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Mr. Swire: I declare an interest as a member of the governing council of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. I wonder whether the RNLI has been consulted in any of that.
Ann McKechin: That obviously relates to plans that are to come in the future, but we certainly envisage that there should be the widest possible consultation in any planning structure, and in the Bill we have made it clear that we do not seek to limit the consultations that are to be held and want to ensure that, when we devise marine plans and marine plan strategies, there is the widest possible public consultation. Clearly, the RNLI will be a relevant body in many cases.
Amendment 32 would place an unnecessary additional burden on the resources available to marine plan authorities. Furthermore, paragraph (3) of schedule 6 goes beyond the requirement set out in paragraph (9)(2)(h) to have regard to other terrestrial plans and strategies by requiring the marine plan authorities to
“take all reasonable steps to secure that the plan is compatible with”
plans developed as part of the terrestrial planning system. Clearly, that goes beyond a requirement merely to have regard to such plans. Provisions in clause 62 will enable a marine plan to be challenged before the courts if a marine plan authority failed to comply with that compatibility requirement or to have regard to the other plans mentioned in paragraph (9)(2)(h) of schedule 6.
I will take this opportunity to reassure members of the Committee that the integration of marine and terrestrial planning at the coast has been of fundamental importance to the development of our proposals from the very beginning. The land and sea, as the hon. Member for St. Ives has pointed out, are inextricably linked. Many actions on the land have an impact on the sea and vice versa. For that reason, it is important that the planning and management of both areas is as integrated as possible, with both systems working effectively together to enable seamless and holistic management of the area. To that end, we have worked extensively with the Local Government Association’s coastal issues special interest group, the Royal Town Planning Institute and numerous key stakeholders to understand how best to enable the integration of marine planning with what happens on land and to identify the most appropriate mechanism to involve local authorities in that process.
Local authorities already lead in the planning and management of the terrestrial components of the coast and in the development of the previously mentioned local development plans and shoreline management plans, and invariably they are instrumental in the partnership development of estuary management plans. Local authorities contain a wealth of specialised and knowledgeable skills and expertise, which the MMO will need fully to incorporate, utilise and build on throughout its marine planning process and beyond into the majority of its functions. Importantly, local authorities also represent the interests of their communities and implement the will of the locally and democratically elected representatives. Therefore, I assure hon. Members that full local authority involvement in the marine planning process will be key to the successful implementation of marine planning from the early stages of development through to implementation, monitoring and review. The provisions within the Bill will support and encourage the integration of planning systems at the coast and will go further than is proposed in amendment 32.
Amendment 31 is not necessary, too, as the result that it seeks is already achievable under the current drafting and could therefore cast doubt on how existing provisions should be interpreted. In light of those reassurances, I hope that hon. Members will withdraw their amendments, as they indicated that they would.
The Chairman: Order. There is no need to withdraw them, as they have not been moved.
Andrew George: Thank you for reminding me that I have not moved my amendment, Mr. Gale. My intention was to probe this issue, which we might come back to on Report. I do not know what I need to do next, under the rules, so I seek your guidance, Mr. Gale. Must I move the amendments to entitle myself to seek to do something on Report?
The Chairman: It is worth clarifying the position for the benefit of all members of the Committee, one or two of whom have indicated to me that their knowledge of procedure is a little rusty. That probably goes for the Chair as well. We move only the lead amendment, and it is open to any other Member to seek to move any other amendment that is grouped with the lead amendment, but the Chair requires notice and will then decide whether to take that. Any amendment that is moved in Committee is unlikely to be selected for debate on Report, so the fundamental principle is that if you wish to come back to something, you should not push it in Committee and should then take a further look at it on Report. I hope that that clarifies the position.
Andrew George: I am very grateful to you for that explanation, Mr. Gale. Perhaps by accident, I have managed to pursue the right strategy on this occasion. Of course, I do not wish to move the amendments because, having listened to the Minister’s response, I might like to come back to the issue on Report.
A theme that runs through the Bill is that we are quango-ising decision taking with regard to the intertidal zone and the marine resource. I am troubled by the issue of democratic accountability for decisions that are taken in areas reasonably adjacent to the coastline in relation to what the Minister has referred to as the seamless provision in the Bill regarding what one might argue is the intertidal zone itself. I remain unconvinced that the Government have quite got the balance right.
The Minister said that amendment 32 would place an unreasonable burden on resources—I think that that was the terminology that she used—but democracy places a burden on resources. That is the nature of democracy, as we know from the cost to the taxpayer of maintaining the House of Commons and ensuring that we have a democratically accountable body to take decisions. Equally, the terrestrial authorities—the local authorities—have a clear interest in future development on the coastline and in maintaining the integrity of local development plans and the frameworks in which they operate, and the Bill should take cognisance of that.
Finally, by failing to acknowledge further the role and importance of locally democratically elected local authorities, the Bill appears to contradict a number of the Government’s other stated intentions and aims to ensure that there is local democracy as set out in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
12.15 pm
Ann McKechin: I assure the hon. Gentleman and other members of the Committee that we fully intend to involve the local community and local authorities, as well as business people and other people with an interest in the marine environment, in the preparation of each marine plan. The proposal will require a full public consultation on the draft plan that is created. There will be no lack of engagement. We are very clear that we want a rigorous consultation process and for the MMO to have full regard to it when preparing its final plan. As I said earlier, that is why we believe that local authorities are very important. We believe that local authorities are a key partner not only in the consultation process, but in the actual implementation of the plan that follows it.
