UK Parliament / Open data

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her sensitive approach to Amendment 73. We will look again at the wording of that amendment to see whether we can persuade her to change her mind on that matter. It seems a pretty obvious thing to require that, if an authority moves in for the very good reasons that it would have in those circumstances, it should leave the place in the same order that it found it. Otherwise, it seems that we are giving extraordinary powers to those who carry out this action.

2.15 pm

On Amendment 72, the noble Baroness produced the Asian hornet. I will not deny that fact that I have never met an Asian hornet yet, but I am certainly persuaded that, if I did, it would be an extremely unpleasant experience and I would want to get rid of it. I did not spend an hour at Defra the other day without becoming increasingly nervous about the things that I might bump into in the night. That was probably the purpose of the exercise—or its secondary purpose.

However, in those circumstances the officers carry with them clear evidence. They would not act and invade premises unless they had clear evidence of the threat they were to deal with. Would anybody turn them down and say, “You cannot come here that day because I am not scared of Asian hornets”? It is not conceivable that that is how people would react. I am not talking about minor things where it might take five years or so before their damage was visible. If what is being quoted is something that has arrived, is evident and distinctly threatening to the environment, I cannot see that the concept of the agreement necessary is much more than a knock on the door, “We’ve come to solve an absolutely massive problem that you’ve got”, and, “Thank you very much”. After all, people want rid of pests. Has anybody ever seen dear old ladies who have wasp nests in the lofts of their houses? They are absolutely terrified of what will happen unless the nests are removed that very day—despite the fact that the wasp nest is most likely to have been there several months or more.

I know that there are all sorts of awkward cases in society, particularly about property. However, the basis of the action is to reach agreement with the property holder. I still maintain that the one instance of the Asian hornet will not deflect me from the feeling and belief that the Bill, as constructed at present, is not acceptable to us. I will dwell on what the noble Baroness said and I know she has thought about these issues very seriously, but so have we in constructing the argument and we will go away and think about this as well. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
755 c158GC 
Session
2014-15
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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