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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I will speak to three amendments in this group. I do not wish to speak to Amendment A350ZA, so the Minister can throw away any notes that he has on that. I will speak to Amendments A350ZZA, A350AA and A350AB. While I accept a lot of the arguments that have been put forward from different parts of the Committee, I will put forward a slightly different perspective. There is no doubt that there has been enormous pressure from various committees of this House, Joint Committees and committees of the other place, to put something in the Bill that allows people who own or have an interest in land to object and to make representations to an independent person in a way that is not present in the Bill at the moment. We believe that these concerns are legitimate and must be met. Whether they should be met by the amendments that have been spoken to so far is a different matter. However, in some way the Bill must be amended. There has been a developing discussion about this and there has been a series of meetings between Ministers and Members from all sides of the House, as well with people outside the House. What I have to say is intended to be constructive and non-oppositional, which I hope is what I have been doing throughout this part of the Bill. It is important that the coastal access provisions are carried through into law and succeed. Much of the resistance to any sort of appeal mechanism comes from the experience of the CROW Act, where the appeals system has not been a tremendous success. It has resulted in considerable delays; it has been expensive, legalistic and if it were being done again people would look for a different system. It was almost exactly based on planning appeals in a different context. The result of it has been that in many cases mistakes have been made in the allocation of land. In many parts of the country, that has resulted in illogical, sometimes jagged boundaries and wrong decisions, as viewed from any standpoint, over particular pieces of land. The 10-year, or decadal review is beginning to grind into action and I hope that that will put right some of the wrong decisions, which have been wrong in both directions. There should have been access land that is not and other land has been classified as access land that ought not to have been so classified. The CROW appeal system is not appropriate for this Bill. Both planning and CROW appeals are against decisions by lower authorities—local authorities and Natural England respectively. The appeal is made to the Secretary of State and is dealt with by the Planning Inspectorate. That is what happens in most planning and CROW appeals. The difficulty in this Bill is that the decisions will be made not by Natural England but the Secretary of State. The proposals under the coastal access scheme will be made to the Secretary of State, so the traditional appeal to the Secretary of State is clearly not appropriate. What principles should apply? First, we should avoid the problems under CROW. That is a negative principle, but on the basis of experience we do not want to replicate that. Secondly, we should give landowners and other people with interest in land a right of challenge to an independent person, and there should be an expectation that that independent decision at least in most cases will be carried through. Thirdly, it should provide for third-party involvement in a way that often happens in planning and CROW appeals, and which ought to happen under appeals or reviews under this system. Fourthly, the number of appeals and reviews should be as low as possible, and to do that the process must be as good, consultative, involving and inclusive as possible before the reports are published. Fifthly, it should be much quicker than the CROW system has been. We know that the Government are seriously considering what they should do and have been unofficially circulating a number of papers and proposals. What I am proposing today should lean heavily on what the Government have been discussing, and one reason for my proposals is to give the Government an opportunity to explain their thinking. I hope that they will take that opportunity. The difference between my proposals and what the Government have been talking about is that I think there should be greater third party involvement. My proposals are set out in Amendment A350AB, which can be summarised as saying that the Secretary of State must appoint a person to carry out an independent review where a representation comes from people with interests in land, and may appoint a person where serious representations are made by other relevant interests. The review has to consider all the representations that the Secretary of State refers and may consider representations from the second category. The independent person conducting the review has to do it publicly and openly. They must, ""publish details of the matter … to be reviewed"," and, ""make provision for the persons and bodies"," who have been making the objections, ""to make … further representations"," if they wish. They must, ""recommend to the Secretary of State"," either, ""that no modifications should take place"," in the final report on the matters that have been reviewed, or refer it, ""back to Natural England with a recommendation that … one or more of the matters that have been reviewed"," should be considered again. If that happens, ""Natural England must prepare and submit a report to the Secretary of State … on those matters that are the subject of a recommendation from the independent review"." That is not exactly the system of independent appeals that exists in many areas, but it is a satisfactory compromise along the lines on which I believe the Government are thinking. If that is true, they will have our full support in going ahead, for it satisfies the human rights of those with interests in land but, at the same time, does not prejudice and obstruct the carrying-out of a sensible scheme. Our final amendment, briefly, is Amendment A350ZZA, which looks again at the question of fair balance being the only reason for a review, and the only issue that should be looked at. Quite clearly, within the context of the scheme as laid down, the concept of fair balance is reasonable and necessary. However, it has to be seen firmly within the objectives of the coastal access scheme. If fair balance is to be the criteria by which appeals are judged, then that has to be done not in a vacuum—as if nothing else existed in the world, and there was no intention to have the scheme—but within the context of the two fundamental objectives of the coastal access scheme, on producing a continuous coastal path and on the access land at the coastal margin. Unless it is looked at within that context, there is scope for a great deal of mischief and obstruction of what I hope Parliament will decide that it wants to see.