Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, Amendment No. 101 revisits an issue that we discussed in Committee—the desirability or otherwise of the Secretary of State to make sure that at least one member of the CRC’s board has experience of, and capacity in, the affairs of local authorities. We have given the matter some consideration since Committee, and reflected on the points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Renton of Mount Harry and Lord Brooke, among others. We reached the same conclusion as before that it would be restrictive to accept the wording of the amendment, as having written local authority expertise into the Bill’s composition, we would need to consider adding similar criteria, covering all the CRCs and any other stakeholders to ensure that their interests were similarly represented on the CRC’s board. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, at Committee stage, we agreed that the local authority angle was an important one that could be covered by the range of expertise on the board of members. We are convinced that the right way in which to achieve that is via the Secretary of State’s responsibility for ensuring a fit between prospective board members’ expertise and personal skills and those required by the CRC. Paragraph 3(3) of Schedule 2 on page 52 of the Bill and the code of practice laid down by the office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments already make provisions for that. Therefore, the Bill does not need to be more specific than that. While appreciating the motives behind the amendment, we maintain that it is unnecessary and invite the noble Baroness who spoke on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, to withdraw the amendment for those reasons.