Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, promotes transparency between the various Executives of the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lady Carnegy has assiduously raised the various slightly difficult areas that occur in this regard and has properly drawn noble Lords’ attention to the fact that this whole area is being considered by the Calman commission. We shall be interested to hear what it has to say on the subject. We were encouraged to hear the Minister say that his department will produce a full briefing. At 11.37 am today it kindly sent me a brief introduction to the subject. As noble Lords will be aware, the Scotland Act laid out pretty clearly what was to be considered as the Scottish zone of the marine environment, reinforced in detail by the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999. Scotland has for some time administered a number of the issues in UK territorial waters adjacent to Scotland. A great many of the powers we are discussing were devolved under the Scotland Act modification order 1999/1756, which covered many things including nuclear installations and forestry but particularly the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985. Since then we had had interesting exchanges with various Ministers on renewable energy, designation of a renewable energy zone and the transfer of specific powers contained in Part 1 of the Electricity Act 1989. Perhaps the Minister can say whether the Government have identified any new powers that will be required to make the powers of Marine Scotland—if that is what it is called—adequate to be a parallel organisation to the Marine Management Organisation. It is of some interest that the Marine Management Organisation will cover electricity generation only up to 50 megawatts capacity, which will probably cover most of the renewable energy available at any site around this part of the United Kingdom. It seems that the Scottish Executive will be able to choose its own generating capacity figure. There is far more renewable energy generating capacity at some Scottish sites than in a lot of other areas. On the amendment, ensuring that the Marine Management Organisation sends a copy of the report to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales no earlier than a copy is laid before each House of Parliament will help to provide clarity, but it will also help to give the Scottish Executive the chance to see whether their proposals for marine management are keeping up with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. In that way, I support the amendment.