Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]

I shall explain in detail why I believe that the amendments would not strengthen the Bill. As a former practising solicitor, I have to say that I do not want the Bill to create a lawyers' charter, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want that either. That is why I want to make it clear that the current wording is important. Other partner organisations, such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, have a duty to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development under their parent legislation—including the Environment Act 1995, the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998, the Energy Act 2004, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, the Energy Act 2008 and the Planning Act 2008. None of those is an old piece of legislation; they are all relatively current. There are also terrestrial planning bodies and regional development agencies that, in turn, have similar obligations placed on them. It is important, in my view, to the desirability of integrating marine and terrestrial planning that we have a degree of consistency. This is not about a lack of ambition, as some have alleged. Indeed, the work of the Environment Agency demonstrates how much can be done under the existing formulation. Introducing a different duty for only one of those bodies would lead, I believe, to a lack of clarity, which could well have unintended consequences and end up being a lawyers' charter, which all of us—including even those involved in the legal profession—want to avoid. Indeed, the hon. Member for Newbury himself pointed out the dangers yesterday when he referred to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and lawyers dancing on the head of a pin in trying to describe where a garden finishes and a park begins. That is precisely why we have tabled Government amendment 4, which will undo the change made in Committee to clause 44 and restore the wording that came to this House from the other place. It is my firm belief that the marine policy statement should set out the policy authorities' general policies for "contributing to" the achievement of sustainable development in the UK marine area. I have considered carefully the arguments put in both Houses in support of the current wording, but I am not persuaded. Speakers in both Houses have made much of the need, with which I wholeheartedly agree, to ensure that there is no inconsistency or incompatibility between the marine policy statement and the national policy statements that will guide decision making by the Infrastructure Planning Commission. Similarly, my ministerial colleagues in the other place and I agree entirely with those who wish to have effective integration of marine and terrestrial plans, yet the current wording gives the marine policy statement a different goal from that of terrestrial planning documents, which would make that integration even more difficult. It may be that, semantically, there is little practical difference between "furthering" or "contributing to" the achievement of sustainable development, but that itself is part of the problem. If Parliament, after such extensive debate, insists on the use of "furthering", then marine planners and ultimately the courts will have no option but to assume that a difference was intended—yet no one seems sure what that difference should be in real terms. "Contributing to the achievement of sustainable development" is a long-established concept in terrestrial planning and other contexts, yet "furthering" is entirely untested. I do not believe that we should create uncertainties like that. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs promised to look into the possibility of inserting a reference to "furthering" into a paragraph in schedule 5 that requires the marine policy statement to undergo an "appraisal of sustainability". I can advise my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test that that initially seemed like a good way of emphasising the forward momentum we expect from the policies in the MPS.