Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Briefly, I support both amendments in the group, which were introduced by my noble friend Lord Livsey and spoken to eloquently by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose. I think that it is going to be a typical pattern of Committee stage of the Bill that pretty well every bit of the Bill that we come to will have a cameo Scottish and Welsh debate as part of it. The devolution thread goes right through the Bill, and the way in which the devolution settlement is evolving and, to some extent, the way in which this Bill evolves it, cannot be avoided. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, will be able to be here for a lot of it, because she is obviously very interested and she will not let us forget it, even if we wanted to. It is absolutely crucial. I want to do two things at this stage. First, I thank the Government for the changes that they have already made to the Bill from the draft Bill and from previous proposals to take account of this extremely complex situation—the situation in Scotland, Wales and England differs in different ways in almost every part of the Bill. Secondly, I very much look forward to the document, which I am told will be quite a meaty document, which might well occupy much of our reading next weekend. We look forward to that very much, because we absolutely have got to get this right. It is this House that has the opportunity to make sure that it is right, because of the more detailed way in which we can discuss this and probe it as it goes through. I wish the Government best wishes on this, but they have got to get it right, and if we think that they are not getting it right we will not hesitate to challenge what they are putting forward.