Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, we had a lively debate on this matter in Committee, when the case for widening the scope of the general offence in Clause 136 to include reckless acts was very well made. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for tabling Amendments 115 to 118, which will extend the scope of the offence to include reckless acts. The Government support his Amendments 115, 117 and 118 without reservation. They will ensure that the reckless killing or injuring of animals which are protected features of a marine conservation zone, the reckless taking of things and the reckless destruction or damage of habitats or features will all constitute an offence. It is entirely right that the features are protected from people who know about a marine conservation zone but simply do not care whether they damage it. In relation to the picking, collection, cutting, uprooting or destruction of plants, the Government have tabled their own Amendment 116A, which provides an alternative form of words to that proposed in Amendment 116, which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has already intimated he does not intend to move. The reason we have tabled a different amendment is that we share the concern to see plants protected in the same way as other types of feature. I should like to reassure the House that the purpose of Amendment 116A is not to reduce the level of protection. The different wording proposed is intended simply to take account of the fact that the act of picking or collecting a plant must by definition always be an intentional act and therefore cannot be the result of recklessness. In contrast, it is conceivable that the act of cutting or uprooting a plant may or may not be intentional, and where it is unintended it could indeed result from recklessness, and the wording contained in Amendment 116A simply reflects this distinction. The point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, takes us back to the contribution made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, when she spoke about the difficulties facing prosecution authorities in proving how much knowledge an offender possessed. We have carefully reflected on the points she raised because she speaks with a great deal of experience of pursuing offenders in her previous role. That is why we have tabled Amendment 118A, where we seek to clarify the level of knowledge that a person must have in order to be guilty of an offence. We still think that it is an appropriate requirement for a person to know that a feature was within or formed part of a marine conservation zone, or that the person should reasonably have been expected to know this fact. If details of a site are displayed on a notice board or on widely used charts, these facts may help to establish that the person ought reasonably, at the very least, to have been aware. But—and this is the point to which the noble Baroness drew our attention—proving that a person had even more detailed knowledge about which particular species or habitats are listed as protected features on the designation order, or that they had the skill or knowledge to be able to differentiate between protected and unprotected features which might be similar in appearance, would be an awful lot more difficult to prove. That was not our intention and we have tabled Amendment 118A to make it clear that a person does not need to know that the feature was a protected feature of the site; it will be sufficient to prove that they knew or should have known that the feature was in the boundaries of a marine conservation zone. I think that that is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, was making. This is a sensible amendment to make.