Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

This amendment introduces a group of minor technical amendments. I shall take the opportunity to explain our general approach to enforcement of the new licensing regime established by the Bill. The regime is designed to allow development in the marine area, while also providing protection for the environment and human health and preventing interference with other legitimate uses of the sea. The primary aim of our enforcement proposals is to prevent harm. We want to bring people into compliance with the law, to avoid harm being caused in the first place. Experience with enforcement of the Coast Protection Act 1949 and the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 has shown that the only options for sanctions under those Acts—warning letters or prosecution—are too limited a range of enforcement tools. There is a compliance gap for offences that the licensing authority would like to enforce but which are judged as being not proportionate to prosecute. Apart from any minor harm that might result, this can mean that operators who abide by the terms of their licence may face costs that those who operate outside licence conditions do not. In the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, we are establishing a sanctions regime that provides a more proportionate range of tools for enforcement in the marine area. We have worked within the context and recommendations of the Hampton and Macrory reports and considered the provisions of the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008. Essentially, they provide for more proportionate and targeted enforcement tools, designed primarily to bring people into compliance, but with the teeth to penalise offenders where that is necessary. There are order-making powers in the Bill in Clauses 90, 92 and 138 to establish a civil monetary penalties scheme for enforcement of both licensing and nature conservation offences, similar to that established under the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008. There will be further consultation on the design of this scheme later this year. In essence, fixed monetary penalties are intended to address minor non-compliances with licence conditions. Variable monetary penalties are intended to address more serious breaches of licence conditions. On the statutory notices that we are making available to use under the Bill, the first, a compliance notice in Clause 87, may be used to bring an operator back into compliance where no serious harm has been caused. It will lay down steps with which the operator must comply to avoid any further penalty. Our Amendments A45, A46 and A47 insert a test of "serious" into the compliance notice for circumstances where the notice cannot be given. These amendments mean that an enforcement authority will be able to issue a compliance notice only where the harm caused by the breach to the environment and human health, or interference to other legitimate uses of the sea, is not serious. This approach is aimed at preventing harm. A notice will be issued to a licensee to bring that operator back into compliance with their licence. A remediation notice, which is covered in Clause 88, may be used for licensable activities where the operator has caused harm and does not have a licence for that activity or has breached the terms of their licence. This notice will detail steps that the operator needs to undertake to put matters right or may specify a sum of money that they must pay so as to allow someone else to remediate the harm that they have caused. Amendments A49, A50 and A51 remove "serious" from the test for issue of a remediation notice. They mean that the enforcement authority will be able to issue a remediation notice where harm has been caused, by the lack of a licence or a breach, to the environment and human health or where there has been interference with other legitimate uses of the sea, and not just when serious harm has been caused. This enacts commitments made by the Government following pre-legislative scrutiny. Two emergency notices designed to prevent serious harm complete the set. First, the stop notice will be used to stop activities that the enforcement officer believes to be causing or likely to cause serious harm. The second notice, an emergency safety notice, will be used to prevent serious interference with other legitimate uses of the sea—for example, ordering operators to provide navigational lighting to make safe navigational hazards. That last notice re-enacts a power under the Coast Protection Act 1949. Amendments A65 and A66 remove "will" and insert "is likely to" in the test for issue of a stop notice so that it can be issued if the activity is causing or is likely to cause, or is creating or is likely to create, an imminent risk of serious harm to the environment or human health or serious interference with other legitimate uses of the sea. Amendments A69, A70, A71 and A72 allow the imposition of an emergency safety notice without there already being a stop notice in place under Clause 101. The amendments allow the enforcement authority to issue an emergency safety notice where a licensable activity has led to a danger to navigation but without the requirement that a stop notice has already been issued, as there may be no activity to stop—for instance, if adverse weather has led to problems causing something to collapse into the sea, thereby creating a hazard. These sanctions do not prevent the enforcement authority from using the tools that it already has: advice and warning letters, through to prosecution in the most serious cases. Under paragraph 10 of Schedule 7, the enforcement authority will develop and publish its enforcement guidance. Taken together, this new suite of enforcement tools will enable the effective enforcement of the marine licensing regime, which will not only protect the environment and human health and prevent interference with other legitimate uses of the sea but also make sure that operators who abide by the terms of their licence are not disadvantaged by the behaviour of those who do not. I beg to move.