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Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I do not have to spell out to your Lordships the importance of boating in the broads to the overall sustainability of the area. It is on behalf of those boating interests that I oppose the spirit behind the amendment, which, as I understand it, would remove the provision in the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act whereby conservation expenditure is not applied to the navigation account. Maintaining the waterways of the broads is a costly business and the navigation account is already severely stretched. If the funds in the navigation account were to be applied to non-navigation expenditure, the boating public would be subsidising the non-navigation functions of the broads authority and the navigation interest would suffer as a result. In view of the substantial increase in the fees that boat users already have to pay to the broads authority merely to maintain the navigations, the amendment seems unreasonable. It is my impression that the Bill is about maintaining a balance between the conservation interest, on the one hand, and other interests, such as the boat users, employment and all the rest of it, on the other. If the amendment was agreed to, it would risk upsetting that balance. I hope that the Minister will oppose it.