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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, this is another adding-to-a-list amendment. It is a fairly simple probing amendment which would add Natural England to the list of risk management authorities. Of course, Natural England is closely involved in advising the Government on the environment and might therefore be considered as a good candidate to be on the list. I am aware that a similar amendment was debated in another place, in which the Minister argued: ""Natural England currently has no statutory flood and coastal erosion risk management functions. As such, it has not been included as a risk management authority".—[Official Report, Commons, Flood and Water Management Bill Committee, 12/1/10, col. 132.]" I would expect the Minister’s briefing to contain similar words. That would seem to be a fairly clear response but I should like to address some of the points raised in that debate. The Minister suggested that Clause 29 would allow Natural England to be included at a later date if it were to gain those statutory functions for flood or coastal risk management. Although that is strictly correct—and the Minister did not suggest that such a scenario would occur—can his noble friend please clarify whether, at this point, the Government have any plans to confer statutory functions on Natural England or whether that has been considered? I understand that the Country Land and Business Association has already developed a protocol with Natural England on coastal protection, allowing some of the coastal defences to break down so that land can be taken back by the sea. If that is so, Natural England may be considered to be playing a relevant role. I wonder whether its involvement will be adequately recognised under the provisions of the Bill. It is currently not even specified as a consultee. While it continues to play its part in environmental protection, I wonder whether it is worth particular consideration. It may be that Natural England’s focus is on the environmental aspects rather than on flood management, but its functions in respect of flood management are so interrelated that it seems incongruous that there is no specific duty on the two of them to work together. This is a probing amendment, which I have tabled to raise the possibilities of what other risk management authorities that we may wish or believe that we ought to see in the Bill. I beg to move.