Clause 3
Energy Bill
9:45 am
Steve Webb (Chair of the Election Manifesto Group, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for that and I noticed that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention was consistent with the points that I wanted to make. Many of the environmental organisations that have been in touch with us, such as the WWF and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, are keen to have some reassurance from the Minister on the point that the hon. Gentleman raises. They seek reassurance on not only present technologies, but novel technologies, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham mentioned. In other words, we want to be confident that there will be, for example, a full strategic environmental assessment where novel forms of extraction or storage are applied. I am not absolutely sure that such an assessment would follow from the habitats directive—I do not know enough about it to know whether that would be the case—but that is the sort of assurance that those groups seek from the Minister. Where novel extraction or storage activities are licensed under the Bill, will they be subject to a full strategic environmental assessment?
The question is whether such considerations should be dealt with as part of the licensing process at all, or whether the proposed marine management organisation, which is obviously germane to this issue, should have oversight. The worry is that the Government’s plan is that it should not. If so, we would have a Bill covering the licensing of offshore gas storage and supply, but the separate marine management organisation that is to be introduced in legislation later this year would have no duties at all. Most people would think it rather strange to create a body called the marine management organisation when that body has no remit over the extraction and storage of gas and energy in the marine environment. I hope that the Minister can clarify the relationship between that body and the licensing authority and why the marine environment organisation will not be given oversight over such issues.
Finally, I should like some clarification of spatial planning in the marine environment, to which these proposals relate. Currently, there is not a robust set of protected marine areas to guide the location of new activities at sea, but the licences that we are talking about should be granted in accordance with a strategic overview. We have heard mention of local planning authorities, and individual planning applications that were made on land would fall within a strategic plan. If the Government do not accept the amendment and if the marine management organisation does not have responsibility for such issues, we might end up with—I was about to say a gold rush, but that is not the right analogy—people making licence applications on an ad hoc basis that do not fit into an overall planning environment, as they would on land.
Our preference would be for the marine management organisation to have responsibility for environmental oversight over such issues. However, if the interest is in regulatory simplicity and in having only one body, not two, and if the marine management organisation is deemed not to be the right body, we would, at the very least, want there to be consultation of the sort envisaged in the amendments with the relevant environmental bodies before licences were granted.