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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) on securing this debate on an important issue. I recognise his long-standing interest in the Thames Path, which runs through his constituency, and his assiduous representation of his constituents through the long series of parliamentary questions he has tabled since entering this House.
The Government are committed to protecting, enhancing and expanding access to national trails. Let us think of other countries. The Camino de Santiago starts in France and goes through Spain. A friend is currently following one of the long-distance paths in Portugal on a bike, finding out about the hills not shown on the map; the map is two dimensional but there are three dimensions out there. The grand routes in France—such as the GR20, or Grand Route Vingt, which that bisects Corsica—are epic, long-distance, mythical trails that connect us to thousands of years of human history.
Every town and constituency in this country has a Green Lane that was literally a green lane. It is important to protect them, not just for inclusive access for local people and the benefits to tourism, but because they say something important and cultural about the human condition, heritage and history.
We have 16 national trails across England and Wales. As the former MP for Wakefield, I know and dearly love the Pennine Way. We always had a new year’s day walk; we would drag the children out, complaining, and then they would find an animal skull and spend the rest of the walk asking what it was and whether they could put it in their pocket. We showed them the Ladybower reservoir where the Dambusters practised for their assault on Germany. Those are iconic, special places that have a heritage in the hearts of local people whose forefathers and foremothers did the Kinder trespass, coming up from Sheffield and Manchester to assert their right to access those beautiful landscapes.
Before the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) leaves, I want to say that in Northern Ireland the national trails are mainly supported by Northern Ireland Government bodies and not the UK national trail funding pot. I like the sound of the Ulster Way and I will look it up next time I am in Magherafelt visiting my uncle.
The Pennine trail up and down the backbone of England offers incredible views over the Peak district and the Yorkshire dales. The South Downs Way runs between Winchester and Beachy Head for more than 100 miles. Those trails are vital public assets that promote wellbeing, health and tourism. It was the previous Labour Government that started work on the vision of an England coastal path, which will be completed under this Government. The King Charles III England Coast Path will be completed next year, an incredible infrastructure achievement.
Richard Foord
The King Charles III coastal path will be an impressive achievement, if we can make it happen. Would the Minister commend the section between Lyme Regis and Sidmouth in my constituency? Would she also pay tribute to the National Trust, which does great work in maintaining our coastal paths?
Mary Creagh
I pay tribute to that section. I have not been to that part of the path but I opened a section of the coastal path in 2011 or 2012, when, sadly, no Minister from the coalition Government could be found to make the journey to Dorset. I was asked as the shadow Secretary of State, and was happy to walk up and down—a lot of up and down—with a pint of foaming ale at the end, which made the visit worthwhile. Achieving these paths requires lots of partners, and the hon. Member rightly mentions the National Trust, which does incredible work in maintaining and protecting the paths through its huge membership support. I was down in Dorset with the National Trust in March, releasing the first wild beaver on the Isle of Purbeck. The National Trust plays an important role in the life of this nation.
When the coastal path is finished, we will have an extraordinary national corridor of access: a 4,750 mile path around England. I have walked certain sections of the Appalachian trail in America, and have heard stories about who goes on these long-distance paths and why. We also have seen the story of “The Salt Path”, which is now subject to some controversy. The Appalachian trail was used by lots of Vietnam veterans as a way of healing; they walked from Georgia to Maine as a way of processing and dealing with the trauma that they had suffered as people who had served their country. Imagine walking 5,000 miles around England! It is lifetime’s work; I do not know whether I will have time to do all of it, but I will certainly have to mark off the bits I have done already.
Since 2009, successive Governments have invested £25.6 million in the planning and establishment of the coastal trail. Successive Governments have recognised the value it will have in connecting communities, landscapes and coastlines, and boosting rural economies. It will be a really important part of rural economic growth. This has never been done before. I remember that, when the Welsh completed their coastal path ahead of us—which was obviously galling—there were articles in The New York Times about it. The path became a tourism destination, with the breathtaking sweep of the Atlantic coast down there. Obviously we have some drier bits, certainly down the east coast, which I know and love dearly—particularly sections around Bridlington and Filey. Coast paths generate a huge amount for local economies. Research has shown that more than £300 million has been spent in local economies by people walking on England coast paths, directly supporting almost 6,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
This Government have backed their commitment to access with action. Since 2022, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has invested £2.5 million into the protected landscapes partnership, which brings together the National Landscapes Association, National Parks England, National Trails UK and Natural England. The partnership focuses on enhancing access and ensuring that our trails have a real impact on people, nature and climate.
