Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Russell and Baroness Kramer

Committee stage
Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendments 29 and 30 in this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for the powerful points he has made, particularly around our 2030 commitment, and I have co-signed his Amendment 28. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Young of Old Scone; I very much support Amendment 25 and nearly all the amendments in this group. Adding environmental protections to the Bill is a key element of our work.

My Amendment 29 would require the commissioners to carry out their duties under subsection (3) with regard to sustainable development, economic development, regeneration, social well-being and environmental well-being. We welcome the plans to update the borrowing and investment powers of the Crown Estate, but we strongly feel that new and greater roles should come with updated responsibilities. The Crown Estate sits in a unique space and position. The land assets are owned by the Crown and managed by the Crown Estate and its commissioners, and they are mandated by Parliament to deliver a profit for the Treasury. The Crown Estate, in effect, floats in a unique position: it manages its land holding and assets, which really belong to the nation, but it is managed as a sub-department of the Treasury, away from much parliamentary scrutiny.

The year 1961 was a long time ago; we lived in a very different world then, as has been said. Our understanding of the environment and the need for nature protection was far less developed, as was any sense of facing an acute environmental and nature crisis. The Bill, as the Government have drafted it, is far too narrow; that is why all these amendments have been tabled. I understand the need for expediency and for the Government to put in the two clauses to amend the borrowing powers so that we can get on with GB Energy. That is all fine, but you cannot revisit a 1961 Act and expect to solely put in two clauses without updating all the other aspects of life and the world that have developed since.

My Amendment 29 shamelessly and purposely copies the text from the Scottish Crown Estate Act 2019, as I believe that these provisions are a useful precedent in our deliberation of these matters here today. When the Scottish Parliament considered many of the exact same matters that we are looking at, its conclusion was that these updated powers were useful, necessary and a helpful update to the powers contained in the original Crown Estate Act 1961. Further, they were agreed and enacted by that Parliament, and have been in force for over five years now. Unless the Minister wants to contradict me, my understanding is that, since they were passed, these new powers have not had any undue impacts on the ability of the Scottish Crown Estate to conduct its business free of undue regulation or burden. The devolution question has already been discussed, but my thinking in tabling this amendment was that I felt, in updating responsibilities, that there was value in seeking to ensure the same duties and responsibilities applied to all the devolved aspects of the Crown Estate’s land in Great Britain, and I felt that this was useful for the Crown Estate’s ability to operate and not be burdensome.

My Amendment 30 places a nature recovery duty on the Crown Estate. The amendment defines a nature recovery duty as including

“taking steps to … embed nature into spatial planning and seabed leasing … allocate space for nature recovery in all projects, and … invest in clean energy projects”.

I thank the Wildlife and Countryside Link for its briefing on the Bill, and its recommendation that this amendment should be included. I recognise and support the critical role that the Crown Estate has in the delivery of offshore wind generation and the role that the Bill has to enhance this going forward, but we really need to decarbonise our power generation, fight climate change and protect nature. However, in updating the 1961 Act, the Bill represents a missed opportunity to ensure that the Crown Estate also has a requirement to support the Government’s obligations towards achieving the nature targets under the Environment Act 2021.

All public bodies in the UK are presently not required to consider the environmental costs and benefits of their decisions and investments, as there is no statutory requirement for them to do so. I support the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and will speak when we debate it on Friday; if it is passed, we will not have to amend every Bill one at a time as there will be a cross-cutting duty, so I encourage the Government to look at that Private Member’s Bill and support it.

This duty is particularly important to the Crown Estate due to the very large area of its land and sea holdings and the fact that many of its sites are extremely ecologically sensitive. It is worth reiterating that the Crown Estate has 200,000 acres of land, 12,000 kilometres of coastline and a total seabed area bigger than the combined landmass of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Crown Estate owns more land than the entire landmass of Luxembourg and is the third-largest landowner in the UK. The land under the Crown Estate is vast, diverse and of high ecological importance.

The marine land, and the seabed in particular, are important as blue carbon stores, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. Equally important are the foreshore, coastline and many other precious ecological sites. I want to publicly recognise that the Crown Estate has existing governance structures and strong policy objectives in place to try to ensure that environmental impacts are a central consideration in its investment decisions. I also note that the Crown Estate has recently committed to embed nature throughout its policy-making process. It has begun consultation on the specific nature recovery strategy, but I understand that this final document is yet to be released. My amendment is not a criticism of its stewardship role; it is an attempt to support the existing duty but place it on a statutory footing. My amendment supports and builds on the work that the Crown Estate is already doing, which proves to me that the preparatory work is already being done to ensure that this amendment would work in practice.

I feel it is essential that this work is given a statutory basis, and that is exactly what my amendment seeks to do. It is essential that the Crown Estate makes an active contribution to meeting environmental nature recovery targets and contributes to climate mitigation and adaption targets. For this to happen, my belief is that a binding target is required.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I will just make two very quick comments. First, there has been a clear message to the Minister that, in one way or another, this Committee feels strongly that we should have in statute an expression of the climate change, environmental and nature issues. That should not be seen as a criticism of the Crown Estate as it is today but simply says that this is so important that the Crown Estate should not be given the freedom to change its mind on those issues without the intervention of Parliament.

I do not want to put the Minister on the spot, but my second brief issue concerns a previous answer, when there may have been some confusion between the memorandum of understanding and the framework agreement. I do not ask him to do this now, but could he go back and look at those two rather different things, as we need to approach them both differently? That would be exceedingly helpful, but I do not want to put him on the spot at this moment.