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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Like the noble Baroness who has just spoken, I remind the Committee that the Joint Committee considered that the MMO should have a duty to further the promotion of sustainable development based on the ecosystem approach. The fact that the Government did not like that particularly has inevitably led to the kind of discussion we have been having over the past 40 or so minutes. It points out some of the difficulties that the MMO will have in balancing all these different interest groups. I believe there should be some strengthening of the duty of the MMO. Quite how the Government can achieve that, I do not know. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who said that ““balance”” is the crucial word, and the MMO will have to maintain a balance between all the conflicting interests. We had the same arguments when discussing the Bill that created Natural England, where the Sandford principle again raised its head. A site might be designated for marine conservation that happened to be a place where some kind of power-generating facility, vital to the nation’s power supply, needed to be put. Who would take precedence? The adoption of the Sandford principle might lead to difficulties.