Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Amendment 1 1: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out ““Management Organisation (““the MMO””)”” and insert ““Agency (““the Agency””)”” I shall speak also to the other 22 amendments in the group; most are identical in wording and all are identical in purpose. This is the beginning of the Committee stage, which no doubt will detain us for a few days. Therefore, I need to declare my interests, which mainly relate to Part 9. I am a member of the British Mountaineering Council, its access, conservation and environment group, the Open Spaces Society and the National Trust. That is about it. I had the privilege to be a member of the Joint Committee of the two Houses that carried out the pre-legislative scrutiny on the draft Bill. No doubt some of the things that I say will be informed by what happened in that committee. This is a simple amendment to change the name of the organisation that will be in charge of the planning and regulation set out in the Bill from the Marine Management Organisation to the ““Marine Agency””. I have tabled the amendment for two reasons. The first is on the ground of simplicity. Shorter names are better, within reason, if they are not silly. If the body is called the ““Marine Agency””, it is likely that people will call it that. If it is called the Marine Management Organisation, everyone will call it the MMO—or at least everyone who understands what MMO means will call it that, as indeed everyone is doing already. Acronyms generally are bad, partly because they are meaningless to many people, who therefore tend to be excluded from the club of people who know what is being talked about. Jargon is bad. Acronyms are usually a kind of jargon and should therefore be avoided. Perhaps the more substantive reason for the change is that the name of an organisation is not irrelevant; it reflects what it does. In a sense, the name brands the organisation. The word that I consider to be unfortunate and which gives the wrong impression of what this organisation should be doing is ““Management””. Perhaps it gives the right impression of what the Government think that it should be doing, but we will have that debate in relation to a number of amendments. I am not arguing for a sexy name. Sexy names seem to be going out of fashion, which I hope they are because they are silly as well. People have suggested that the organisation might be called ““Seas UK””, which would be totally silly. Someone said that it is the body that will rule the waves, so let us call it ““Britannia””. My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that if I want to call it Britannia I had better transfer to the Tories. I replied that I had better not call it Britannia because the Tories would not have me. At least, I hope that they would not have me if they understood a lot of my views. Therefore, I am not calling for a silly name and I hope that it will never be given one. I am calling for the simplest, most basic name, and ““Marine Agency”” seems to be the best that anyone can think of. There has been a lot of debate about what the marine agency, or Marine Management Organisation, will be, and we will probably discuss that in some detail in a later series of amendments. How strategic an organisation is it to be? Will it just carry out government policy and co-ordinate that policy to the best of its ability? Is that what ““strategic”” means? We will be debating that. Is it in some ways a policy-setting or lobbying organisation? Perhaps that is going a little too far, but to what extent will it be the champion of the seas? That is certainly what the Joint Committee recommended it should be. Will it help to set the policy agenda and be the body that speaks for the sea? We will shortly come to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Miller that questions whether it should be the body that represents public interest in the sea. Those are all important and interesting concepts but none of them particularly relates to management. Of course, many of the organisation’s functions will be about management. It will be in charge of carrying out the new planning system and new planning regime for our coastal waters, and rightly so. It will be the body that carries out the licensing and regulation; a great deal that is currently carried out by diverse agencies will rightly be brought together. However, will it have a function over and above that? Will it play a leading role in the debate and in discussions on proposals for what should happen in its sphere of interest, as, for example, the Environment Agency clearly does and as Natural England and its predecessors clearly have done? Will it be that sort of body or will it be a functional, managerial, mechanistic body that only carries out government policy, doing a useful job in bringing things together but nevertheless being no more than that? There are other big issues relating to its functions, such as the emphasis on development as opposed to conservation, and how those can be synthesised, but they are for later debates. The name change that I am proposing raises the question of the organisation’s culture. There is a concern that its culture will be derived from the Marine and Fisheries Agency, its predecessor, which does good work but is basically a delivery body—a regulatory body. It is not an organisation such as the Environment Agency and Natural England. On Second Reading I complimented the Minister on his speech and said that he had been visionary, but when I read what he had said I thought that I had been a little over the top. I complimented him a little too much; I was taken in by his usual enthusiastic style and delivery rather than his actual words. We have had a useful Explanatory Memorandum about the organisation and how it will run, in which we read the details of an organisation that is functional, carries out services and delivers policies on behalf of the Government but does not have a real life, spirit and vision of its own. Will the body provide leadership and vision? As well as doing all its work, will it argue its case and promote its cause, which is the cause of the British seas? The Government’s document refers to its being a regulator of most activities in the marine environment. It will be a licensing body that will take a strategic view across all its responsibilities but not a strategic view of the way in which policy is going. We argue that it should be a body that promotes, champions and leads. If it does not, who else will do that on behalf of the marine environment? I beg to move.