Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Benches, I thank the Minister for the way in which he presented the Bill. We welcome the Bill perhaps a little more enthusiastically than did the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, although he welcomed it, too. We welcome the Bill as a whole, but that does not mean that we will not find a great deal to discuss and debate in it as we go through it, because that is the role of your Lordships’ House. If no one else is going to do it, we have to do it. I declare two interests in relation to Part 9, as a member of the British Mountaineering Council and of its access, conservation and environment committee, and as a member of the Open Spaces Society, which are two organisations that have been lobbying Members. I thank my colleagues who are taking part in the debate today. There are at least two others: my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who is a true expert on marine conservation and who I hope will take part in the Committee stage, and my noble friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who I hope will give some Scottish expertise. Scotland and Wales are clearly crucial to the Bill and its relationship with the United Kingdom and English institutions. I hope that my noble friend Lord Livsey will speak concerning Wales. Those are two themes running through the Bill that we want very much to scrutinise. In a sense, this is two Bills running together: a big Bill and a smaller Bill. There is what might be called the main marine Bill, if that is not a slightly laboured pun, and then there is Part 9, on coastal access. I shall say something about Part 9, then leave it to Committee before I say anything else. I welcome Part 9, which follows an eight-year campaign since the Countryside and Rights of Way Act was passed by Parliament. I regard that with some affection, not just because it was very important but because it was the first Bill in which I took any substantial part in your Lordships’ House. There are a few survivors here today from those debates. Nevertheless, my welcome for the fact that Part 9 has reached the statute book based on Section 3 of the CROW Act does not mean that we do not have to give it a thorough scrubbing down in Committee. There is a danger that, because it is tagged on at the end of the Bill, by the time we get to it and by the time the House of Commons gets to it a certain amount of fatigue will have set in, together with pressure from government Whips and such people to get on with it and get through in the allotted time. It would be very unfortunate if that happened. We will insist that Part 9 gets a proper going through, no matter how much time we have spent before then. We would certainly totally resist any attempt to push it through because it is at the end of the Bill. Important as it is, it has to work. Our job is to make sure that the provisions set out in the Bill will work and will produce what the Government want in their very good vision on this. The main marine provisions have had a long gestation. The first real promises of a Bill were at least four years ago and the first consultations on what should be in it were three or four years ago. We had the White Paper A Sea Change, we had the draft Bill last April, we have had at least three lots of consultation, and consultation is still taking place on proposed secondary legislation and guidance. We had the pre-legislative scrutiny in the Joint Committee, of which I was privileged to be a member. I echo what noble Lords have already said about the superb way in which that committee was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway—who I am delighted to see is taking part in the debate today—despite the short time. Tribute should also be paid to the people who did the work on behalf of the committee—the staff, the advisers and all the people who gave evidence in person and written. The work of that committee has helped the Government to substantially improve this Bill, even before it came here, although I dare say that it still requires a great deal of debate. We welcome the responses that the Government have already made. There are some concerns about this Bill from different angles. Some organisations think that it is too conservation-based and others think that it is too development-based. The Government no doubt will say that that proves that they have got the balance right, but it does not prove anything other than that we have an important job to do to sort it out and to ensure that, when the Bill leaves us, it is as good as it possibly can be. There is also a concern that, although this is a Defra Bill and it is being promoted by Defra, there are a large number of interests in government involved in it. It is important that, during the development of the Bill and once the Bill has been passed, turf wars between those government departments do not slow things down. I was pleased that, at the beginning of his speech, the Minister became quite visionary about the importance of the Bill. This is a very important Bill indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that the seas and the oceans are the, "““biggest environmental challenge after climate change””." Many of us would agree with that. The limitations that the United Kingdom has in dealing with the seas around our shores are an indication that this Bill will not solve all the problems, but it can go some way towards doing so. We have the promise of a new regime: a new system of marine management, marine planning, licensing of marine activities and so on. Much of this comes back to sustainable development. I am increasingly coming to the view that ““sustainable development”” are weasel words, which sound wonderful and with which everybody agrees but which are unclear in their meaning. Everybody agrees that sustainable development is the answer to everything, but finding a consensus as to what it means is more difficult. There are those who emphasise the ““sustainable””, and put the emphasis on conservation, and there are those who emphasise the ““development””, and put the emphasis on economic progress. No doubt the Government will say in their usual language that we have to find a balance and that everything has to be proportionate. In some of the responses to the consultation, the Government have been talking about synthesis and synergy. There is scope in the marine environment for synthesis and synergy. It is not just a trade-off with a zero-sum result at the end of it. On the other hand, sometimes it is. Sometimes choices have to be made and somebody has to lose out. Again, when we examine this Bill, we will have to try to understand the outcomes that will occur within the new—and it is new—marine planning system. The terrestrial planning system—the ordinary planning system—produces winners and losers. You cannot win them all. There is development in some places, there is conservation in other places and there are synergies in others. There is nothing new about this. What is new is accepting that this will apply in the marine environment. There are issues that we have to tease out. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned the Marine Management Organisation and talked about its functions, resources, relationship with other bodies, whether there is still sufficient clarity of purpose and how it will approach the difference between those who want it to be primarily a conservation body and those who want it to be primarily a development body. We have to understand the new marine planning system and improve the Bill before it leaves here. We shall discuss the marine planning statement, the marine plans, the timetable, their integration with other plans, integration UK-wide and with European Union directives, what the Government have taken to calling the land-sea interface—I think that we had better call it the coast—the relationship between the Infrastructure Planning Commission and the Marine Management Organisation on the big projects, and the relationship with local authorities along the coast. The more that I look at the devolution issues in relation to the marine environment, the more complex they seem. We have to bottom them out before they leave this House, because I do not think that anybody else will. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said that he had heard that this was a framework Bill. The Government are calling it a framework Bill. Those are their words. Much is left to secondary legislation, guidance and memorandums of understanding. However, the Bill is already long at 301 pages, 315 clauses and 21 schedules. Therefore, I understand that the Government do not want it to be any longer. However, it will end up being a lot longer by the time it completes its passage because Bills always do. As Bills go through, Governments always put a lot more in them than they take out. There is an important issue here, which is how flexible we can be in primary legislation and how much inevitably has to be left to secondary legislation, guidance and memorandums of understanding, whether we like it or not. If we agree that much has to be left to secondary legislation and guidance, we need at least to have a clear understanding about the Government’s intentions with regard to that secondary legislation and guidance. As we all know, we have limited consideration of secondary legislation and no possibility of considering guidance. If much of the devil is in the detail, we have to know a lot about the detail before we let go of the Bill. Will the Government let us have as much information about the detail as possible before the Bill leaves this House—not before it leaves Parliament but before it leaves this House—because we can look at it in great detail? A lot of hard but interesting work on the Bill awaits us after Christmas. I do not think that it will lead to huge ideological chasms across the House. However, we have to ensure that when the Bill leaves this House it will achieve what the Minister and the opposition parties want it to achieve. We are all united as regards what we want it to do; the question is how that is achieved. Working out how it will be achieved will be our job in the weeks ahead.