Introduction

At the Labour Party conference in September 1999 the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, announced the creation of two new National Parks for England: the New Forest and the South Downs. Hailing the creation of National Parks as a historic Labour achievement Prescott described his pledge as “a birthday present from Labour to the youth of this country” (BBC, 1999). A year later the newly formed Scottish Parliament passed legislation for the creation of National Parks in Scotland, paving the way for the designation of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs in 2002 and the Cairngorms in 2003. This designation programme has resulted in a 30% increase in the area of land designated as National Parks in the UK. It would therefore seem, on first appearances, that New Labour has been good for National Parks, presiding over a period of remarkable expansion in the system.

However, judging New Labour's record on designation alone would be misleading. The increase in land area masks a fundamental ambivalence on the part of New Labour. The National Park concept is supported and constructed in nostalgic terms but a coherent National Parks policy does not feature on Labour's agenda. The low priority accorded to National Parks can be seen in their treatment in the major rural policy statements and policies of the last decade. Reforms to the structure of rural policy undertaken since Haskins’ Rural Delivery Review of 2003 (Defra, 2003) will have potentially far-reaching effects for National Parks but they get barely a mention in the 2004 Rural Strategy (Defra, 2004a) that paved the way for reform. Furthermore, while individual National Park Authority budgets have expanded during New Labour's period in office, they remain a pittance even compared with other conservation, wildlife and recreation bodies and are vulnerable to cutbacks in times of budgetary squeezing. Even though the rural environment has received unprecedented levels of attention in terms of policies, programmes and funding as a result of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and national policy reforms, National Parks remain at the periphery of New Labour's policies for the countryside.

This chapter examines New Labour's handling of National Park policy by explaining the impacts of policy change and institutional reform since 1997. To do this the author has focused on treatment of the institutions which take the lead in their governance: the National Park Authorities (NPAs).