Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I certainly thank the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for his very useful comments and for reminding us of how far the Royal Commission’s report has got. It is helpful that the Minister has told us that the response will be in late spring, and we look forward to that, because one of the themes of the Royal Commission was that there should be mandatory reporting about this. The Minister did not tell us how much money is being spent at the moment by Defra on research and I would be grateful if he would drop me a line on that between now and Report; nor was there any mention of the research commissioned in the marine area, which would be very interesting. What the Minister did tell us was that there is a moratorium on the use of nanosubstances for environmental remediation, but I am not sure that, in the Bill, the term, "wash-off substance" would actually be covered. That is a bit different from environmental remediation, which is the term used in those other instances. I would want to look at that between now and the Report stage, unless the Minister can assure me that the moratorium does cover wash-off.