Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

As we have heard, this group contains many detailed amendments which raise interesting issues. We are entering an interesting part of the structure of what the Government are creating. They seem to expect all adjoining or adjacent areas to have some say in what is happening in the next area. This process will obviously have to be handled with some tact. By way of an example, if, as someone suggested, Scotland decided to have only one or two offshore regions, every plan contained in the whole Scottish offshore region would have an input from the Secretary of State, and probably will anyway. It might be worth the Minister putting on the record which Secretary of State that would be. Perhaps that is a bit facetious because it could be construed that more than one has an interest in Scotland. I was happy to listen to the detail of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Changing ““adjoins or is adjacent to”” to ““contiguous to”” and related planning authorities being forewarned of planning, even if they are only partly joined to the marine plan area, are important factors for consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has an amendment in this group which goes into the finer detail of the real nub of the issue of trying to define and manage a border area, in this case between existing Scottish government control and Westminster. On our previous day in Committee, we spent some time in a similar discussion defining the interests and powers in the Severn estuary, and it would be interesting to see whether the Minister wishes to vary his response. In this case, the options are rather more limited, as Scottish Ministers’ authority would be required for anything that affected their interests. Will the Minister elucidate for the Committee whether there is any place in the Bill in which we can require the Scottish Administration in their control of the relevant parts of the Scottish inshore area to consult another UK area that adjoins it or to which it is adjacent? On the same subject, will the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, explain why he is so prescriptive about local authorities that have to be consulted? Does he have a strong rationale about the role of local authorities? Perhaps he has more up-to-date information than I do, but my impression is that the Scottish Administration do not yet have a settled view of which model they will use for designating Scottish marine regions in the Scottish inshore area. At least four possible administrative groupings appear to affect the Scottish coastal area, only one of which is the Scottish local authorities. This is the nub of the issue when trying to define the border area between Scottish government control and Westminster. I hope that the Minister will be able to expand a little.