Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I appear at your Lordships’ Dispatch Box wearing my Welsh hat. This is a short, probing amendment to enable your Lordships to delve a little more deeply into the new Welsh zone. As I understand it—I hope that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the Bill establishes through Clause 41 and Part 2 of Schedule 4 that fisheries will be devolved to the Welsh Ministers in this zone. This is obviously a significant devolution. The control of fisheries will have a huge impact not only on those directly involved in the industry but on the development of marine conservation zones, as the rather tortuously expressed consultation requirements in Clause 116 make clear. Clause 284 also makes it clear that this devolution carries with it significant powers to impose executive penalties. It is therefore surprising that the actual limits of the zone are still not specified. The Minister and his officials were kind enough to give us a very useful and enlightening meeting with maps last week on the various devolved powers, but their notes and maps contained the very concerning detail that the boundary between the Republic of Ireland and the Welsh economic zone is still undefined and a matter of negotiation. This negotiation, I suspect, will not be all that easy. If the Republic of Ireland does not recognise this new zone, as distinct from its waters, the devolved powers that we are discussing cannot be implemented properly. Getting final agreement is therefore of the utmost importance, and the agreed limits should be clearly stated in the Bill to provide certainty for those involved. Let us not forget how wide that strip of water is. At its widest—I have not taken this from a chart—it is probably 100 miles at the very most and, in many places, considerably less. The Minister gave the impression in that meeting that the negotiations were close to their conclusion and that only a few small details had still to be resolved, but I have dealt with an awful lot of small details concerning Ireland in the past 20 years. Presumably, if this is so, we can anticipate final agreement before the Bill receives Royal Assent, which is still several months away. Can the Minister promise the Committee that he will table amendments as soon as he can that express this agreement and remove some of the uncertainty enshrined in the Bill? I would also be grateful if he could confirm that no such uncertainty remains about the other boundaries of this zone, in particular that with the Isle of Man. I would like these boundaries to be numerically clarified, because, excellent though the maps were that the department showed us, the distances are so small and the scale of the maps and charts were of a size that they did not indicate the problem. I am also concerned about the areas between Scotland and Northern Ireland. We should not be fighting among ourselves, but we need clarity. At its narrowest, the distance is only 10 miles. I beg to move.