Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, it is quite often the case that Cross-Benchers disagree with each other. I am not sure that I agree with my noble friend Lord Cameron on the Cairngorms, but he makes a point. I was quite happy with the noble Baroness’s amendment when I saw it on the Marshalled List at the beginning of the week. It seemed to me that she had got it about right and that she had got the point about irreconcilability. Irreconcilability is the point. If you have something and you want something else, these things may be mutually incompatible. There is a question about the Cairngorms that one might argue on that front. But I thought that the noble Baroness had got it about right, including the magic word ““irreconcilable””. Then, this morning, I got a copy of the letter from Jim Knight to the noble Baroness and I thought there was something to be said for a bit of flexibility in what is a difficult issue. So I was most interested in what the Minister was going to say. Now I hear from others, who obviously know more than I do about what is going on, that the letter seems to have been withdrawn. Whether the noble Baroness will press her amendment to a Division tonight rather depends on what the Minister will say. It may make sense to press it not tonight but at Third Reading. It is not easy when you receive a letter in the morning and then find, by half past six in the afternoon, that it has apparently been withdrawn or that something else has happened.