Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I will deal first with the question of money spent on the coastal access path. The costs are estimated at £50 million over 10 years. They will fall to Natural England. We will deal with that as part of the overall settlement that will come to my department and then be allocated to Natural England. If a local authority decided that it wanted to undertake works itself, which it would then be responsible for, the costs would fall on the authority. There is no reason why a local authority would not want to do that. If it believes that opening up the coast would, for instance, enhance tourism activities in the district, it would give serious consideration to the matter. I hope that I have answered the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about opening some parts of the route first, rather than opening the whole route at a later stage. The current drafting is designed to provide for the route to be opened in stages. I assure the noble Lord that, if he thought that this was a loophole allowing us to avoid providing a route all around the coast, that is not our intention. A route around the whole coast is certainly the ideal that we are working towards. I have not read "enabling" in the way in which other noble Lords have, and I have not found myself concerned about it. The language is consistent with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. We hope that access can be achieved through consensus and with the agreement of a landowner. We need to have the ability to put a route through when a landowner is being unreasonably obstructive. I have set out the safeguards for the landowners where they can make representations, and we will come on to the question of appeal. I did not read enabling in the way in which noble Lords did. I will look at it in the light of what noble Lords said to make sure that it does not have the meaning they think it has. However, it is not meant to be a wiffly-waffly, maybe-there-will-maybe-there-won’t thing. It is meant to be very clear that members of the public should be enabled to have access. I am happy to check that to make sure that there is no loophole there. I am entirely sympathetic to the point about the 10-year time limit, because we want to see a completed coastal access path, and we want it to be completed within this timetable. However, we are a little reluctant to put it in the Bill.