Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, I am very supportive of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and co-signed by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I would actually encourage the noble Baroness to retable Amendment 242A, if she is allowed to, because I do not think we will have deliberated on it—I am sure the Public Bill Office can advise—and it will work well, as she says, next week. On Amendments 185F and 185G, the noble Baroness made a very good point. This is one of my wider frustrations with aspects of people using certain things, certain regulations or “the nature” as an excuse. As the noble Baroness has well laid out, quite often it can be a factor: there are things that can change—rulings and decisions about licensing. The abstraction of water is one example I have used before when talking about the impact—that happened at Sizewell C. Nevertheless, one of my wider points would be that, if you really want to accelerate a lot of infrastructure, do not start planning to build stuff in a place that has already been designated as the most important for nature in this country; find somewhere else, and think it through. One reason why quite a lot of people move to certain places in the country is that they are beautiful, environmental places. I do not want to go over Sizewell C, and I will keep to the point of the regulation, but this is really a way to future-proof and to get a lot of this infrastructure flowing. There are things that we could get into about which species are the right ones to consider in habitat regulations; there are other debates forming about whether we should look after only things that are really at risk. That does not necessarily work. We have already heard today about the importance of global biodiversity and chalk streams, but I think this is a very useful amendment. I am glad that we are doing at least part of the debate today, because it will give the Government time over the weekend to think about whether their modest proposals in revising Part 3, which are welcome, really go far enough to help local communities, local developers and local councillors so that we can move forward. By getting rid of some of these unnecessary arguments, we would have the homes and the development that are much desired, and we would still have places, right around our country, that are special for nature and special for our planet.