Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Before my noble friend responds, I want to apologise to him for not being able to get to my place to hear his opening remarks. I should like to pick on a point arising from the concerns of the Joint Committee about funding. Has the noble Lord any idea of how much of the research undertaken at the moment is being commissioned and funded by government departments compared with what is being undertaken privately, if you like, by other research areas? It would be interesting and helpful to have some idea about this. There are two issues here, the first of which is whether there will be enough money to obtain the sort of information that the management organisation will want. Secondly, on a point that my noble friend wanted to come back to, under Clause 23(2) does the MMO have to provide information for anyone who requests it? Does it have to make it available on demand? That could become a very expensive exercise. The Minister has indicated that he will probably come back to this point and I hope that he will, because at the moment the wording is very open-ended and could result in great demands being put on the finite resources of the MMO.