Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I agree with those noble Lords who have talked about perspectives, as the noble Baroness just did. It would be a mistake to try to see interest groups represented. After all, what are the staff and consultants to the organisation, and so on, to do? An organisation is almost bound to fail if it relies primarily or only on the expertise of individual board members. We are talking about something much more than this. Eight is a low number and it seems odd that the Government want to impose such a low ceiling at this early stage, particularly as the Secretary of State has the right to move all these things around. There are skills and qualities beyond expertise that need to contribute to the workings of the board—things such as judgment and openness to other people’s areas of knowledge, as well as having enough knowledge to understand what is being discussed without necessarily being expert in the subject. I think, too, that the dynamics of a board composed of different numbers needs to be one consideration. A board of five would probably behave a bit differently from a board of eight and certainly very differently from a board of 12 or 16, so I question whether it is sensible to put such a low ceiling on the number. When we debated the Planning Bill and the Housing and Regeneration Bill, to which the noble Earl referred, we were told that these schedules were very much in standard form. However, comparing this schedule to those pieces of legislation, I do not think that this is completely standard. For instance, last year the Government resisted a restriction on board members serving for more than a total period of however many years. We have 10 years here and the IPC has five to eight years, whereas for the Homes and Communities Agency the period is unlimited. As for my noble friend’s amendment to paragraph 11, on remuneration, I had a look at comparable provisions, under which the HCA may pay its members whereas the IPC must pay them. If we are supposed to have consistency, as we are told we should, I wish that we could actually have it.