Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not entirely agree, because that is a false conflict. I am talking only about the deployment of machinery that has been demonstrated to have little or no environmental impact in its own right. We should not give the MMO the job of consenting to such deployment, because there is a very real fear that it will not have the engineering expertise to deal with it, whereas the IPC will. Is it sensible economically to set up two structures with lots of experts or to have only one? There is no way that the MMO would be excluded, in any event, because it will still be a statutory consultee that looks at environmental impact assessments. The hon. Gentleman asks whether I think that the MMO might be too green and too weighted against energy installations. He has a point there. The tidal stream turbine had a very rough passage in getting environmental impact consent, and very nearly did not get it. The assessment and monitoring process cost £4 million—25 per cent. of the cost of the whole project. The investment climate in the industry is appalling and the market is very difficult, because there is not enough support for new and inherently somewhat expensive technologies; adding a crippling burden of costs in environmental consenting creates a risk of strangling it.