Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, my Amendment 261 is to be considered in this group. Specifically, it would require that an EDP must pay not just regard but due regard to the local nature recovery strategy that has been published by the appropriate public authorities for that area. This matters. We have been on this journey, right across the country. I genuinely believe that, rather than the EDPs we are debating, the local nature recovery strategies will be the building blocks of how we rescue nature in this country. The reason for that is that local people know what is going on, and have a sense of the relationship between place and their community, and there are powers in local government to consider not only planning decisions but other aspects of infrastructure that come together towards it. By and large, across our country, the local nature recovery strategies are being made at county level, though that is not true in every geographic county. There are some unitary councils—such as Northamptonshire, though I cannot remember the reason now—where they are split in two, which is somewhat sad. Nature knows no boundaries of administrative convenience of how councils are determined. Building on the Lawton principles, which will be absolutely vital in trying to ensure that we have nature recovery, it is important that public authorities at the higher level—key to this is that it is the upper tier, not the lower tier, that tends to do the planning—have due regard to the discussions about what has been put in place. That will have already gone through extensive consultation, as is happening right now, right around the country.