Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Clause 46(8)(b) seems to state that the construction of marine plans must not be delayed or interrupted even though the MPS is no longer relevant for a particular country withdrawing from the MPS, or for all countries if the Secretary of State withdraws from the MPS. I wish to make two points. First, Clause 49(5) states: "““A marine plan must be in conformity with any MPS””" I know that the next subsection exempts it if it has been withdrawn, but the overriding intention is that the marine plans must conform to the MPS. However, if the marine policy statement is withdrawn, I do not understand how the marine plans can be finalised and adopted because, without any MPS in existence because it has been withdrawn, they cannot possibly conform to it. Can the Minister explain how he sees this working, or have I missed the point? My second point goes back to what I said on Amendment 85C. I tried to explore the possibility of a partial withdrawal or opt out from the MPS by one country or the Secretary of State and, when he responded, the Minister was resolute in his rejection of this possibility. Clause 46 states that if any policy authority that has adopted the MPS decides to subsequently withdraw from it, it can do so. It seems highly unlikely that a policy authority, having already adopted the MPS, is suddenly going to come to the conclusion that it wants to withdraw from all of it. It would be a sorry state of affairs if it came to that. More likely, the policy authority would want to withdraw from a particular section or sections while still being content with the lion’s share of the MPS. So I ask the Minister again: should it not be possible for a policy authority or the Secretary of State to withdraw only from those sections of the MPS about which they are concerned? This would make more sense of continuing with the construction of any marine plan, which could then be finalised once the new revised sections of the MPS have been agreed and adopted. I look forward to the Minister’s response.