Speeches by Chowns.

“rose—”

“The Bill overrides that.”

“rose—”

“I have two points. The first was raised by the Office for Environmental Protection in its advice. I was going to come to it when discussing clause 58, because it is specifically about the amendment of EDPs. Only Natural England and the Secretary of State get to decide if an EDP should be amended. There is not even any …”

“I apologise.”

“rose—”

“With respect, I do not think that the point made by the shadow Minister does make the Minister’s case for him, because it was about taking a site-by-site approach, which is not a good analogy here. We already have capacity under existing environmental law to take a district-wide approach—for example, district-level lic…”

“rose—”

“rose—”

“It is important: the whole point of Committee is to look at the detail and really get to grips with it. Replacing “are likely to” with “will”, as my amendment seeks to do, would not make it necessary to conduct a site-by-site assessment. It relates to the wording that clause 55 applies to the EDP overall. It is about t…”

“Will the Minister explicitly address the concerns expressed by the OEP, in its advice on clause 58, about the fact that there is no requirement to consult? The Secretary of State “may direct” Natural England to consult on an amendment, but does not have to. There is also no mandatory requirement to initiate a review or…”

“Where in clause 58 does it specify that consultation should or should not happen? I cannot see it.”

“rose—”

“I beg to move amendment 54, in clause 61, page 93, line 2, at end insert— “(2A) Natural England may only accept a request if Natural England is satisfied that the developer has taken reasonable steps to appropriately apply the mitigation hierarchy, including by seeking to avoid harm to any protected feature. (2B) For t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Dr Huq. I thank the Minister for his comments. He emphasised that his intention in the Bill is to continue to protect nature at the same level, but differently. He emphasised a different but not worse approach. I share his desire to ensure that even if it is differe…”

“I have a genuine question and concern. Under the Bill, Natural England has responsibility, as advisers, preparers, developers and deliverers, to implement the EDPs, and it is also judge and jury on the effectiveness of EDPs and whether they are doing the job that they are intended to do. That is a lot of functions to g…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Mrs Hobhouse. The amendment relates to the mitigation hierarchy. As previously, I refer to the advice from the Office for Environmental Protection, which called particular attention to the weakening of the mitigation hierarchy in the wording of the Bill. The OEP adv…”

“I have two points. The Minister has claimed that the Bill maintains the mitigation hierarchy. Can he point to where that is stated in the Bill? I cannot see it; I have just checked back on clause 53, which deals with the preparation of EDPs, but it is not specified. Where is it specified in the Bill that it maintains t…”

“I rise to speak to amendment 3, a crucial amendment relating to timing. The current wording in clause 52 opens the door to conservation measures in EDPs coming long after the environmental features that they relate to having been damaged. Such a delay could be fatal to some habitats and species that have already suffer…”

“I thank the Minister, but just observe that if we can simply trust Natural England to consult anybody that it thinks relevant, there is no need for any list in clause 54(1). We could just keep paragraph (h), which refers to “any other public authority Natural England considers should be consulted”. The fact that there …”