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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

We share some of the anxieties of the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart. The issue of remedy as opposed to mitigation of damage seems to be crucial to the whole philosophy behind the Bill. Its long process of genesis has not yet sorted out precisely how that careful balance is to be achieved. The Minister has on a number of occasions and again this afternoon referred to bringing those responsible for damage into compliance, which is clearly an extremely important objective of the Bill. It may well be that in some circumstances it will be a question of mitigation rather than full remedy. As the noble Earl said, often damage that may start as being relatively minor can have very long-term consequences and be very difficult to reverse. This is an extremely difficult and technical area where the expertise available to the MMO will be extremely important. We have had a number of discussions in Committee about the quality of advice and support that it will have. We share the concerns expressed by the noble Earl and his objective of probing from the Minister and the Government clarity about exactly what they have in mind in the complicated area of remediation notices. I do not envy the Minister, because he will have to live with the consequences of the Bill long after it has left your Lordships' House and perhaps after he has left his current responsibilities. This may be an area where he will look back and wonder whether we got it right. It will be very difficult to get it right; I sympathise with him in that respect. Sometimes it is much easier to say "Stop!" than to say what should happen once something has happened and it is necessary to try to reverse the situation. That is especially true in the marine environment, so I say good luck to the Minister. I hope that he will not need it.