small print that threatens all public land

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/small-print-public-land-infrastructure-bill-lords-uk

As the infrastructure bill in the Lords shows, we 
seem to measure progress only by how much of the UK we can concrete over
    * 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.theguardian.com/profile/georgemonbiot>George 
Monbiot - 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>The 
Guardian, Monday 23 June 2014 18.45 BST
Planning laws inhibit prosperity. That's what 
we're told by almost everyone. Those long and 
tortuous negotiations over what should be built 
where are a brake on progress. All the major 
parties and most of the media believe that we 
would be better off with less regulation, less 
discussion and more speed. Try telling that to the people of Spain and Ireland.

Town planning in those countries amounts to 
shaking a giant dustbin over the land. Houses are 
littered randomly across landscapes of tremendous 
beauty, and are so disaggregated that they're 
almost impossible to provide with public 
services. The result, of course, is a great 
advance in human welfare. Oh, wait a moment. No, 
it's economic collapse followed by mass 
unemployment. Spain and Ireland removed the 
brakes on progress and the car rolled over a 
precipice. Their barely regulated planning 
systems permitted the creation of property 
bubbles that trashed the economy along with the land.

Needless to say, we have learned nothing from 
this. Our lords and masters still whip the 
buttocks of the Gaderene swine. When the 
infrastructure bill was discussed in the House of 
Lords last week, our unelected legislators rained 
curses upon peace and quiet, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/140618-0001.htm#14061871000194>beauty 
and stillness.

Lord Adonis, a Labour peer, complained that "for 
the first time in 350 years, Britain will no 
longer have the world's largest port or airport. 
That accolade will pass, symbolically, to Dubai". 
The shame of it  to have some upstart petro-city 
making more noise and pollution than we do. For 
the government, Baroness Kramer boasted that "we 
are making the biggest investment in roads since 
the 1970s". The Conservative peer Lord Jenkin, in 
discussing the new freedoms for frackers the 
government proposes, celebrated what he called a 
"drill, baby, drill bill". All this, we are 
assured, will enhance the life of the nation.

Since the 1980s, the Department for Transport has 
consistently forecast traffic growth 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/roads/170412-phil-goodwin-ltt>along 
a steep trajectory. But the distance covered by 
car drivers in England is now 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/media/30-07-2013-nts-2012>7% 
lower than it was in 1997. The total volume of 
traffic has flatlined since 2002, nixing every 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/roads/170412-phil-goodwin-ltt>prediction 
the department has made. Last year, 32 transport 
professors wrote to the secretary of state 
pointing out that, in the absence of traffic 
growth, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.tps.org.uk/files/Main/news/pr/Open%20letter%20to%20SoS.pdf>"the 
basis for major infrastructure spending decisions appears to be changing".

The only thing likely to induce more traffic 
growth, they argued, is building more trunk 
roads, and that would put intolerable pressure on 
the city streets into which they feed. The facts 
might have changed, but the policy remains the 
same. The department continues to make the same 
failed forecasts, using the same failed model. 
The desire to build  and to appease the 
construction industry and motoring lobby  comes 
first, and the forecasts are made to fit.

So is the planning system. The government's draft 
national policy statement for major roads weakens 
the protection of wildlife, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/263720/consultation-document-draft-national-policy-statement.pdf>ancient 
woodlands and treasured landscapes. It forbids 
any consideration of climate change during 
planning inquiries: motorways will officially 
produce no more carbon dioxide than cycle paths.

Not a word of this was heard in the chamber last 
Wednesday. No one questioned the need for the 
road-building programme of which the government 
boasted. The peers, an unlikely club of boy 
racers, stood only to demand that we should go 
further and faster, on a journey without purpose or destination.

If they have their way, we will become the proud 
recipients of a new network of roads to nowhere. 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/17/in-tempo-apartment-building-spain>Like 
Benidorm's In Tempo towers, the tallest 
residential buildings in Europe, they will be 
commissioned in a convulsion of optimism and 
greed, before becoming monuments to bad debt and 
human folly. "Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
".

But this is by no means the worst of it. Buried 
in a schedule at the bottom of this bill is the 
kind of clause that was once inserted to relieve 
tribal leaders of their lands for a rifle and a 
bolt of cloth. The kind of obscure, innocuous 
wording from which, in those days, the entire 
grandiloquent flummery of the proceeding pages 
was designed to distract. In schedule 3 there are 
a couple of lines, noticed by some campaigners 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/infrastructure-bill-allows-ministers-to-sell-off-public-land>but 
not by the press, which could, if they have been 
interpreted correctly, license the government to 
sell off any public land it chooses, while 
cancelling, without process or debate, public access and use.

This is what it says: "The property, rights and 
liabilities that may be transferred by a scheme 
include: property, rights and liabilities that 
would not otherwise be capable of being 
transferred or assigned." This refers to the 
transfer of public land to the government's Homes 
and Communities Agency. The HCA can then sell 
this land to private developers. In transferring 
it, the government will have new powers to 
extinguish easements (rights of use), public 
rights of way and the protections afforded to 
consecrated ground. 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2014-2015/0002/15002.pdf>These 
transfers "are to take effect irrespective of any 
requirement to obtain a person's consent or 
concurrence, any liability in respect of a 
contravention of another requirement, or any 
interference with an interest or right, which would otherwise apply".

The news site Schnews reveals that during the 
great battle over the coalition's attempt to sell 
off the public forest estate, which resulted in 
the 
government's<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/england-forest-sell-off>first 
major U-turn, one of the campaigners received 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/SEEING-INFRA-RED/>an 
anonymous call from a civil servant. "The forests 
are just the start," he warned. "They are 
absolutely determined to sell every scrap of 
public land  beaches, parks, the lot."

Is that what this is? I don't know. During the 
Lords debate, Baroness Kramer insisted that this 
measure applies only to "surplus land" and 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/140618-0001.htm#14061871000194>"applies 
only to private rights and not to those that are 
public". Just one problem: there are no such 
safeguards in the bill. The word "surplus" does 
not occur anywhere, and the bill creates specific 
powers "to extinguish public rights of way". Yes, 
public  not private. Had Kramer read the bill 
she moved? Or was she making it up as she went 
along? In either case, until this is either 
clarified or struck out, the forests for which we 
fought so hard and, perhaps, all other state-owned land could be at risk.

But who needs all that, when you have the world's 
biggest airport to boast of, and the biggest 
investment in pointless roads since the 1970s and 
a "drill, baby, drill bill"? What else would 
anyone who loved this country wish for?

Twitter: 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot>@georgemonbiot. 
A fully referenced version of this article can be 
found at 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/23/http://www.monbiot.com/>Monbiot.com

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