Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I was surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, let rip like that, because I was really agreeing with his noble friend. I made it clear that I fully accepted that "community" is taken to mean "communities". It has become fashionable for Ministers to read what they said as authority for what they then maintain, as we saw in the debate before the triumphant vote of my noble friend Lord Bach half an hour ago. Clearly there are many different interests in the fishing community. The task of my department when it comes to guidance to be issued to the Marine Management Organisation, the work that the MMO will need to do on each IFCA, and the bringing of an order before Parliament will be to ensure that so far as possible we recognise diversity of interests in a particular sector, such as the fishing community. Clause 147(8) is a helpful explanation of what is meant by "the fishing community", saying that, ""‘the fishing community’ means all persons with any sort of interest in the exploitation of sea fisheries resources or in fisheries for such resources"." That seems a pretty wide definition. The challenge will be to ensure that we embrace sufficient interests within an IFCA without having a huge number of members; as the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, would probably point out, that would cost a lot more in expenses but also be unmanageable. We have to try to get the balance right. I have no argument at all with what the noble Lord said about the need to represent. We want the fishing community represented, but there are a lot of different interests within what is meant by "the fishing community".