Allowing people to enjoy the outdoors is important for ecological reasons - Caroline Lucas

Closer to home, 15 per cent of the UK’s species are now threatened with extinction, with a horrifying decline in our biodiversity which has left our dawn chorus quieter and our fields still.

Indeed, Britain has one of the worst rankings in the world for biodiversity, placing it in the bottom 10 per cent, and it also ranks lowest in Europe for nature connectedness.

I would argue that those two facts are related. The less relationship we have with nature, the less our ability to fight for it and protect it.

We are more alienated from nature than we ever have been, all too often trapped in our individual concrete or brick boxes, cut off from the beauty that these islands hold: our amazing woodlands, our rivers and, of course, our beautiful wildflower meadows.

That crisis of connection is one in which half of children surveyed just a few years ago could not identify simple species such as brambles, bluebells or stinging nettles. That is not just a personal tragedy, but a profound concern for the future of our planet.

In the words of scientist Robert Michael Pyle: “What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known the wren?”

In other words, that intimate connection with nature is a prerequisite for learning better to love, protect and restore it.

If the Covid-19 pandemic taught us anything, it is that that connection is also critical for our collective health and wellbeing, calming our minds, bringing solace to our hearts and re-energising our souls.

A survey by Natural England in May 2020 found that 90 per cent of people agreed that natural spaces are good for mental health and wellbeing.

Many felt that access to nature was even more important now than before the pandemic, when restrictions eased and our use of parks and public green spaces soared.

Earlier this year marked the 90th anniversary of the Kinder Scout trespass, an action that united the campaign for access to the countryside and eventually contributed to the establishment of our treasured national parks under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.

As Benny Rothman, one of the key organisers of that trespass, said during his trial at the Derby assizes: “We ramblers, after a hard week’s work, in smoky towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation and fresh air. And we find the finest rambling country is closed to us.”

Much has changed since then, but so many of us remain cut off from most of this green and pleasant land. The Government has often spoken of the importance of a greater public relationship with nature, most recently in the Environment Act 2021, but we have still not seen enough action to deliver it. For example, the powers in the Act to set public access targets are not currently being used. Back in 2019, the Government-commissioned Glover review urged Ministers to “look seriously at whether the levels of open access we have in our most special places are adequate”.

Three years later, there is still no response from the Government to that aspect of the Glover review.

An abridged version of a speech delivered by Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party, at a reading of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (Amendment) Bill.