Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I was not going to press the Minister on that point, but I was going to draw his attention to the well accepted distinction in terrestrial planning between general conformity and strict conformity. I was just about to talk about general conformity, because we were not referring to the national policy statements at all. I hope that the Government might be prepared to think about that a little, but if that is completely out of the question—if it is, I would be interested to know why—they need to find a way of putting into the Bill some reference to the relative weight of relevant considerations. I used the term ““significance””, which may not be quite the right thing. The Minister referred us to Clause 39. One of my concerns is that third parties might challenge whether considerations were truly relevant or of sufficient weight that they should have allowed the plan not to be ““in conformity”” with the marine policy statement, and could use Clause 59(4)(a), arguing that the document was not within the appropriate powers. Even if I am not right about that, I am sure that someone who was aggrieved would find a way to challenge it.