Clause 292
Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Richard Benyon (Shadow Minister, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Newbury, Conservative)
It is a great pleasure to have you back in the Chair, Mr. Pope. You will see that we have made startling progress since you were last here, but there are still important issues to resolve before we complete the Committee stage, one of which is raised by my amendment.
The amendment seeks to ensure that before the Secretary of State approves Natural England’s final proposals for the coastal access scheme and lays them before Parliament, those proposals are subject to public consultation. Consultation has arisen on numerous occasions in various areas of the Bill. I anticipate that the Minister will argue that there has been consultation, and that there will be extensive further consultation. I note that on page 9 of the draft scheme guidance on coastal access prepared by Natural England, there is a helpful flow chart of the various processes of the designation of the path, which includes a number of different consultations. I appreciate that, but the consultation that I propose is for a particular area.
There will be extensive further consultation with local authorities and key individuals during the drawing up of coastal access reports, and we support that. However, I wish to make a specific point on an area from which public consultation seems to be conspicuously absent, and I hope that, in the spirit of the conversations that we have had on these sorts of concerns, the Minister will be able to reassure me.
The amendment deals with public consultation on the coastal access outline scheme, rather than on the coastal access reports, which will be consulted on after the outline scheme is approved. The scheme will outline how Natural England will approach the discharge of its coastal access duty and will constitute the guiding principles for coastal access reports. It is therefore extremely important that Natural England gets it right, and that the concerns of all parties are taken into account before the scheme is sent for approval by the Secretary of State and then laid before Parliament, at which point there will be no recourse to amend it. As the Bill stands, there will be consultation on the outline scheme with “such persons” as Natural England “considers appropriate”. That leaves the choice of who gets consulted completely at the discretion of Natural England. How will Natural England determine who is appropriate? Surely public consultation would be preferable, so that all interested parties are given an opportunity to contribute, rather than an elite few chosen by Natural England.
Although Natural England has released the draft outline scheme, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has produced a draft section 3A order indicating both how access will be implemented and the changes that the Department proposes to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, both those documents are subject to change, especially the latter. So much is being left to the discretion of Natural England, and we are putting huge faith in an unelected body. It is hard to know what the final scheme will consist of, and the public must have a right to be consulted, in addition to the consultation that was held prior to the drafting of the Bill. The amendment seeks to ensure that all members of the public are given equal access to the consultation on the outline scheme before the scheme is approved. That means that the best informed version will reach the Secretary of State and Parliament.