Small Farms and Family Businesses

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Leicester]

That this House takes note of the impact of the Government’s budget proposals on the future of small farms and family businesses.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to Conservative colleagues for giving me the opportunity to hold this very topical and important debate. I look forward to hearing what noble Lords have to say on the matter. Indeed, looking down the list I see that it is populated with titans from this House. I also look forward, albeit with some sadness, to the valedictory speech of my remarkable noble friend Lady Cumberlege. She has been a giant at the centre of healthcare for decades, and we are grateful to her for her many achievements.

The achievements by the Chancellor in the Budget are too many for me to list in 15 minutes, so I shall rely on noble Lords following me to elaborate on those I miss. The delinked BPS payments have been summarily cut, out of the blue, with no warning. Money that businesses had earmarked for growth or investment, or to pay the wages of a new tractor driver to undertake all the environmental work on a farm that I know of, has gone. Meanwhile, national insurance contributions have gone up and the baseline has come down. The living wage has gone up way beyond inflation again, with no recognition that this affects the pay differentiation of supervisors and junior managers who are just above employees on the minimum wage or living wage. This will have a huge effect on all business across the country. I know of a small GP surgery in Norfolk that now has another £250,000 added to its costs. Were we not told that this money was to plug the gap in NHS funding?

The cost of employment has become prohibitive, inflation is creeping up and interest rates remain stubbornly high. This Government are making the cost of business prohibitive. Then the Chancellor dropped the “A-bomb” in the Budget, which she followed with a “B-bomb”: agricultural property relief capped at £1 million as if it were personal wealth, instead of what it really is—a business asset.

The president of the CLA, Victoria Vyvyan, visited Lower Leighton Dairy in Wales a couple of weeks ago. It has invested millions of pounds in technology. It is a cutting-edge dairy, an incredible place with inquisitive animals that themselves are valued at over £1 million. Now, all that investment is going to be taxed on death. Will the dairy go to the bank to borrow £10 million again? I do not think so. Why would it bother?

All the CLA and NFU modelling shows that farmers and their businesses cannot afford this change. There is not the profitability in farms or in the diversified farm businesses to pay this tax. I have heard it said on the Government Benches that APR is a loophole—that is so not true. It is a specifically designed policy introduced in the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 to protect Britain’s family farms from being sold and broken up. For this reason, Governments of all parties have retained APR. APR and BPR are necessary tax reliefs that help people do business across multigenerational businesses.

Ironically, this Government were elected on a mandate for growth. In the rural economy we have the capacity to grow, so instead of taxing small businesses into non-existence, perhaps if they encouraged people to grow their businesses with the right policies, they might end up with more income tax.

While in opposition, Defra’s Secretary of State, Steve Reed, provided multiple reassurances privately and publicly to the NFU and the CLA that Labour had no intention of changing APR. Rural businesses now have no faith in the man or his party, although I have some sympathy for those at Defra and its hapless Ministers. They have been cut off at the knees by an unthinking Treasury.

Outside of agriculture, many small family businesses will be caught by this. According to BDO accountants, in one short month since the Budget, high street retailers had their worst slump since Covid, with November sales tumbling 5.8% year on year. Part-time Christmas job vacancies have fallen by a staggering 12.9% this year. Business confidence, as judged by the IoD, has nosedived to the lowest form since April 2020, plunging from minus 52 to minus 65.

Business leaders are pointing the finger directly at the Chancellor and her tax hikes, with national insurance contribution hikes alone expected to cost industry £7 billion. Wetherspoons boss Sir Tim Martin said:

“All democratic governments need to manage the relationship between an economic horse and the public services cart—society needs both. This Government has disincentivised and discouraged the horse”.


BPR is crucial for family business owners, helping them to plan for succession, with long-term strategies that retain value within the business to drive investment and growth. Changes to inheritance tax create uncertainty among family businesses, which will feed through to reductions in investment, headcount and turnover.

There are currently an estimated 4.8 million family-owned businesses in the UK. They are predominantly very small. Oxford Economics has estimated that 74% have zero employees, owned by people who are themselves self-employed, while 25% have between one and 49 employees. The vast majority—92%—of UK family businesses are worth more than £1 million.

