Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

It is a great pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, to our debates. In a sense, this discussion has followed on very well from the discussion on the first amendment and the essential nature of the Marine Management Organisation and its appropriate accountability through Ministers to Parliament. There can be no doubt that it is in the public interest that we bring the Bill to Parliament today. That is why we want a marine management organisation to be established. It will make an important contribution to protecting the wider public interest, and will do so by discharging the responsibilities that are laid down in legislation. It will have to work within the parameters set by both the marine policy statement and the guidance that the Secretary of State will give to it, as described in Clause 2. There is no doubt at all that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and the noble Lord, Lord Eden, are right. The noble Lord referred specifically to his legitimate concerns about marine reserves, which are among the very important issues and pressures with which the Marine Management Organisation will have to deal. The noble Baroness raised two other issues: dredging and renewable energy. All those matters are important. The Marine Management Organisation will be faced with a number of competing users and interests in the marine environment. That is why we believe the public interest is served by creating this new organisation, which will work within a new strategic framework for marine planning, with new bodies to deliver it, together with a range of other functions. In addition to the guidance that the Secretary of State must give in relation to the contribution that the Marine Management Organisation is expected to give to sustainable development, which we will debate later today, the marine policy statement, which we will debate under Part 3, enables the Government to take a broad strategic view across a range of government policies in the marine environment. It will then be up to the Marine Management Organisation to produce plans within that context. As its expertise develops it will become a strategic delivery body in the marine environment. The status that will be given to the MMO as a non-departmental public body gives it that degree of independence which is clearly essential, but ensures that it will remain answerable to Parliament through the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As a non-departmental public body, it is axiomatic that the MMO must carry out its functions in a way that serves the public interest. As the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, reinforced by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, in the end, that public interest duty lies primarily through the Secretary of State’s accountability to Parliament. It is within that context that the Marine Management Organisation has to operate. While it must operate within the public interest, it is with Ministers, through their accountability to Parliament, that the overriding public interest responsibility must lie. For that reason, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment. I do not disagree with her general comment about the pressures on our marine life and marine environment or the tensions and pressures that the Marine Management Organisation will have to deal with, but that has to work within the parameters set down by Parliament in the directions and guidance given by Ministers and the marine policy statement. For that reason, I resist the noble Baroness’s amendment.