Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, I stand to support Amendment No. 52. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the letter from Mr Jim Knight which was also copied to a number of us with an interest in this issue. The letter, dated 13 March, also kindly gave us a draft text of guidance that could have dealt with the issue of conflict resolution, and indeed was very much in line with the position I proposed in Committee, which I hoped the Minister was taking away. I was therefore pleased to see a copy of the letter, though I was a bit downcast when I learnt, round about 5.35 tonight, that the letter had been passed over and was no longer the Government’s intention. I know a week is meant to be a long time in politics, but it appears that two days is now a pretty long time. I am confused about what the Government’s position on conflict resolution will be. I understand that we are not to expect that guidance will be forthcoming on this issue and so I want to talk to the substantive issue of the amendment, which would not have been necessary if guidance had been promised. I will use the briefing that many of your Lordships will have received from the Country Land and Business Association in relation to this amendment. The association gave an example where it thought it would be inappropriate for there to be guidance or anything on the face of the Bill saying that conservation and landscape should take precedence in extreme circumstances where there is no means of reconciling them and they are of a serious nature. It took the strange example of a person running a tourist attraction in an SSSI who wanted to develop visitor facilities in the midst of the site, the construction of which would be detrimental to the provisions of the SSSI. The association went on to say that if the amendment were adopted, Natural England would have no possibility of allowing that development to go ahead. It said that there might be perfectly good grounds for allowing it to go ahead and that,"““A small scale development””—" in the SSSI—"““creating a couple of jobs and bringing in a bit of money for the landowner which could be reinvested in the area, may well do more for achieving the general purpose than a refusal””." I remind your Lordships that SSSIs are a very small proportion of the land surface of this country. They are the jewels in the crown of nature conservation, the most priceless and irreplaceable parts of our natural heritage. This briefing was equivalent to saying that you might carve a bit out of a Vermeer or a Picasso so a few local artists would have some canvas to paint on to keep them from going to the wall. That is not quite what we are looking for as the steer for what the Minister at another time called the ““trenchant champion”” of the natural environment, but it is a good example of the sort of pressure Natural England will undoubtedly face on a daily basis, and shows why the Minister needs at least to give it guidance, if not to put a conflict resolution clause on the face of the Bill. I know he will say that he has already said, I think on Second Reading, that protected sites will of course take priority, but it is clear that there will continue to be debate about what takes priority when economic development and conservation and landscape are in conflict with each other. I would have been extremely happy if the Minister had underpinned his wish that Natural England be a trenchant champion of the natural environment by giving it the sort of guidance that it was indicated to us on Monday would be given. Now that it will not be given, there is a real need for Amendment No. 52, and I hope the noble Baroness will divide the House on this.