Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I shall speak briefly to my Amendment 94ZZA, which is grouped with those of my noble friend. It seeks to add a further subsection to Clause 56, which covers ““Decisions affected by marine policy documents””. The amendment suggests much more definite wording than that proposed by the Government in Schedule 6. The issue here is exactly how the interface between the marine plan authority and the land-based planning authority will work. The Minister has used the phrase ““have regard to””, but at exactly what stage will that happen? My suggested wording addresses a critical issue that we have not yet fully considered. I should say also that we have received a briefing on this from the LGA. Noble Lords will be aware that the LGA is concerned about the importance in planning terms of the overlap between the landward extent of the UK marine area, which is marine high water, and the seaward extent of areas under local authority responsibility, which is mean low water. That is a considerable amount of land. We need to make it very clear in the Bill what exactly is the extent to which the marine plan authority must have regard to decisions of the terrestrial planning authority. I invite the Minister to add something more definite to Clause 56 rather than leaving the issue simply to a paragraph in Schedule 6. That does not give sufficient weight to exactly how the planning function is going to work in an area that is of absolutely common interest. Local planning authorities already have planning functions down to mean low water, and I do not think that that has been sufficiently recognised in the Bill.