Family Business UK commissioned CBI Economics to undertake research into the effects of the loss of this relief on family businesses. More than a quarter of family businesses expect to change ownership in the forecast period, which is the four and a half years that this Government might hope to have in office. Some 18% of businesses expect to change ownership between April 2026 and 2028, with a further 9% expecting to change ownership between April 2028 and 2030.

There will be a reduction in economic activity as a result of the Budget changes: 85% of family businesses say they will decrease investment by, on average, 17%. More than half—54%—will decrease headcount by an average of 10%. Four in 10—41%—are anticipating reductions in turnover, with an average loss of 7%. An overwhelming majority of family-owned businesses expect detrimental impacts from the changes to BPR, with 15% expecting to have to sell off their business entirely, 2% closing the entire business and liquidating it, and 2% locating the business overseas.

When BPR reliefs are reduced the Government believe that it will bring an increase in tax revenue and, bizarrely, an increase in UK economic activity. But the reality is that an increase in tax burden on businesses due to increased costs will lead to reduced investment, reduced headcount, reduced turnover, partial or full selling of the business, reduced stability and, crucially, reduced competitiveness versus foreign and non-family businesses that do not have to pay these charges or make tax planning a priority. The net result is that the total tax take will be smaller than the Government think they will get. In the process, they will have destroyed thousands of family businesses that are the bedrock of the country’s economy.

Every single Labour Government that ever existed left office with unemployment higher than when they came in; with this Budget, we will see more of the same. The Exchequer is expecting to raise £1.4 billion in tax revenue from family-owned businesses over a five-year period by changing BPR. However, the reality is that the Exchequer can expect a £2.6 billion reduction in total tax revenue from family-owned businesses, caused by reduced activity of those businesses in the same period: less production, less spending, less income and less national insurance contributions. The Exchequer will actually be expected to make a net fiscal loss of £1.26 billion over the next five years.

I return to family farms. Farming has a very small profit margin. We are talking about a return on capital of anything between 0.5% and 0.9% each year, from what a farm’s land, buildings, tractors, equipment and stock are worth. I predict that the impact of the brutal withdrawal of the remaining single farm payment of agri-funding, with no warning, will supress that surplus by a third—let us say a 0.5% return. A tax of 20% over a generation—typically 30 years—comes out at 0.66% recurring. That is clearly unpayable if someone’s return has dropped to 0.5% a year. Can the Minister please acknowledge the mathematics of this question?

Then there is the practicality of actually paying this death tax—because that is what it is, a tax on death. The first instalment has to be paid within six months of the date of death. This can be interest-free and paid over 10 years, but only as long as you have paid the first 10% within the first six months. But how many farms, quite complicated businesses, will even have completed probate by this time? District valuer officers have not dealt with these sorts of valuations for over 40 years—over a generation. I doubt very much whether they will be tooled up with enough resources to provide the service they should and ensure that their letter, or that of the capital taxes office, arrives within six months. What the successors pay on time to qualify for this interest-free allowance will therefore be guesswork. This is unnecessarily cruel when you have just lost your father.

The Government say that 75% of farmers claiming agricultural property relief will not be affected, but most claimants are not even farmers. Nearly 40% of land holdings that claim APR in England are under 50 acres, containing perhaps a couple of horse paddocks. These account for barely 4% of the farmed area, so the Government’s claim is specious. Furthermore, BPR is to be merged with APR, meaning that all tractors and combines—which can cost up to £0.5 million—and stock will fall into the equation too. Therefore, it is very likely that, if the owner of a small family farm dies, his or her successors will be charged IHT at the new rate of 20% on at least some of their assets, even if the land does not reach the APR threshold.

Suppose a farmer is hit with an IHT demand of £500,000; it is very unlikely that that money will be in the bank. Most farmers are either in debt or have very small cash reserves. It is unlikely that they will be able to pay that bill out of income, so they will have to sell some acres—admittedly, for quite a bit of money. However, this will make the farm less viable in future. Sale of land or assets, integral to the viability of the farm, will be the only way to get cash to pay the tax. In this case, they will have to realise an asset, with all the costs of selling it, and then from the profit of selling it, hand back a big chunk to the Government. Of course, they have just become liable for 24% capital gains tax too.

