Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

moved Amendment No. 107:"Page 2, line 6, leave out ““, thereby contributing to sustainable development””" The noble Baroness said: We have had quite a discussion already on Clause 2. My Amendments Nos. 107, 118 and 121 sit within that clause. I do not intend to go back over some of our discussion, but the extent of the discussion means that there is a general mood in the Committee that we are not happy with the form of words in that clause, although some of the Minister’s replies and definitions have been extremely helpful. I will read them carefully. Nevertheless, I should like to point out one inconsistency at least with regard to the phrase,"““thereby contributing to sustainable development””," in line 6, which I suggest we leave out. There is a question that even if you preface the word ““development”” with the word ““sustainable””, development is not always desirable. It may not even fit within the first phrase of that clause. It just sounds better if the word ““sustainable”” is put in front of the word ““development””. But it is clear there what the Government’s intention is for Natural England. In Clause 33, page 11, where the Government talk about the JNCC, there is an inconsistency, because the JNCC shall have only ““regard to”” but not a commitment to sustainable development. The Minister in another place, Jim Knight, said that the phrasing was carefully chosen so that the JNCC could set its advice in the context of sustainable development without having to moderate it in order to take into account socio-economic factors. That is rather different from Natural England, and at this point I simply ask the Minister to dwell on the issue and perhaps come back to that when later we consider the clause in its entirety. Amendment No. 118 suggests that after the word ““recreation”” in the list of purposes, we should insert the words ““contributing to sustainable development””. An awful lot of recreation could be classed as far from sustainable. I use a shorthand way to explain to the Committee what I mean by this. That would be recreation of the Jeremy Clarkson kind. I cannot call that sustainable, and I am sure that we need some refinement here. Amendment No. 121 would insert a new paragraph to cover the protection of the ““nature”” of rural areas, thus, ““contributing to sustainability within them””. The amendment explores the relationship between the protection of the landscape and the need for rural areas to have a living and working nature. I believe that we should think about the nature of rural areas rather than consider exactly what they contain. It is at that point that I begin to have a problem with the word ““conserving””. We need to get a feeling for the nature of an area in the round without necessarily having to conserve in aspic every single aspect of it. We have moved on considerably in this area. I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who is in his place, spent a considerable time explaining to the House what the word ““sustainability”” means. It might have been the noble Lord who perhaps four or five years ago first used the phrase, ““the three-legged stool of sustainability””. Today we have at least a general understanding of what the term means, but I believe that we could go further towards an exact definition. It is important for the reasons put forward by noble Lords who have spoken in the debates on the last few groups of amendments. I beg to move.