Member

The Minister said in his Second Reading response —I paraphrase here, and he will probably shudder when he hears me—that this Bill gives the Crown Estate more flexibility and, as a result, it will be able to do more good things for all these areas. I hope that I am not misrepresenting him. That is probably true, but it is not enough. This thing is too big to leave to the good will of the Crown Estate commissioners or some theory of trickle down for the environment as a result of a more vibrant economy. The Minister may say that the Crown Estate already has a strategic objective on promoting the natural environment and biodiversity. Indeed, in one of his responses to an earlier amendment, he outlined a whole range of good things that the Crown Estate is doing on biodiversity—but they are all voluntary; they are all at the whim of the Crown Estate commissioners. That is just too risky in the case of an organisation as big, influential and crucial as it is to legal commitments that the Government must make.