CLA modelling has suggested that, based on differing models of farm size, this may mean selling between 16% and 28% of the farm. A farm is not like a share portfolio or a collection of buy-to-let properties; it is so much more difficult and inefficient to try to sell 20% of a farm. The land cannot be consolidated or relocated.

Who will buy this land? It will not be the neighbouring family farm, as they will be in the same boat. It is more likely to be a very rich individual, to whom a 20% tax hit will not necessarily be a problem. It is much more likely to be a corporate farming business—a corporate that wants the land for energy generation or tree-planting and carbon sequestration; a charity such as the RSPB or the National Trust; a government body such as Natural England or the Forestry Commission; or a local council that may need it as a carbon land bank. What is the single factor that separates these large organisations from a family farmer? They do not die—I repeat to the Minister: they do not die—so they never have to pay this tax, whereas individuals do. That is simply unfair.

IHT is a death tax on family businesses and on small people. It is deeply unfair, when, as I have just illustrated, much larger and wealthier land-owning organisations are exempt from it. I would like the Minister to answer that. One thing I hope this debate does is to shine a spotlight on IHT generally. As I understand it, 96% of people in this country do not pay it and it does not raise a great deal of money.

What we are seeing now in some sections of the Labour Party is the old-school socialist view that land should not belong to an individual: yes, you can own a house, but land should belong to the state. That was Lenin’s view, and he deliberately expropriated land from an enormous number of people, with disastrous effect. Following the Budget, the Deputy Prime Minister was heard to say that, when a farmer dies, it is right that some of the value of the land comes back to the state. Really?

As Jeremy Clarkson said, if Rachel Reeves had wanted to attack landowners such as himself or Sir James Dyson,

“she would have used a sniper’s rifle, but she’s used a blunderbuss”.

I hope that, at the end of this debate, the Labour Government will have gained a greater understanding of the issues at stake. They must surely reconsider this disastrous Budget, or are they really determined to be this tribal and venal? If they are, it will not end well for them. This is structural vandalism of the farming ecosystem by a Government that did not consult, did not listen, did not learn and did not see the flaws in their plan, and that now need to stop, listen and think through the harm that their Budget proposals will cause. They need to step back and understand that APR and BPR are not tax loopholes; they are enablers of successful tax-paying businesses that take multiple generations to achieve the ability to operate in a highly competitive, difficult and volatile market.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, first I must apologise for not mentioning earlier my interests as laid out in the register. They include land ownership in Norfolk, let land, my own farming interests and managing arguably the most important national nature reserve in the land at Holkham.

This has been an excellent debate, with many excellent points made by noble Lords from all sides. I thank all Peers who have contributed. I started writing down everybody’s name, but it was pointless because everybody’s contribution has been incredibly meaningful, emotional and well researched. There were certain noble Lords who could not participate today, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Fuller, and those who were scratched. Other noble Lords were unable to speak on such a controversial topic by virtue of the committees they chair. It is only controversial because this Government made it so by producing such a venal Budget.

I thank noble Lords from the Conservatives, Lib Dems, Cross Benches and the Bishops for taking such an interest in this Bill. It must be very embarrassing that the Government had only one Member of their Back Benches speaking on it, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu—and she was speaking on our side of the argument. It is a great shame, and just demonstrates that this Government do not really seem to care about this issue. I feel sorry for the Minister having to read out that brief, parrot-fashion. He should credit Members of this House with some intelligence; we all spoke in this debate because we know something about it.

Unfortunately, this tin-eared Government have yet again demonstrated their lack of understanding of wealth creation other than through what is arguably their only understanding of it: the short-term and inevitably short-lived medium of taxation. With not a single Cabinet Minister having any real-world business experience of wealth creation, how could they? Before the general election, without exception, every single candidate for their top-100 target seats came from the public sector. Together, they have trumpeted the same old socialist mantra of misconceived wealth redistribution. With this Budget, they have completely missed their target.

