Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I too would like to put on record my appreciation for the immensely significant strategic points about our future that the noble Lord raised in the amendment. However, I would like to suggest to him that it seems to me that the wording on which the Government have settled gives this new authority the opportunity to do exactly what he seeks—to manage the countryside in the interests of sustainable development and the future. In doing that it would have to take the kind of pressures and realities, which were so well enunciated, into account. I am uneasy about inserting the word ““developed”” into the initial paragraph because the word ““developed”” is open to a great deal of subjective interpretation. There are many pressures for many different kinds of reasons to develop the countryside. If there were a primary duty on the new body to develop the countryside in the interests of our future, I suspect that that would play into the hands of people who could not be further from the considerations the noble Lord puts forward in his proposal. But I think that he might inadvertently be opening the door to a lot of pressures which are not strategically about what concerns him. Furthermore, I observe that of course those pressures will be there. I will be second to none in supporting them when appropriate, but that seems to be why in a way it is all the more important that this body should have very firmly in its sight its responsibility for conservation—not to prevent the development but to ensure that the arguments that are being put forward really are accommodated in the context of this priority.