Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

We have made a splendid, non-consensual start to our debates in Committee. I am aware that we are enjoined by the Chief Whip to try to make this group last until just after 3.31 pm and I am sure that, when he replies, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will enable us to do so. It is a great pleasure to respond to this first group. Behind his comments, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, posed a fair question about the essential nature of the Marine Management Organisation. I accept that he is also arguing for a title that is as simple as possible and avoids jargon, but his question was essentially about the status of the proposed MMO and, more important, about what it is to do. I hope that I can reassure him that we think it right that the word ““Management”” should be in the title because, as I will explain in a moment, the Marine Management Organisation will have to manage some difficult issues and tensions that are inherent in the sea and many of the activities that take place there. Although it is right that the work of the MMO should take place within the strategic direction given by the Secretary of State, who is accountable to Parliament, it will have sufficient independence and confidence to make a major impact in relation to marine policy and to wider debates about the development of the sea and all the issues that we are going to debate over the next few weeks. We are setting up the MMO as an independent non-departmental public body—not a step taken lightly—because we want the independence that the status of an NDPB brings. That status has been accorded to the Environment Agency, which has already been referred to, the Trinity House lighthouse service, the Health Protection Agency and the Natural Environment Research Council. We think that that gives the organisation the independence and status that it needs to deliver on behalf of government as a whole. It is notable that all those bodies have different names, yet they have the same legal status as the Marine Management Organisation. I ought to say a word or two about the policy matters that the MMO will be concerned with, which are of direct interest to nearly every central government department: defence, shipping, courts, renewable energy, fisheries, aggregates, environment, recreation and more. While the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be the sponsor Minister, the organisation will deliver on behalf of all departments. We think that this status ensures that it will have their confidence to do so. The MMO will be able to deliver the new marine planning system with objectivity and propriety. It will build on experience of fisheries and environmental licensing to deliver more joined-up decisions and a better, faster one-stop service to developers. It will play a key role in integrated coastal zone management by linking conservation with fisheries management and regulating a new flexible tool to enable conservation benefits to be delivered while encouraging important economic developments, such as renewable energy. These are major policies that run through the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. They mostly arise because of the need to deal with the increasing and sometimes conflicting pressures on the sea. I accept the point that the noble Lord made about a champion, but what is also urgently needed is a referee. That is what we are equipping the MMO to be and why I do not think that the word ““Management”” is inappropriate.