The Minister was wise enough not to mention the £22 billion black hole. How we in this House are getting bored with it, as are the public. Last week, I discussed this very matter with the right honourable Jeremy Hunt. He, and we on these Benches, have rubbished that figure, and the OBR has stepped back from it. I hate to have to inform the Minister, but frankly the voters no longer believe it either. As the oldest democracy in the world, we are lucky enough to have a very sophisticated electorate. They can clearly see that the so-called black hole was entirely of Labour’s own making. They created it when they gave their chums in the unions—the train drivers and the junior doctors—huge pay rises without negotiating any change in their terms and conditions.

This Budget was sadly put together with no impact assessment, no consultation with Defra, no idea of how much revenue it would generate, and certainly no consideration whatever for the damage, and in many cases the destruction, it will cause to hundreds, maybe thousands, of small family farms and businesses.

We always hear this Government and their acolytes decrying the far right for rioting and for questioning or criticising the perceived wisdom of the intellectual elite and its progressive policies—and now, increasingly, for thought crime. Let us see it as it is: this is not a Labour Government; this is a far-left Government. History records that the far left has been far crueller and always does far more damage to its subjects, particularly its agrarian population, in its vainglorious pursuit of misplaced ideology. It is straight out of the World Economic Forum’s playbook: “In the future, you will own nothing and be happy”.

Motion agreed.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I also support my noble friend, who recently sponsored an important debate in the Moses Room on this very subject. I inform noble Lords, if they had not spotted it already, that this is a very modest measure. It is not instructing the Scottish Environment Protection Agency or the local planning authority; it is simply instructing the commissioners of the Crown Estate and asking them to be more responsible in terms of outlook to the environment and, in particular, to the obvious evidence that is accumulating about the damage being done to salmon and sea-trout.

I want to reinforce what I hope the Minister is going to say by giving him what I think it is the really important example of the River Lochy on the west coast of Scotland near Fort William. That was once a very important salmon river with a prolific angling catch of well over 1,500. It has gone downhill quite catastrophically: the numbers have decreased; the number of staff employed as ghillies on the river has gone right down; and the impact of tourism on the economy has been very badly affected.

About seven years ago, the two fish farms in Loch Linnhe were both fallowed for a year. The following year, the number of grilse coming into the river went up very sharply and the angling catch went up by a factor of three and a half. That seems to me to be quite compelling and overwhelming evidence of the damage that is being done, which my noble friend described so eloquently. I hope the Minister will accept this amendment because it is a modest amendment and, as I say, it is not actually affecting any government or local government organisation; it is simply affecting the commissioners and giving them this extra duty. I support my noble friend.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I declare interests as a trustee of the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust and president of the Wells-next-the-Sea RNLI station—I say that only because they both go out to sea. I apologise that I was not here at Second Reading on 2 September; I was in the Netherlands on business also relating to the environment. Like my noble friend Lord Trenchard, I agree that the main purpose of the Bill is to allow the Crown Estate to borrow and leverage against its assets and manage them in a way becoming of the 21st century.

I am astounded that the Crown Estate is not required to undertake the same level of environmental impact assessment that we do on the mainland. Amendment 37F is incredibly straightforward. It seeks to install in law a requirement for the Crown Estate to undertake an EIA, just like any other business on the mainland planning to undertake large-scale engineering works.

In preparation for this amendment, I spoke to a number of people in my local community on the coast of North Norfolk: Andy Frary of the Wells & District Inshore Fishermen’s Association; Bob Smith, the Wells-next-the-Sea harbourmaster; Leo Hambro, founder of Tidal Transit; and Professor Jenny Gill of the School of Biological Sciences at UEA—she is not really in my community any more, because she has just moved to Fife.

As the harbourmaster and I discussed, obviously the Crown Estate wants the rent, but this EIA needs to be rather more rigorous. If we insist that the Crown Estate will be required to undertake detailed environmental impact assessments, who will monitor that? Will it be the MMO? Bob Smith’s view is that the MMO is vastly removed from the coalfaces; it gives out the licences but has inexperienced staff and does not really understand local communities.

The fishermen I spoke to, the harbourmaster and I are very much for wind farms out to sea. We have marine protected areas and, ironically, once a wind farm is established, it becomes a sort of natural marine protected area. Rock armour is placed around the base of the wind turbines to protect them from big tides and scarring, et cetera. It then quickly attracts crustaceans—lobsters and crabs—and fish and there is a 50-metre “no fishing” rule for fishermen, who cannot get close to them. It is almost a sanctuary for all these crustacea. As they develop and thrive, they move out and the fishermen can then catch them.

