Clause 305
Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Huw Irranca-Davies (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Marine and Natural Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Ogmore, Labour)
It may help if I expand on what we intend this part of the Bill to do. The Secretary of State is responsible in England for contributing to the network of marine protected areas, which will include all relevant areas. That means, in addition to marine conservation zones, sites of special scientific interest, among others. We must give the Secretary of State the ability to select sites that will form the network for which he is responsible. It would be wrong to make him accountable for a network and then deny him the right to designate the sites for it. There is no argument that the Secretary of State should be responsible for selecting the other marine protected areas in the network—marine conservation zones, special areas of conservation, special protection areas and Ramsar sites for important wetlands. On that basis, it would be odd to legislate for the Secretary of State not to have that power for the marine aspects of SSSIs.
We have to take account of the fact that biology, ecology and the vast variety of wildlife do not recognise those administrative boundaries. The problem is that habitats do not always fall neatly into terrestrial or marine areas, which is precisely what schedule 13 is about. We need to provide clarity and an administrative way to deal with that overlap. On the marine side, the Secretary of State is responsible for delivery; on the land side, Natural England is. I am a little concerned about one potential way forward. If we were to strip out the Secretary of State’s role so that he does not have the power of direction, a non-elected public body would be placed higher in the pecking order of decision making in the marine area than the elected Minister of the Crown, whom Parliament had made responsible for delivery.