Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I have three amendments in this group and shall speak also to whether Clause 171 should stand part of the Bill. I gave notice of my intention to oppose Clause 171 in order to allow the financial matters to be probed in a general way. I do not want to pursue it any further than that because the information that will be supplied by the Government in responding to these amendments will probably be sufficient. I support the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lady Miller, who puts her finger on an important issue. If IFCAs need to carry out capital spending, how will that capital spending be financed? If it is substantial capital spending and more than just a penny or two, I think that there is an issue. My Amendments A240A, A240B and A240C concern some of the details of the financing arrangements. The first one is intended simply to probe whether IFCAs will be able to have any sources of finance other than their constituent local authorities. It is a simple question. The Bill currently says: ""The expenses incurred by the authority for an IFC district are to be defrayed by the relevant council or councils"." Are there to be no other sources of money of any kind? Amendment A240B would leave out lines 13 and 14. It is intended to probe how the calculations will take place, what the Government’s views are about how the calculations could take place and which proportion of the expenses are to be paid by each of the constituent authorities. The Bill reads: ""The order may provide for the portion of the expenses payable by a relevant council to be calculated by reference to any circumstances whatsoever"." What sort of circumstances do the Government have in mind as to how this will be worked out? Amendment A240C concerns an apparently minor matter of wording but it relates to the extremely important matter of the local authority members of an IFCA being able, as the Bill suggests, to veto a levy on the local authorities. Presumably, it is unlikely that the authority would demand that the levy be higher than that proposed by the whole membership of the IFCA. Therefore, it would presumably be a requirement by local authorities that the IFCA’s expenses be reduced, perhaps in line with government financial constraints on local authorities. My amendment would make the provision slightly more positive. It would make the Bill read that the decision, ""must be approved by a majority"," of local authorities, rather than, ""may be vetoed by a vote"." There is a significant difference. If there is a simple veto, the normal procedure would be that the IFCA decides what the levy will be for a particular year and a special procedure of veto must then be invoked by the local authorities. I suggest that it should as a matter of course each year be put to the local authority representatives, so this is a positive rather than a negative provision. People may say that it does not make any difference in practice. However, it may well make a considerable difference to how this operates.