Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will declare my interests before speaking to this part of the Bill. I am vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; former chief executive of the Environment Agency; former chairman of the predecessor to Natural England, English Nature; president of the Wildlife Trust and president of the British Trust for Ornithology. I feel a bit like some sort of party-pooper, after the outbreak of harmony and congratulations that has gone around the Chamber. I am sorry to bring a discordant note but I am afraid that I have to. However, let me start on a good note and commend the Government’s amendment on the chief scientific advisor. The points on full-time work made by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, were very well made. I think that the Minister would quite rightly expect me to fall away from him on Amendments 7 and 8. The statement about the MMO’s primary objective fails what I call the "small green man from Mars test"—that is, if a small green man arrived from Mars and read the provision, would he have a clue what on earth this body was there for? The provision continues to fail the "small green man from Mars test". Not only does it say that the primary objective of the MMO is a duty, ""to secure that the MMO functions are so exercised that the carrying on of activities by persons in the MMO’s area is managed, regulated or controlled"," it goes on to say: ""with the objective of making a contribution to the achievement of sustainable development"." "With the objective of making a contribution" could involve an extremely small contribution. At some point the Government must get off the treadmill of having to perpetuate this definition because it exists in previous legislation, and move on to the more sensible one of asking these organisations, in language understandable by a small man from Mars, to "further" the achievements of sustainable development. It is a very simple statement that we should be expecting of all public bodies. After all, what is sustainable development? That is where I would differ on Amendment 8—the one where, cunningly, the word "furthering" does appear. The amendment states: ""furthering any social, economic or environmental purposes"." The whole point of sustainability is that it is not about social, economic or environmental purposes; it is about trying to achieve solutions that deliver on all three of these. I would place a rather large wager—that is probably improper in your Lordships’ House—to see whether the Minister could come up with any human endeavour whatever that does not fall into the category of either social, economic or environmental. I think he would be hard-pressed to find one. This amendment says that the MMO, ""may take any action which it considers necessary or expedient for the purpose of"," doing anything that it should. So I am not convinced that we have made huge progress. I think that the Government need to get off this treadmill of the historic definition of what we expect our public bodies to do in order to further sustainable development, being so hideously tortuous and flabby that it is not understandable in any commonly understood sense of the word.