Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, on Report I said that we on these Benches were of the opinion that it was impossible to legislate for every single sort of case that Natural England would have to look at. When noble Lords are considering the amendment, it is important to remember that the board will be looking at dozens of cases that will be reconcilable. They will sometimes be extremely difficult to balance and yet they will be able to come to some form of opinion on them. It is not that the board will not have enough experience. In moving the amendment the noble Baroness said that it will be a body of people with different slants—independent people with knowledge and expertise. We will have to trust the board to be able to make judgments. It is possible that once every decade or so it will get that judgment wrong. We will probably be sad about that. However, it will get its judgments right most of the time. In the rare instance that it gets the judgment wrong, this clause would not necessarily get it right either, for all the reasons that other noble Lords have given. The Bill has also strengthened—for example, in Clause 40, with the duty to conserve biodiversity—the position of wildlife, which is quite different from what it was at the time the noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to. That was back in the days when you had only Swampy to defend the great crested newts against the roads. Time has moved on, which is part of the point of the CROW Act and, I hope, will be part of the point of this Act. I hope that it is one reason why we do not need this amendment—I believe that it is.