There was also concern that giving licences to different companies for different wind farms was rather disjointed; they should be liaising on where their cables can come together out to sea so that they hit the land in one place. That has happened to an extent in North Norfolk, where they come ashore at Weybourne.

Professor Jenny Gill looks at this from an environmental point of view. The location of these wind farms is the most important thing. We need to avoid putting them where birds are—they are easier to monitor than fish and sea mammals. The concern is bird strike out to sea. Organisations such as the BTO and the RSPB have done a lot of work on flight heights of migratory birds and sea birds in relation to rotor speed and on whether bird strike is a big threat. Bob Smith surveys boats going out from Wells-next-the-Sea; maybe they are lucky and the wind farm they have been surveying is in the right place, but they come back and say, “We saw four birds today”. That damage is not happening.

In seeking this EIA, I am encouraging the Government to involve nature conservation organisations at an early stage so that they can be part of the planning process. Professor Gill mentioned that this is getting quite complicated. Beth Scott, professor in marine ecology at Aberdeen University, has worked on how tides work in open sea and form around tidal nodes and on whether putting static turbines on the ground changes the way tides work and the spatial way in which they move.

The big thing is making the planning process more transparent and getting conservation organisations at the table. They do not want to be adversarial; they are all at the green end of the scale and want to see a lot more of this renewable energy.

I had a very interesting conversation with Leo Hambro, of Tidal Transit. He operates crew transfer boats. I talked to him about the construction phase of these wind farms. He said that there have been improvements of late, in the last few years, including air bubble rings that are placed around the piling system which let out bubbles to reduce the sonic boom—which of course carries a long way underwater—therefore, we hope, mitigating damage to mammals. However, that has happened only recently.

When trenching, that is done either through some sort of underground machine that pulls a plough through the sand or, more often, through a large ship pulling a plough which turns over a trench a metre deep, into which the big cable is placed and then sand is placed back over it. If necessary, a few more rocks are placed on top of it. However, there really ought to be an EIA to decide which route these cables take. I suspect they probably take the shortest and cheapest route, but do they avoid mussel lays? They must avoid sunken ships, but off the coast of north Norfolk, in Cromer, we have a very important chalk reef, and it is important that that is protected.

To go back to crew transfer boats, Leo Hambro has seven of them. In fact, there are 200 around the UK and 700 around the world. Some 80% of them are in the UK and Europe because of the large-scale wind farms we have out to sea. To explain, these boats go out every day and take engineers to maintain and man the wind farms. The average stat for the industry is to use 1,500 litres of red diesel a day. In reality, he said they could use 2,500 to 4,000 litres a day, particularly if they are servicing a wind farm which is 45 miles away. He has to service East Anglia ONE from Lowestoft. These boats are going at 20 knots, so they are burning a lot of diesel.

It is not the case that when they get out there they switch their engines off. They have to spend up to two hours pushing against the turbine to make a safe platform for workers, transferring kit on and off the boat, et cetera. When they are then waiting for another three hours or so for the engineers to do their work, they have to stand off, but they do not drop an anchor and switch off; they have to run their engines to maintain generators and such on-board.

Leo Hambro is operating boats out of Wick, Grimsby, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. An interesting point to which I hope the Minister pays attention is that one of his boats is being converted to run on pure electric. That is being done in Great Yarmouth and should be ready for May 2025, thanks to DfT UK SHORE funding. It also includes offshore and onshore charging infrastructure, which I will come to in a second. The reason I mention these boats is that, for 200 boats using 2,500 litres of red diesel a day on average, five days a week, 50 days a year, that is 125 million litres of diesel.

That takes me to exhausts. AdBlue is added to the exhaust to reduce toxins, including nitrous oxide and sulphur oxide, and diesel particulates. AdBlue is made of synthetic ammonia—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Watch the time.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

Am I not allowed 15 minutes?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

No.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My apologies—this is it. AdBlue is not made from green ammonia. All these marine exhausts omit their fumes below the water to keep the exhausts cool. AdBlue is depositing heavy metal poisoning into the sea. I will stop there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords for the points raised during this debate and for powerfully highlighting such important issues. I will respond to the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Douglas-Miller—who was the Minister for Animal Health and Welfare in the previous Government—and the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, which all touch on environmental and animal welfare protections.

