Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, noble Lords have already recognised the muddle that we seemed to get into at a previous stage of the Bill with the guidance that existed and then did not exist—it came and went. The matter was perhaps inadequately debated at the previous stage and therefore I shall speak for slightly longer than is appropriate at this stage of the proceedings. In supporting the amendment, I want to hark back to what some noble Lords may regard as ancient history, but which I think is a valid comparison—the position that English Nature found itself in on its establishment in the early 1990s. Noble Lords who recall the axing apart of the Nature Conservancy Council, which had covered the four countries of the UK until then, may recall that that act purported to be about devolution but was actually an act of neat revenge on the NCC, which had been a fairly trenchant champion of nature conservation until then. Indeed, it had ““got in the way”” of economic development on occasion and was reviled by some sectors of politics at that point. As a result, it suffered the penalty of being divided into four bits. The NCC was also penalised in a different way, in that it was given a strong political signal at that time that that was the sort of thing which happened to bodies that stood up for nature conservation—they got hacked into pieces and told to sit in a hole and not be particularly championing in their approach. Indeed, for the first five or six years of its existence, English Nature did behave like that. It was frightened of its own shadow and it was not particularly robust in supporting nature conservation. Its staff were, at best, confused about their role and, at worst, demoralised. They were not explicitly told that if they put their head out of the hole it would be shot off, but that was certainly how they perceived the lie of the land. Basically, we had a nature conservation body which, due to an implicit political signal, would not even say ““Boo”” to a goose, far less to anybody who wanted to damage nature conservation interests. I am not saying that that will be the position as regards Natural England on its establishment, but those events show the power of gentle political signals in one direction or another. They were very much the result of an implicit rather than an explicit signal from the government of the time. Successive leaderships of English Nature have changed that. They have made it clear that standing up for nature conservation is an okay thing to do. Indeed, we have seen some excellent work on the promotion of sustainable development through the conservation of nature done by English Nature since then. I believe that we run a double risk in not seeing either guidance to Natural England, or something in the Bill if guidance is not forthcoming. Without the right signal from government on the predominance of nature conservation, we run the risk that in some of the very rare, but nevertheless real, moments when there is considerable pressure from socio-economic development interests, harm will be done to nature conservation or the landscape. That is a problem. The double whammy is that, having argued consistently all the way through the Bill that such a signal should not be given, the Government almost send the implicit signal that impacted on English Nature at its birth—that balance at all times is the order of the day and that, even in the rare circumstances where there is significant and irreconcilable conflict, that balance should be maintained. The risk is that during the passage of the Bill we are giving the wrong signal to Natural England at its birth. On Report, the Minister talked about the risks of guidance. I declare an interest as chief executive of the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency is subject to 57 pages of guidance, which is renewed and reviewed every five years. At the agency’s inception, the guidance contained some provisions that I was pretty sure we would be judicially reviewed on. I hesitated long and hard before I raised this issue on the Floor of the House today, because you can bet your bottom dollar that someone out there will read Hansard and come to the conclusion that we should be judicially reviewed on our sustainable development principle, but nevertheless we have not yet in our 10 years—it is our birthday this year—been so reviewed. To worry about guidance leaving an organisation wide open to frequent judicial review is probably not necessary. I am conscious that it is unlikely that the Minister will have a change of heart at this stage in the proceedings. A gentle signal given through guidance to the new body that biodiversity and landscape must, when push comes to shove and significant and irreconcilable conflict takes place between the purposes, take precedence is not a huge thing to ask for and does not expose the new organisation to risk. I hope that the Minister might delight us all by saying that he has changed his mind.