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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I hope my noble friend will accept that some of us earnestly hope that the noble Baroness will bring this proposition back on Report. My noble friend is a very accomplished parliamentarian. He is a parliamentary craftsman who loves the art of assembling the arguments to demolish a proposition. He will forgive me as an old friend for saying that sometimes he gets a little carried away by it. Sometimes his best friends, of whom I want to regard myself as one, want to say to him, "Come off it". My noble friend knows perfectly well what a seascape is. He knows that in our literature, poetry and history, seascape has been a central and living concept. He goes on and on about the precise scientific measurements of other elements of conservation. Is he really saying that as a nation we have given up on spirituality, imagination and vision? Why can we not encompass these dimensions of our life in this Bill? They are of so much importance to so many people. I hope that the noble Baroness will come back with this proposition on Report and that, in the mean time, my noble friend will use his, in some ways, unequalled parliamentary skills in getting to work with the draftsmen and his officials to say that this is something so wonderful in our heritage that we have to find a way of recognising it and putting it in the Bill.