These amendments would require the Crown commissioners to assess, on an ongoing basis, the environmental impact and animal welfare standards of, respectively, salmon farms, offshore energy installation and generation and aquacultural practices on the Crown Estate. Where that assessment determines that a salmon farm, a relevant offshore energy installation and generation, or relevant aquaculture is causing environmental damage or has significant animal welfare issues, the Crown Estate would be required to revoke the relevant licence. The commissioners would also be required to make the same assessment of any applications for new licences for salmon farms or the installation and generation of offshore energy on the estate. Where the commissioners determine that an application may cause environmental damage or raises significant animal welfare concerns, the Crown Estate must refuse the application.

The Government wholeheartedly support the objectives behind these amendments. It might help noble Lords if I set out the protections that currently exist in regulations and legislation, which apply regardless of the landlord. All aquaculture activity in England, including salmon farming, is regulated with the intention of ensuring that it is carried out in a responsible manner that respects the environment and protects consumer health and animal welfare, although I appreciate from the powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that this intent is not currently being achieved. At present, virtually all salmon aquaculture in the UK takes place in Scotland. As has been observed, the management of the Crown Estate in Scotland is a devolved matter.

The Government’s starting point is that these amendments may duplicate existing protections that already exist in legislation or protections that are required by regulators as part of the licensing process for aquaculture and offshore energy installations. Specifically, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 makes it an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to any protected animal. The assimilated Council Regulation No. 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing requires that farmed fish are spared avoidable pain, distress or suffering during their killing and related operations. The Aquatic Animal Health (England and Wales) Regulations 2009 contain provisions to protect farmed fish from serious disease by introducing a system of authorisation for businesses involved in aquaculture.

To address a point on environmental impacts made by the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 require the competent authority—in this context, the Crown Estate —to determine whether a plan or project is likely to have a significant effect on a European marine site. If so, it is then subject to an appropriate assessment. If that assessment shows that the plan or project could have an adverse impact on the integrity of the site that cannot be mitigated, authorisation of the activity must be refused unless specific derogations apply. For marine areas that are designated as a marine conservation zone under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, a marine conservation zone assessment is carried out by the public authority to test activities that may hinder the achievement of the conservation objectives of the specific zone and decide from the assessments whether the application for an activity can be authorised.

The Crown Estate seeks to supports the regulators through the inclusion of necessary requirements on any leases and requires all practitioners to comply fully with all legal obligations, including animal welfare practices. When developing or managing its assets, especially in areas such as offshore wind farms, coastal management and urban redevelopment, the Crown Estate must comply with regulations that require environmental impact assessments. An example of this happening in practice was in February 2017, when the Crown Estate launched an opportunity for existing wind farms to apply for project extensions. Following a habitats regulations assessment, the Crown Estate confirmed that seven of these extension application projects would progress to the award of development rights.

The Crown Estate also received an application for an extension project where the majority of the site of the proposed extension sat within the Inner Dowsing, Race Bank and North Ridge special area of conservation. The plan-level habitats regulations assessment determined that it would not be possible to rule out an adverse effect on the integrity of the special area of conservation. Therefore, the Crown Estate decided that this extension project would not progress to the award of leasing rights as part of the 2017 extensions round.

On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about looking at impacts holistically, that is exactly what this Bill seeks, by enabling the Crown Estate to map the whole seabed and therefore improve the understanding of how to ensure benefits for nature for the long term.

I would be interested to know in due course whether noble Lords consider that these existing regulations and the legislation are inadequate or are currently being inadequately applied. I hope that, for now, the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Douglas-Miller, and the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, feel able not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

Is the Minister able to address the issue of pollution from all these crew transfer boats? I mentioned 125 million litres of diesel every year. If we are to have many more wind farms out to sea, that amount of diesel may get very large. Can he comment on converting these boats to electric?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am afraid that is not something I know about, but I am happy to write to the noble Earl.