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Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I shall try to explain. It is important to understand the primary role of the JNCC. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, mentioned, it has an advisory role on nature conservation. Of course, as with all our sponsored bodies, we want the JNCC to have a reference to sustainable development in its remit, but that reference must be consistent with the wider role of the body itself. We want the JNCC to give advice within the context of sustainable development rather than to be constrained by it or to have to moderate it to take account of wider issues. Many of those issues include balances that might need to be struck between conservation and other objectives, and will fall to the recipients of the advice from the body, including Ministers and, in some cases, Natural England itself. It is worth emphasising that the JNCC is not an operational delivery body and thus has limited ability to contribute to the delivery of sustainable development at first hand. It is important that the JNCC can give objective advice based on good science, but it is also important to show how that advice might help to take sustainable development forward. We believe that that is what the current wording does. We are asked whether this provision is, in effect, simply window dressing. No, it is not. At the risk of repeating myself, let me say that we are keen that all our sponsored bodies should have a clear sustainable development remit, but that that must be consistent with each body’s wider role. Frankly, each body has little scope to take forward sustainable development through its own activities, apart from managing the green footprint of the organisation itself, but it can put advice to others in the context of sustainable development. I shall give an example. The JNCC may be called on to advise on the potential nature conservation impacts of offshore wind farms. It is not for that organisation to form a view on the balance to be struck between activities that might harm wildlife on the one hand, but that might also have environmental and economic benefits on the other. It is right that the organisation can flag up those issues for those who need to decide which way to go. That is why we think that to give this body too up-front a role in the sustainable development field is out of kilter. We meant it when we referred to sustainable development in the clause, but that is as far as we take it.