Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 289. Before I do so, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, as he came to what I think is the nub of this group and what the question really is. In my mind, it is this: are we content with the Government’s amendment, which changes the overall improvement test so that the wording is “materially outweigh”, or do we want it to be, as in the amendment from my noble friend and others, significant and measurable? As it happens, I agree with my noble friend and others that “measurably” and “materially” probably have meanings that are alike, but “significantly” should tell us something about the nature of the guidance. However, we need to think very carefully about putting in “significantly”, because there will be material improvements that are not regarded as significant. Would that mean that there would be environmental delivery plans that could not be made because they would not pass the overall improvement test, even where they would lead to a material improvement? We need to think about this carefully. There is no simple way to use particular words in legislation. They have their plain meaning, and if we were to say “significantly and measurably”, we mean that there is something beyond measurable that is significant. The guidance would need to say that. I raise this point because, if I were looking for the plain meaning, “materially” helps us a lot because it shows that there must be something where you can literally distinguish between the present situation and the future situation. On Secretaries of State, I am confused. I always thought that, conventionally, we just put “the Secretary of State” into legislation. As a former civil servant, I remember people who sat in the same office, behind the same desk, working for Secretaries of State whose titles and departmental boundaries regularly changed. Therefore, trying to specify the Secretary of State for anything in legislation is a mistake—you just put in “the Secretary of State” and work out which one it is subsequently. My Amendment 289 is about the conservation measures that are identified but not expected to be needed. This is quite interesting because, if they have been identified but are not needed to secure the overall improvement test, they wait there, as it were, until we reach the point at which the Secretary of State is making the decision. If the Secretary of State determines that the overall improvement test has been met but in doing so has had to take into account conservation measures that were not expected to be needed, as referred to in Clause 55(5), my amendment would require that determination to make it clear that those conservation measures have been added, just so there is transparency and clarity. Of course, that flows into what is required in terms of the levy and the obligations that have to be met out of the nature restoration fund.