Part of Crown Estate Bill [HL] - Committee (1st Day) – in the House of Lords at 6:00 pm on 14 October 2024.
I shall make a short contribution in agreement with Amendment 22 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.
When I was preparing for this debate, I looked at some figures, but they are very difficult to find. On the first group in Committee, I referred to the fact that we know that the Crown Estate has land worth more than £600 million in Wales, that it owns 65% of the coast and that it has 300,000 acres of land in Wales, but we do not know exactly how much money that raises in Wales. We know that, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, profits have more than doubled in the past year, growing from £443 million in 2022-23 to £1.1 billion in 2023-24, but there is very little clarity about the contribution of each individual nation to the total. In the interests of transparency, I certainly support Amendment 24. On Amendment 22, I cannot understand why none of the Parliaments of the UK sends a representative to sit on the board of the commission. I support those two amendments.