Lord Fuller (Con)

My Lords, before I speak to my Amendment 19, I would like to support my noble friend Lord Jamieson in his promotion of Amendment 25 in respect of rural areas. I have been in enough debates in this House to know how hard it is for the term “rural” to be defined. The lamented right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans entertained us all with a debate about 18 months ago on what rurality meant. There is no definition within the Government or in this country of “rural”. There are a lot of contended assertions that rurality might be this thing or that. So unclear is the term that the Bishop commissioned his own research, and we debated it. I am bound to say that we were no further forward at the end than at the beginning—although last week, in the debate on the rural economy, as the noble Lord, Lord Katz, who is in his place, will recall, I advanced the definition of rural as that place where at 11 pm you cannot get an Uber to take you home from the pub, because in the sticks we do things differently. I make this point because if we are to have the term “rural” in Clause 7, it should be much more tightly defined so that we know exactly what we are getting and it goes beyond, “Can you get an Uber or not? Are you in the town or not? Where does the town begin? Where are the suburbs?”, and so forth. I have made that point, and I now want to dwell on my Amendment 19. I am trying to be helpful here, because later, on Amendment 52 in the next group, I will talk about the concept of locality and recycling the right-to-buy receipts. It has been said that locality is not part of this Bill, but here it is in Clause 7, where the right-to-buy carve-out exists for social homes in national parks. Those places have some of the greatest housing pressures, as well as restrictions on new build, because new homes are restricted in national parks. My amendment aims to be helpful, because when we had the ministerial drop-in before Second Reading there was a slip of the tongue. The words “national parks” and “national landscapes” were used interchangeably. I have taken that as my cue, because Clause 7 mentions areas of outstanding natural beauty. I am entirely in accordance with those, but there are only 34 areas of outstanding natural beauty, whereas there are 46 national landscapes. Collectively they make up 15% of England, and there are other places in Wales, such as the Gower, and in Northern Ireland there are about half a dozen, including the Antrim Coast and Glens. I am seeking to avoid confusion between what I believe is the old term—areas of outstanding natural beauty—and the new term, now preferred by government: national landscape. That is why my proposed new sub-paragraph (1)(aa) would make it clear that where there is a national landscape, which includes areas of outstanding natural beauty, covered in new sub-paragraph (1)(b), it really means national landscape. This small amendment seeks to extend the provisions of Clause 7(3) from national parks, to avoid leaving a gap between them and areas of outstanding natural beauty. This should provide the clarity and certainty to make it consistent with the Government’s new nomenclature.