Phil Brickell
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Outdoor Education
Phil Brickell Excerpts(3 days, 12 hours ago)
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Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered outdoor education.
It is an absolute joy to serve under your guidance, Dr Huq. I am happy to take some interventions, but I shall do my best to leave at least 10 minutes for the Minister at the end.
It is my privilege to chair the all-party parliamentary group on outdoor learning. It is also my privilege to be the Member of Parliament for many outdoor education centres in the lakes and dales of Westmorland and Lonsdale: the Bendrigg Trust at Old Hutton, which supports young people with disabilities; Brathay, near Ambleside, which develops young people from challenging backgrounds; the Outward Bound Trust on Ullswater; Patterdale outdoor education centre; the Field Studies Council centres at Blencathra and Lindale; the YMCA at Lakeside; and countless others, including the many university, local authority, charity and privately owned centres; as well as all the freelance specialists who use the outdoors to infuse our young people with joy, resilience, physical and mental health, and new skills and perspectives.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate. He mentions the joys of spending time in the great outdoors, and I thank him for mentioning Patterdale Hall, which is a truly excellent outdoors centre that I benefited from a great deal. Last month’s Supreme Court judgment, upholding the right to wild camp on Dartmoor, shows just how precarious our rights of access to nature are. Following that landmark ruling, does he agree that the Government must urgently introduce primary legislation to expand the right to roam on land and water across England?
Tim Farron
It is vital to ensure that people have access to nature. As somebody who represents national parks, I always think that they are there for everybody, not just those of us who live there. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.
Outdoor education is crucial to our economy, culture and communities in Cumbria, and we are deeply proud of the whole sector and the many hundreds of people who work in it. The benefits of outdoor education experiences are obvious to anyone who has ever gone for a hike through a muddy field while wrestling with an Ordnance Survey map, abseiled, potholed, spent the night camped in a lakeland forest, climbed a rockface or kayaked down a river. These are experiences that form young people and stay with them for the long term. We know, not only through academic research but powerfully through our own experiences, the transformational and tangible good that outdoor learning delivers for the lives of children and young people.