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Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

The noble Baroness was pleased with my response to the previous discussion about appeals or a review mechanism. I suspect that this is not going to be so positive for her, though I am very grateful for the succinct way she has drawn out the issue. Essentially, her amendment would mean that Natural England would have to pay compensation for any loss caused by coastal access if it could be shown that the value of a person’s land had depreciated, or that the person had suffered damage by being disturbed in his enjoyment of the land. I am afraid that I am going to resist this. The Bill has been drawn up so that the implementation of a new right will take account of the interest of landowners and minimise any impact on business. It is worth pointing out that land covered by buildings, or the curtilage of such land, will be excepted from the right of access. We expect the overall impact on business to be positive—I do not know if I can pray the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in aid of that as a general point, but I will tempt fate in seeking to do so. The right of access was introduced under the CROW Act and we now have experience of it working and working well. We do not consider that it is appropriate that compensation should be provided for and, as far as the landowner’s interests being protected if there is no right of compensation, I refer the noble Baroness to Clause 287, which requires the Secretary of State and Natural England to strike a fair balance between the interests of landowners and the interests of the general public. As I have made clear, since the Government are clearly committed to introducing a review mechanism, we think that we have the balance right.