Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

When the Minister talks about cartographical discrepancies, I hope to God that he is not talking about the Rural Payments Agency; otherwise there would be so many denotifications and renotifications that we would be here for ever. That organisation seems to be completely incapable of getting its digital mapping correct. Nevertheless, I understand the point of Lords amendment No. 15, and I support it. On Lords amendment No. 16, I understand completely what the Minister is trying to achieve. The inability to serve a notice because an owner cannot be traced should not result in an SSSI being rendered invalid. However, I want to challenge the Minister on a couple of aspects of the provision. The first involves the use of the word ““failure”” in the phrase"““failure to serve certain notices in connection with SSSIs””." It seems an odd word to use when we are really talking about an inability to serve the notices because a particular owner or occupier cannot be traced. I wonder why the word ““failure”” has been used. The second, more important, aspect relates to the use of the term ““reasonable steps””. Who is to make a judgment on that? Am I right to assume from what the Minister has said, and from the way in which this provision is drafted, that the only form of appeal would be by judicial review? If an owner came forward and said, ““Well, this is all very well, but I wasn’t notified, and I’ve been at home for the last six months””, who would decide whether the conservation body had taken all reasonable steps to ensure that every owner and occupier had been notified? I do not want to suggest that anyone would intentionally set out to fail in that task, but the practicalities might dictate that the notice could not be served. I can well understand that, in some parts of the country, a small parcel of land could be overlooked. An organisation might think that it has covered all the owners involved, when along comes an owner who has a bit of land in the middle of an area. He might then say, ““There is no reason why they should not have been able to serve the notification on me. I haven’t been anywhere. I haven’t disappeared.”” I am worried that the provision is too open-ended and that the conservation body could still serve the notice, and do whatever it wanted to do under the provisions in subsection (2), without necessarily having been as diligent as we might wish in ensuring that every owner or occupier had been notified. While I accept that nothing will happen until after the commencement of this section, that is a relatively minor point. What is important is what will happen in future. Before we concede to this amendment, I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how he envisages it operating in practice. What grounds for appeal will be open to an individual who feels that he should have, and could have, been served a copy of the notification but did not get one?