Crown Estate Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Andrew Snowden and Perran Moon

Committee stage
Thursday 6th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

I will also speak to amendment 1. I add my voice to the request for assurances from the Minister on the alignment of sustainable development with the UK’s net zero goals, and also on community benefits. I agree with him that we must not lay too narrow a scope on the Crown Estate and seek to limit its opportunity as a key revenue driver for the UK economy. Goodness knows, we need it after 14 years of Conservative failure.

I am really concerned, however, about the potential bypassing of deprived coastal communities in the revenue from the Crown Estate to the Treasury. It would be nice to get reassurance from the Treasury of the Government’s plans to ensure that coastal communities closest to many of these huge revenue opportunities will see some of the benefits of that growth.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you on this Committee, Ms Furniss. I would like to echo the final points—not some of the other points, obviously—of the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth regarding reassurances from the Minister about the economic benefit that these offshore projects will create for local communities. I represent a coastal community with the beautiful Fylde coastline, and north of us is Blackpool and Fleetwood. The Crown Estate owns significant amounts of seabed off the coast of Fylde. There are a number of projects under way, including the Morgan and Morecambe wind farm, which will cable through Fylde constituency to get to the national grid.

These amendments reference the Environment Act 2021 and regional economic growth. Can the Minister give reassurances that when projects such as offshore wind go ahead—they could be further encouraged by these amendments—local communities will be taken into account regarding the economic benefit? At the minute, a lot of the projects end up being opposed by and very unpopular with local communities, because all they see is the environmental damage being done to their area, countryside and coastline, and there is no economic benefit left from residual cabling that runs through areas. Although I welcome some of what the amendments try to do, I seek assurances that, at the heart of this, we have the communities who are negatively impacted by these projects seeing benefit as well.