Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

This is a good group with which to end our deliberations today. It gets down to the nitty-gritty of how this is going to work in practice. I reiterate that we have every expectation that it will be possible to produce a marine policy statement embracing the whole of the United Kingdom with the support of the UK Government and all the devolved Administrations. If that is not possible, we have provision in the Bill to deal with that eventuality, but we are confident that it will be possible. Ministers always stand here and resist the use of the word ““must””, but the noble Earl should be in no doubt that we are committed to preparing a marine policy statement; we want it to be jointly agreed and published by all the UK Administrations. The noble Earl has reiterated the point that he made regarding the group that we were debating before when he asked about some of the practicalities of how this will be done. There has already been close contact with officials from all four Administrations and I assure him that that will continue. All the Administrations will have points that they wish to bring to the table and within the UK Government there are different departments. The aim, however, is to involve everyone as early as possible in order to get the kind of ownership, expertise and experience that will come from different parts of the country. Our problem with the amendment is that it would go against the whole principle of how we should take this forward, by removing the requirement for the Secretary of State to invite the devolved Administrations to participate in preparing a marine policy statement. It would also be difficult and unusual to impose a statutory duty on all four policy authorities to jointly agree an MPS. It is possible that, despite our best efforts, agreement on an MPS may not be reached. It is difficult to place a requirement in law that all the policy authorities hold the same policies for marine matters. We have to have a construct in the Bill that encourages that agreement. The Bill has a fall-back position if it is not possible to reach agreement, but we must do everything we can to ensure that agreement is reached. I understand why Members of the Committee are concerned. Bringing together the devolution settlement and our collective intention of making this marine Bill work and have consistency is clearly a formidable challenge. Only so much can be achieved by legislation. It also depends on the different parties working well together. All four Administrations have lots of incentives to make it work together. All the signs that we have seen in the past few months are positive in that direction. While I cannot stand here and guarantee that a marine policy statement will be produced that commands the support of all parties concerned, I assure Members of the Committee that we will work as hard as we can to achieve that. In so doing, we will want to work very closely and invite early participation of the devolved Administrations in the work that needs to be undertaken.