Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, the House will recognise my heartfelt relief that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is taking the government amendments at their face value—as he should, on all occasions, because they are purely to make the Bill as clear as we can make it. I know what an enthusiast he is for consistency and clarity in legislation, so I welcome his support for these amendments. I want to emphasise to the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, that we are concerned to have the same reference to the Scottish position throughout the Bill. The problem with the definition in this clause is that we had not taken consistency throughout the Bill sufficiently into account, which is why this amendment is necessary. We have now removed reference to Scottish areas and the definition of the term, but the danger, as the noble Duke indicated, was that we would have a lack of consistency and clarity in our reference to the position in Scotland. We have looked at this carefully and consider that with this amendment we have made the references consistent with the rest of the Bill. We will come on to the Scottish position on inshore waters when we refer to the Scottish marine Bill, which is the responsibility of the devolved Administration.