Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I warmly support the words expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, in appreciation of the work of the Ministers in charge of the Bill. At the same time, I should also like to extend congratulations to those who have laboured behind the scenes in doing some extremely skilful drafting work, some of it fairly rapid, in bringing the amendments forward in the way that they have done. I am gratefully encouraged by these amendments and by the words that the Minister used when he talked about the evolving nature of the concept of ecological coherence. It is important that the legislation should contain sufficient flexibility to allow improvements to be generated as further knowledge is gained from the experience of the establishment of the marine conservation zones. The Minister referred to one other thing that was not totally clear to me. He talked about guarding against "excessive recreational use". I wonder how that is to be assessed. It seems to me that the most important thing is to have a very alert monitoring system so that there is effective policing as life goes on, so that those who are responsible for adjudicating in these matters or for policing in the operation of the MCZs are ahead of the game and know when action is necessary, because in order to introduce the necessary action a certain amount of time will have to have passed. With those words about welcoming the amendments and my slight concern about the interpretation of excessive recreational use, I again thank the Ministers very much indeed for the wholly constructive way in which they brought this measure to the House.