Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for his expeditious response. He suggested that I thought the Government were being evasive on two points. He was wrong: I think they were being evasive on all three points. The ecosystem point, as an issue and a concept, will clearly come back for further discussion on Report somehow, so I shall say nothing more about it now. Whether it is at this point in the Bill or some other remains to be seen, but I am quite sure that there is further debate and discussion to be had on it. The point of view will, clearly, have to be put on Report that ecosystems ought to be more overtly placed in the Bill as the basis for marine conservation. The noble Lord chided me for my historical suggestion that in the historic and iconic 1949 Act on the national parks, people had a much clearer vision of what the end result might be than appears in this Bill. I stand by what I said, and if the noble Lord were to go back and read the Hansard of those debates from 60 years ago, he would find lots of references to the likely size and shape of the national parks that were to be set up. They did not all happen exactly as everybody wanted. There was much controversy, for many years, about the north Pennines and there is in what the Minister mentioned about the network continuing to evolve, which is about the South Downs. Many people had the vision, 60 years ago, that the South Downs should be a national park. For all sorts of reasons, that was resisted and did not happen, but it is probably happening now. Although the network has evolved, I am absolutely certain that its basic size and shape was a vision that existed at that time, and the Minister was wrong in chiding me over that. Meanwhile, that vision is simply not there for marine conservation zones—or perhaps it is. I accept the remarks from the Conservative Front Bench and from the Government that putting a precise figure in the Bill is not appropriate, but many of us would be much more reassured if the Government were prepared to talk about the likely size or range of a network. We know—or at least we hope—that the network will probably not be below 5 per cent, or it will not fit the criteria of the Bill, and we know that it will not be 80 per cent. There is a range, then, but its likely range at the finish is clearly a lot narrower. Are the Government thinking of 10 per cent, or 30 per cent, or 50 per cent? They will not tell us. They are not being as visionary, ambitious or clear in the purposes or likely outcome of this legislation as many of us—the many who have for so many years been working, campaigning and hoping for this legislation—would like. Finally, the Minister said that putting 2020 in the Bill would be "crippling in its limitations". I thought that this Government were full of targets for amounts of things by certain dates. The rest of the world is inundated by targets that are heaped on them, yet they are not prepared to provide targets here for themselves. What is wrong with targets, or with saying, "This is our ambition; this is what we want to do"? Many people out there, and some of us in here, fear that without that kind of discipline—not a crippling limitation, but a discipline—everything will drift. Reasons will be found, as time goes on, for why it has to go slower and slower. That is the fear, and it remains. The target does not have to be in the Bill, but it would be wonderful if the Government were to tell us much more clearly what ought to happen in the next 10, 15 or 20 years. If they did that, everybody would be a great deal more confident and it would challenge other parties—who might, by some conceivable stretch, get into government instead—to say whether they agree with it. Do they think it too slow, or too fast? Then, when we are in government, we would know what we are supposed to do, as would the Conservatives, who might by some freak win the election. Having said those things, the issues are clear and the debate was worth having, but I beg leave to withdraw. Amendment A157 withdrawn. Amendments A158 to A160 not moved. Amendment A161 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.