My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment, which has been coupled with this group. We are now moving on to Part 6 of the Bill, which involves Scotland. We have heard about all these doubts and areas that need to be cleared up, which are even more worrying for devolved Administrations.
My amendment is to Clause 143, “Requirements to consult devolved administrations”. I declare my family’s interest, as noted in the register, in that we own land in Scotland. We are fortunate; it is not a big area in Scottish terms, but it includes part of a national park, a nature reserve, a site of special scientific interest and special protection areas. As the Minister pointed out in an earlier debate, this is the section of the Bill that is most likely to affect devolved competencies. There can be no doubt that the Bill is causing much concern in the UK’s devolved Administrations, and we have just been hearing about the extent of the existing Henry VIII powers. Anyone who has spent any time in this Chamber knows that we are allergic to Henry VIII powers, and I hope that my noble friend can assuage us on the extent to which they will be included.
In the earlier debate on Clause 83, my noble friend rejected my proposed amendment. That issue only involved powers regarding planning data. Clause 143, as drafted, is a mirror of that text:
“The Secretary of State may only make EOR regulations which contain provision within Scottish devolved competence after consulting the Scottish Ministers”.
My Amendment 382 provides that, following the consultation, the Secretary of State must report the outcome and provide reasons. This is surely a necessary step for transparency and to maintain the trust between the parties on an ongoing basis. Consultation implies that all will put their cards on the table; agreement, as we all know, is harder to achieve. My noble friend may like to say that we would carry out these steps anyway. This amendment as drafted does not give any more power to devolved Assemblies but just gives them the comfort of knowing exactly where they stand.
It was further encouraging to hear my noble friend say, in his reply to an earlier debate, that
“the Government are continuing to work with the devolved Administrations to understand whether there is scope to extend the EOR powers to provide a shared framework of powers across the UK. Once those discussions have concluded, the Government will bring forward any necessary amendments to both Part 6 and
Part 3 to reflect the agreed position between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations”.—[Official Report, 22/3/23; col. 1803.]
A shared framework of powers is precisely what this amendment is aiming to achieve. There is always the danger that, without achieving this framework, and with one party withholding consent, the outcome might go against any changes at all.
The Scottish Parliament’s legislative consent Motion for this measure was tabled on 27 July 2022. As I mentioned before, the main one of the three committees to give it consideration was the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. In its report, brought out on 22 December, it could see some elements of the Bill that it welcomed. But, after taking evidence, it concluded that:
“Environmental Outcome Reports would lead to a significant change to environmental assessment in Scotland. However, the UK Government has not provided sufficient clarity around how they will operate in practice.”
Similar concerns were also highlighted by both the other committees in the Scottish Parliament. After consideration, all were still not prepared to grant approval.
The Government have introduced quite a raft of amendments to the Bill already. It would be interesting to know whether some of these are the fruits of their intergovernmental discussions, but we are still a long way short of achieving an agreed framework. Can my noble friend say whether that is still their aim?