Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Humphreys and Lord Wigley

Committee stage
Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

Before I pursue the subject of the amendment, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on that subject. I suggest that, if the Crown Estate has the powers, it also has the responsibilities that go with it. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has highlighted some important responsibilities, and I suspect that it will need a lot more attention in coming months and years.

I shall speak primarily once again on issues relating to the devolved dimension. It is to better understand the financial dealings of the Crown Estate in Wales that Amendment 24 in my name and that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Humphreys, is on the Marshalled List. It asks for the disaggregation of the annual reporting of capital and revenue items to provide transparency in regard to the Crown Estate finances relating to Wales, England and Northern Ireland respectively. We have gone through some of the general arguments in this sphere, so I am not going to repeat them, but I stress that this is a modest proposal that surely cannot be rejected by any Government who have some sympathy with the position of the devolved Government.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

I shall make a short contribution in agreement with Amendment 22 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

When I was preparing for this debate, I looked at some figures, but they are very difficult to find. On the first group in Committee, I referred to the fact that we know that the Crown Estate has land worth more than £600 million in Wales, that it owns 65% of the coast and that it has 300,000 acres of land in Wales, but we do not know exactly how much money that raises in Wales. We know that, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, profits have more than doubled in the past year, growing from £443 million in 2022-23 to £1.1 billion in 2023-24, but there is very little clarity about the contribution of each individual nation to the total. In the interests of transparency, I certainly support Amendment 24. On Amendment 22, I cannot understand why none of the Parliaments of the UK sends a representative to sit on the board of the commission. I support those two amendments.