Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I congratulate the noble Lady, who has been very patient. I have spotted her on a number of occasions in the past few weeks as she has regularly come in to see what progress we have made. I take the noble Lady’s point to heart, and she made it in a persuasive way. What she said in essence was that the Act being amended here had been amended many times before and it would therefore be difficult for a lay person, let alone a hard-pressed fisherman, to understand. While I doubt that hard-pressed fishermen worry much about having Acts of Parliament with them as they go about their fishing, I understand that it is very difficult for people who have to go through legislation to understand it if it has been amended time and again. My own experience has been in the NHS, which also has suffered from the fact that considerable numbers of amendments have been made over the past 40 years. A consolidated Act was produced in 1977 but more amendments followed. It makes legislation very difficult for people to understand. The noble Lady referred to Clause 187(2), which does take some understanding. It is a catch-all clause that may relate to any circumstances—in other words, vessel length, vessel tonnage or gear type. That is what is meant, but I agree that on first reading that would be very difficult to understand. The Government have given serious consideration to producing new consolidated legislation. Unfortunately, so far it has not proved possible to produce a consolidated measure. The Bill has been our best opportunity to introduce necessary changes to fisheries legislation. Our problem is that if we miss this opportunity, it may be a considerable time before we will be able to make some of the changes that the Bill provides for. The amendments in Chapter 1 of Part 7 are relatively minor, and in these circumstances there is a lesser case for consolidation. Amending the Acts makes it easier for the reader to focus on the changes being made. As these are mainly amendments to enabling powers available to Ministers, there is less of a requirement to issue guidance; but we will ensure that a summary of the key changes is published on the Defra website. In a moment, I will describe what further guidance we can give.