Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I appreciate what my noble friend has said. I thank him, my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham, Mr Huw Irranca-Davies and the ministerial team for being so accessible and willing to listen and for responding so constructively—I am most grateful to them. I also thank and congratulate English Heritage officials, who briefed a number of us with precision, lucidity and very good judgment. My final point has already been suggested by others. Could we please now have the heritage protection Bill? That would much more fairly and squarely deal with the important issues addressed with such eloquence and passion by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges. The debates that we have had on the heritage aspects of this Bill have been more anxious and uncertain than they would have been had the heritage protection Bill been proceeding in parallel through Parliament. This Bill is primarily about issues concerning the natural environment, whereas the heritage protection Bill is the appropriate primary vehicle for protection of the marine historic environment. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, there must be complementarity between the two, and I am grateful to Defra for the strenuous efforts that it has made to ensure that there is that complementarity. However, in the absence of what should have been the parallel Bill, the regime for which we are legislating will be lopsided. I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lord Hunt reaffirm that the Government remain committed to the heritage protection Bill, but why do we not have it? It has been frustrating to be told repeatedly that the House of Commons during the past several weeks has been twiddling its legislative thumbs without enough to do. We know that the heritage protection Bill has all-party support—at least, I am assured by senior, responsible people in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties that they support the essence of the measure. It has had pre-legislative scrutiny. Why can we not, even now, at this late stage of the Session, bring it into the House of Lords, make some progress with it and, if we cannot complete scrutiny of it in this Session, carry it over to the next Session? As I understand it, there is no procedural objection. Of course, that would need to be agreed by the usual channels, but, given that everyone thinks that it is a valuable measure, what difficulty should there be? If we fail to do that, how will the heritage protection Bill get on the statute book? The next Session, the last of this Parliament, must be a short Session. It is difficult to be confident that the Bill would take its place in the first Session of the next Parliament, when it is all too liable to be crowded out by Bills emanating from big manifesto pledges. It would be a valuable thing to get it on the statute book. It would be enormously helpful for the heritage sector and local government. I hope that it will be possible for the usual channels to have constructive discussion about that and to agree that we should proceed with no further delay with the heritage protection Bill to support the now excellent heritage protection elements within the Marine and Coastal Access Bill.