Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 103. The initial debate on this amendment has, in a sense, already taken place with my speaking to it in the appropriate group on the list, so I can take what the Minister has said about it as read. In the light of what he said, I have two questions. The first refers to the capacity to make a physical restoration and the second to the cost of having to make it. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that the correct approach to the first question is to ask the following: can the damaged part of the sea be physically restored wholly, yes or no? If the answer is yes, I suggest that the correct approach, subject to the cost, is to undertake complete restoration. If it can be restored only in part, I suggest that the correct approach is the one which the Minister will find under the habitats directive, where the initial aim is to provide the appropriate mitigation or restoration within the damaged area, or the area which is likely to be damaged if the project goes ahead. If it is not possible to restore or to mitigate within the damaged area, there is a requirement in the habitats directive for the developer to find another part of the sea or the estuary where appropriate compensation can be made, so that within a reasonably well defined area of the sea what has been taken away by the developer in area A can be put back in area B. I would very much like the Minister to say that that is an appropriate parallel. My more worrying concern is the passage of the Minister’s speech referring to cost. He seemed to me to suggest that where an area is physically capable of being restored but the cost is exorbitant—whatever exorbitant means—there will be an obligation to restore it only in part. I hope that I have misunderstood the Minister. I perfectly understand that it might be said that where the cost of restoration was exorbitant, the decision-maker would give consideration to a proposal from a developer that he might make up for the part which is exorbitantly costly by providing an equivalent amount of environmental benefit elsewhere, in a sense, in conformity with what I said about the habitats directive. I would not be happy if the Minister simply says that, where the cost is exorbitant, nothing can be done. That seems to me to drive a coach and horses through the fundamental intention of the legislation so that all the principles which we set out at the beginning could be undermined by a diluted obligation on the wrongdoer to restore. I beg to move.