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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I would join the noble Earl in saying that I was out of my depth if I were not dealing, on the whole, with inshore waters. Therefore, we are not as far out of our depth as we are with other parts of the Bill, which go further out to sea. I wanted to identify that we are faced with the fact that the authorities, in seeking to act, would do so under several different Acts and requirements; they would have to operate and get agreement using several different processes. By "holistic"—I am not very fond of that word, which I will now expunge from my lexicon—I was seeking to identify that here is a procedure that will take into account all the necessary factors that obtain with regard to those Acts, but also the necessary issues that are contained in the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. It is in order to achieve that position that we are seeking, in Clauses 75 and 76, to reduce the regulatory burden and to create a position in which all the issues that need to be considered can be considered within this framework, because each of them, in each of the separate Acts, is an important provision that needs to be taken fully into account. In particular, I wanted to reassure the Committee over the anxiety that might obtain that, if you are dealing with the Harbours Act or the Electricity Act, the authorities acting will have regard to those provisions and that the provisions within this Bill, when it becomes an Act, might be of a lower order and lower in the scale of consideration. I wanted to emphasise that this is a total procedure in which the provisions in this Bill will rank equally in terms of significance or of getting agreement. That explains my unfortunate use of the word "holistic".