Andrew George: I am grateful to the Minister for her intervention. However, that, of course, does not preclude the conclusion of that consultation and consideration ignoring and overruling the interests of the local authority. On behalf of those local authorities with an interest in the coast and in the intertidal zone in particular, that is the concern that I want to articulate to the Minister. While the processes described in the Bill would allow the marine authorities to go through the motions, the local authorities could be ignored in that process. Having said that, I have had the opportunity to air the issue. The lack of democratic accountability, in some respects, is a theme that runs through the Bill. We may well come back to the issue, if not later in Committee then on Report.
Amendment 24 agreed to.
Clause 51, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 6 agreed to.
Clauses 52 to 70 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 71

Licences
Mr. Benyon: I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 71, page 48, line 30, at end insert—
‘(1A) This decision shall be made within 16 weeks of the application.’.
Assessments must be considered and a decision reached within three months. There is a requirement that onshore planning applications are considered within 16 weeks.
Subsection (1) outlines the conditions for granting licences. Our amendment requires that assessments must be considered and a decision reached within 16 weeks. As the Bill stands, there is no time limit on the consideration of marine licence applications. Without committing marine licensing authorities to a certain time scale—I am happy to say at this stage that I am relatively flexible on what that time scale should be—we are leaving the system open to massive backlogs and delays. Considering the potential lists of activities that will require a licence, it is important that we do not open up small businesses, in particular, to a potential loss of earnings through the lack of a licensing time scale.
The amendment also considers the renewable energy industry. Time is of the essence for marine developers. They may be funded by venture capital, and delays cost money. Unless we insist on some sort of defined time scale, it is conceivable that important developments that will play a great part in dealing with our renewable energy commitments will be affected.
Mr. Williams: I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s amendment to put a time limit on dealing with licence applications. The explanatory statement mentions onshore planning applications, but does the same requirement apply to onshore licence applications? There is a slight difference between planning applications and licence applications.
Mr. Benyon: I am seeking to develop a degree of consistency. I am not entirely certain what the requirements are on the whole range of onshore licensing, but we certainly have a well developed and accepted system of time limits in relation to planning. I do not see why we should not impose that on marine licence applications. Other countries do that as well.
Mr. Swire: My hon. Friend is making a point with which I have some sympathy. There also seems to be nothing in the clause about an appeals process. Given that, as my hon. Friend has said, many of the applications will be funded by the private sector and that time costs money, should the Bill not also contain something about an appeals process if, for whatever reason, the initial application is refused?
Mr. Benyon: My hon. Friend makes a good point, and this may be an opportunity to tease out of the Minister whether we can expand the amendment to include that sort of requirement. Other countries seem to manage in terms of marine management licensing. I was interested to read that South Africa has a legal framework that requires environmental impact assessments to be considered and a decision reached within three months. I therefore hope that the Minister will look favourably on imposing some sort of time limit.
The Chairman: Before we go down that road, may I draw hon. Members’ attention to clause 73, which may cover part of the issue that has just been raised? I do not want to have the debate twice; if you have it now, that is fine by me.
Mr. Williams: I have a certain amount of interest in the issue, and I have sympathy for the amendment. My interest arises out of onshore licensing by Government authorities and the way in which that must be done to a standard in order to ensure that the environment is safeguarded. Imposing a specific time limit should in some way reflect the complexity of the application, because my experience is that the conditions that are put on a licence must be both practicable and enforceable. On a large pipeline that went through Wales, for example, there should have been a statement at each stage of the crossing of various streams in relation to how adverse effects on those streams could be mitigated, but such statements were not included as conditions in the licence.
While I have some sympathy with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Newbury, certain minor applications should be dealt with on a shorter time scale than larger ones, which needs to be reflected in the scale and complexity of the application. That would help in our future deliberations, because we will later discuss clauses on enforcement. Does the licensing authority have the necessary capacity to ensure that it can enforce the conditions? It is one thing to put a condition on a licence, but it is another to enforce it when a rather large organisation that is pushing ahead with a development has more of an eye on completing that development than on complying with the conditions.
The hon. Gentleman has raised a good issue, and I look forward to the Minister’s response, but the issue involves an option of proportionality that depends upon the size and complexity of the applications.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Let me say first that we agree with the sentiment behind the amendment. In fact, one criticism of the current licensing system is that applicants are uncertain about when their applications for a licence will be determined, and we are certainly looking to improve that in the Bill. To pick up the points made by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, however, an arbitrary time limit in the Bill is not the way to proceed, and I will explain why in a moment. None the less, I think that we can do something about the issue.
As has been said, the activities and developments that the marine licensing regime has to encompass are incredibly varied in scale and nature. They include everything from jetties built at the bottom of people’s gardens to pilot offshore energy schemes, aggregate dredging, harbour developments, laying submarine cables and pipelines, and the creation of artificial reefs, which is something that we are hearing more about.
The varied nature of such projects is matched only by their size and complexity and sometimes by the controversy over what they involve, which can go from the insertion of a few piles to the construction of a huge marina. Projects also take place in a wide variety of environments, which can be miles out to sea, in intertidal areas, in marine conservation zones or in sites that are protected under European legislation.
For each application, the licensing authority will have regard to the need to protect the environment and human health and to prevent interference with other uses of the sea. It will also factor in marine plans, socio-economic issues and anything else that it considers relevant. All those factors will be unique to every application and will need to be given the due consideration that they deserve and which is required under law.
Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con): I take the Minister’s point, but do not similar considerations apply to onshore planning applications? Is it not the case that a sensible developer will understand that the statutory time limit for such planning applications frequently cannot be adhered to and will allow the determining authority more time? The difficulty here is that no time is stipulated, so it is not possible to have such a negotiation.
 
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