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Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill
8.30 pm
Consideration of amendments on Report resumed on Clause 14.
Baroness Byford moved Amendment No. 88:
"( ) The Secretary of State shall make grants to meet Natural England's costs in carrying out its duties under sections 3(1), (2), (4) and 4(1) and in complying with directions given by the Secretary of State under section 16."
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, on 1 February, at col. 293 of Hansard, I questioned the Minister about the funding of Natural England and the use of lottery money to accomplish some of its aims. On 8 February, the Minister provided additional detail, for which I am grateful. We have read the Hansards concerned most carefully, and we still feel that the Minister said that the bodies that would form Natural England spent about £360 million a year. He said that, of that, some £17 million was obtained from the lottery and that that element would be limited to £10 million over the next two years. I cannot be sure whether that means that Natural England will be £7 million short of current receipts in each of the next two years or that the income will take two years to drop from £17 million to £10 million. Either way, I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is a sizeable sum.
Natural England's mandatory duties must be given assured funding. Those duties include review, consultation, standards and advice and the following of general or specific directions. I can in no way estimate what fulfilling those duties will cost, in spite of the figures from the regulatory impact assessment, but I assume that Natural England will be constructed to deliver its mandatory duties. The rest of its duties should be added as and when external funding is found. That could come from government, the lottery, loans or private donations, but it would not be used to fund Natural England's prime functions.
Natural England should be able to count on the full funding necessary to fulfil its primary and mandatory role. So far, such an assurance has not been incorporated in the Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, the amendment would require certain areas of Natural England's work to be funded totally by government grant. Those areas would be any reviews relating to the general purpose; research activities; compliance with UK common standards established by the JNCC; provision of advice to public authorities; and compliance with any direction from the Secretary of State. Although we would expect all those areas of work normally to be funded from Natural England's core funding from government, we do not categorically rule out the possibility that Natural
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England could utilise other sources of funding. One example may be European co-financing or other EU funding sources such as the LIFE regulation. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, would not wish Natural England to be excluded from applying for such funding. Programmes funded by the lottery have a limited life. It is too early to say whether individual programmes will be replaced.
We understand the noble Baroness's concern that Natural England should be properly funded and that it should not be too reliant on, for example, lottery funding for top-up. I can merely reiterate some of the reassurances that I have given previously and highlight the fact that lottery income represents a small but significant element of the current bodies' income. They have not been encouraged by government to seek alternate funding from lottery sources for their core work. Nor will we encourage Natural England to do so once it is established. Rather, those bodies have been able to use their expertise to deliver the lottery distributors' aims, and we have encouraged them to do so. The noble Baroness expressed fear in an earlier debate that money would be diverted from charities and voluntary bodies, but the opposite has been the case. The bulk of lottery money that is given to the confederation bodies, English Nature and the Countryside Agency, is passed on to local communities. Confederation bodies are assisting lottery distributors by making available their grant-giving machinery. In the case of the local heritage initiative, they were successful in attracting more than £1m of private sector sponsorship.
The noble Baroness asked about the current position. As she said, that income amounts to £17 million or about 5 per cent of the bodies' total expenditure of £360 million. That does not include EU co-funding of the agri-environment programme or the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. Much the largest source of income has been the lottery. During the next two years, income is projected to drop to around £10 million, unless it is replaced by sums not yet awarded. The vast majority of that is where the bodies act as a distributor rather than a recipient of funding. I hope that the noble Baroness is satisfied by my response.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I am not sure that I am satisfied, but I thank the Minister for her response. I have not referred on Report to my earlier discussions with the confederation bodies, but I was trying to make sure that funding would be guaranteed for the mandatory responsibilities that Natural England would undertake. I accept that it may look to additional sources of funding for other projects, but I was not talking about that sort of funding. I was seeking clarification on the core funding for the successful operation of the body. I will read carefully what the Minister said. It is not an item of major concern, but it is of concern. The Minister spoke about possible EU and agri-environment money, but that
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money will not definitely be available in the amounts that it has been in the past. That is why I sought greater clarification. I thank the Minister for her response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 89 to 92 not moved.]
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 93:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in Committee, we were asked by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, to consider whether any guidance issued by the Secretary of State should be published "comtemporaneously". We could not accept that wording but could not argue with the logic and principle of his amendment and undertook to come back to the matter on Report.
We believe that there ought to be a degree of consistency in the Bill and, once we had decided that it was right to publish such decisions as soon as was practicable, we could see no good justification for not applying it to all decisions made by the Secretary of State under the Bill. Therefore, this group of government amendments adds various requirements that the Secretary of State should publish the directions, guidance and lists which he may issue under the Bill,
after their issue. I hope that the noble Duke is pleased with the response. I commend the other amendments in the group, and I beg to move.
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, we thank the Government and the Minister for agreeing to address the issue that we raised in our amendments in Committee about how Natural England had to follow up on its policy developments.
The wording is probably the most practical that can be achieved for all the categories of guiding, directing, advising and all the other things that Natural England will be called on to do. It has also relieved us of the need to get our tongues around the word "contemporaneously" more than once this evening. We must thank the team on the Bill that this option is not quite as obscure as what apparently came up in debate yesterday, where the Government had to dispose of the phrase "the effluxion of time" in favour of slightly simpler wording. Now we are just left with having to get our tongues around "practicable". We welcome the amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 95 and 96 not moved.]
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Lord Bach moved Amendment No. 97:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
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