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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I support the view that this body needs a strong focus on marine science and environmental conservation science—when I come to talk about my Amendment 28A, your Lordships will better understand why. In a body such as this, which is aimed at bringing together a whole variety of competing interests and developing some sort of consensus if possible, there will be a need to make sure that, if consensus and agreement are not possible, it makes decisions on the basis of good evidence and scientific information, rather than simply of voting power. For that reason, I used to be attracted by the idea of a smaller rather than a larger board. However, perhaps I could give the Minister the benefit of a little knowledge gained from recent personal experience setting up an organisation in his former field of health, the Care Quality Commission. Having gone for a smaller board there, I regretted deeply the proposition. With issues as complex as the marine environment, there is a range of different perspectives—not necessarily interest groups or stakeholders, but perspectives that need to be represented around the table when decisions are being made. I would therefore favour a board that is bigger than five, and probably bigger than eight, but that has an upper limit, because it needs to be effective and to be able to resist through a statutory limit on its size pressure for every interest group under the sun to be represented on it.