Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Schedule 1: The Marine Management Organisation Amendment 6 6: Schedule 1, page 212, line 22, leave out ““5, nor more than”” In the curious way of these things, we now move away from discussing major issues of principle and get on to what might be called the Committee nitty-gritty. In addressing Schedule 1 we leap to page 212, where we shall stay for a while before going back to page 2. In moving Amendment 6 I shall speak also to Amendments 8 to 11 in the group. They refer to the membership of the Marine Management Organisation, and all are probing in nature in order to discuss the size of the organisation and the purposes of its members, as well as what expertise and skills they should have. Amendment 6 seeks to remove the provision that the membership should be between five and eight, which with the chairman would be a range of six to nine, and replaces it with a provision that there should be nine or more members. The Government also suggest that, despite these clear and restrictive numbers being in the Bill, the Secretary of State can nevertheless change them to anything else if they do not turn out well. Amendment 10, by seeking to remove that, again probes exactly what the situation should be. Amendment 8 probes the question of the skills and experience required. Paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 says that, "““the Secretary of State must have regard to the desirability … of securing that a variety of skills and experience is available among the members””." I want to delete the words, "““that a variety of skills and experience is available among the members””," and insert a much stronger wording, so that the paragraph would read: ““As far as is practical, the skills and experience of the members cover the full range of functions of the MMO””. It is interesting to go back to the useful draft document on the MMO, which the Government have kindly provided, to look at what the Government believe to be the experience and expertise required by MMO board members. The Government refer to three pillars of sustainable development: economic, environmental and social. Under ““economic””, they suggest that experience of aggregate extraction is relevant, along with experience of renewable energy—which is very different—fishing, ports and harbours, and shipping. These are all economic factors and they are all very different. Somebody with experience of renewable energy will not necessarily know about shipping. Under ““environmental””, the Government suggest experience of habitats, fish stocks and water quality, which seems to understate what is required. We need to think about questions of conservation and biodiversity, particularly the proposals for conservation zones, and questions of the geology and geomorphology of the seabed. Under ““social””, they list, for example, heritage, recreation and defence. Clearly, somebody who is expert in heritage is not necessarily expert in defence. Indeed, that would be very unlikely. Recreation is different again. These are 10 examples, although they are not exclusive. How is the board of this organisation to get the experience and skills that it requires if it has only six members? Six seems to be very much on the low side. I understand and accept that you do not want a big public meeting every time the board meets. The body has to be relatively small, but the numbers that the Government are proposing seem a little restrictive. I am grateful to the Conservative Members for adding their names to Amendment 9, which refers to the need for experience and knowledge of marine science—that is not on the Government’s list—and marine conservation. Amendment 11 is slightly different; it probes remuneration and allowances. The Bill says that the Secretary of State may specify the level of remuneration and allowances of members of the board. This is a probing ““may/shall”” amendment. It is the first of the Bill, but no doubt there will be many more. Perhaps there will be some ““shall/may”” ones as well. Is it the Government’s intention that the Secretary of State shall specify the remuneration and allowances? If so, why does the Bill not say so? The first question, then, is will they be paid? The assumption is that they will. Secondly, who will decide what they are paid? The assumption is that it will be the Secretary of State. Will the Minister confirm that? Thirdly, how much will these lucky people be paid? I do not imagine that we will get a clear answer to that today, but perhaps we will. Perhaps there is a scale on which these things are done. These are nitty-gritty amendments that refer to the membership of the board, but the board and the people on it are going to be very important if this is to be successful, and it is right that the Committee should probe the matter.