One of the most innovative projects under the partnership is the coastal wildbelt project, which is being led by National Trails UK. It focuses on the coastal margin adjacent to the England coast path, which amounts to an area the size of Dorset. Our pilots will identify innovative ways to connect the public with this coastal area around the country. They will also identify ways to better drive nature recovery in these places, because once the path is created, access is created, so we will be able protect and restore nature in some hard-to-reach places.
We have also provided around £5.5 million in support to National Trails UK to enable it to continue its vital work of protecting and restoring the trail network. Trail maintenance funding is provided through Natural England, which is responsible for managing those relationships and ensuring that the trails are well cared for.
Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) mentioned, many of the challenges facing our national trails are caused by the impacts of climate change, but at the moment Natural England’s fund for environmental incidents covers only coastal erosion and riverbank erosion. Does the Minister agree that this funding pot must be expanded and increased in line with inflation to cover proper provision for climate impacts such as storm damage and flooding?
Mary Creagh
The hon. Lady raises an excellent point. Making sure we are resilient to a rapidly changing climate with warmer, wetter winters and hotter, dryer summers is important for not just food and water security, but all infrastructure, including our roads and bridges. With the flooding in Tadcaster, we saw what happens when a bridge that connects two parts of a town is knocked out during a flood as well as the huge economic and social consequences that that brings. I will take the hon. Lady’s suggestion back to the Department as we look at business planning for this year.
In the Labour manifesto, we committed to deliver nine new national river walks, one in every region of England. That will open up our riversides to the public in a transformative way, creating new opportunities for recreation, supporting biodiversity and strengthening community access to nature. The walks represent a step forward in our mission to make nature accessible to everyone, improve public health and provide opportunities to engage in the great outdoors.
The new Coast to Coast Path national trail from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay—an area I know and love well—will take walkers across some of the most beautiful parts of the north of England, including through three national parks: the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. It will be one to walk from west to east, so that hikers always have the rain on their back—and I can promise that there will be rain.
The new national trail will bring increased access opportunities for recreation and tourism, improving health and wellbeing and increasing spending locally. We already have fantastic rights-of-way networks across England, with 120,000 miles of footpaths, bridleways and byways. On Sunday, I got lost near Crawley and Gatwick airport while looking for a friend’s house on my bike. When we go down the little country roads and trails, the signposts are so important when the sat-nav is out of range.
Let me share a story with the House. As the Minister for the circular economy, I am always looking out for waste and pollution. I saw this big, white polystyrene thing by the side of the road and got off my bike, thinking, “That is absolutely disgraceful—someone’s chucked this huge piece of litter here”. It turned out to be a massive puffball mushroom family. I took it and put it in my bag. Last night, my husband and daughter enjoyed puffball mushroom steaks with a hot chilli sauce; we did a lot of checking to make sure it was not poisonous, but fortunately it is literally the size of a football so we could not really mistake it for anything else.
The hon. Member for Henley and Thame raised three points. On the issue of statutory purposes for national trails, the statutory purposes of protected landscapes have been established and evolved over 75 years. If we were going to make any changes, we would need lots of consultation and evidence gathering. Although trails and protected landscapes are part of the same family, they have different roles and responsibilities. Giving trails statutory purposes may not be the most effective way to support them to achieve their objectives.
A statutory purpose would not, on its own, bring planning protections. Many trails cross through existing protected landscapes and other designations. They are covered by protections for those designations already. As such, we do not at this time believe that additional planning protections for trails are needed to support trails in their mission. Perversely, without robust evidence they could place additional burdens on the teams that manage them, so we could not be certain they would provide the benefits that the hon. Member suggests.
We have, as he said, a constrained fiscal environment. This year, the trails have had additional funding with £3.26 million for access-for-all improvements. I saw when I visited Dartmoor how important that was in giving people with Tramper scooters, which I had not previously come across, access to the amazing landscapes there. I am afraid that the percentage quoted by the hon. Member is inaccurate, but we can give him the correct percentage if he wants it afterwards.
We had also funded National Trails UK. In ’25 to ’26, it received £108,000 in revenue and £150,000 of capital support from partnerships. DEFRA has also allocated £500,000 for national trail reinstatement this year to help reestablish the England coastal path when there was a break in continuity due to erosion.
There has also been movement in the last year on removing bureaucracy at the Environment Agency and I will take the good words from the hon. Member for Henley and Thame back to my colleague. I understand the Thames Path national trail partnership is continuing to work with the Environment Agency to reopen Marsh Lock bridge. The EA has conducted a survey and has options for repair and we will continue to work in partnerships on this issue.
Question put and agreed to.