INSPIRE (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that comprehensive introduction. I will start with the Explanatory Memorandum; I then have some general questions. My noble friend said that Scotland has its own regulations. Paragraph 4(1) states that the only differences are in Regulations 3 and 4. So is there any other dimension where Scotland is different to England, Wales and Northern Ireland?

To move on, Regulation 6(1) on legislative content states that it also confers temporary powers to make secondary legislation. Is there any definition of “temporary”? That seems to me to be quite important. What is the procedure if the UK, outside the EU but operating obviously within the total context, wishes to propose future changes? Are there any difficulties in that format or not?

Paragraph 10 talks about the consultation, which the Minister touched on. The phrase used is “informally engaged stakeholders”. Can we have an assurance that this informal consultation did actually contact all the normal stakeholders that we know about?

Paragraph 13 refers to regulating small businesses. As there is no definition within the context of this SI of what a small business is or is not, when does a small business become, in effect, a partner in this SI itself?

Finally, Part 2 of the SI says:

“In my view, INSPIRE … do no more than is appropriate”.


Who made the judgment on what is or is not appropriate?

Those are all my questions on the printed SI. I have a couple of questions arising from the briefings that we have received, principally from the Library. One of them says:

“In 2019, the European Commission published and implemented a decision intended to simplify the way in which INSPIRE operated.”


Although the Minister mentioned that, nothing was said about the way in which it has been simplified. Is it a matter of quantum, or some other aspect that is not self-evident to those of us who come to this only warm?

My final question is quite important. How much is it costing the UK to remain within INSPIRE? If the Minister does not know now, I rather hope he might have asked the question himself. Does it cost us anything as UK Ltd or does it not? If it does cost us something, is it on a fixed-term basis or reviewed periodically every three years, five years or whatever? That is an important element that I wanted to raise.

I have a couple of other questions. On the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, is anybody excluded? It talks about “most” UK partner bodies, but that means that somebody has been excluded. Does the Minister have anything on that? The regulations refer to working with all central government departments and all local authorities. As far as I can see, “local authorities” are not defined here. Obviously, we have counties, unitary authorities and district councils, but if we are dealing with environmental matters, they ought to cover town councils. I declare an interest, because I live in Sandy in Bedfordshire, which has a very active county council Local authorities need to make good use of the Local Government Association. That needs to be re-emphasised to those involved, because it is absolutely key to it.

I have two more questions. The regulations say that publishing INSPIRE location data requires “most” geospatial data to be published. Which bit is not published? That seems to be of some relevance. Finally, I am sorry to come back to coronavirus. Has it affected record-taking at all? Has it changed it at all? Has it slowed it down or has it in effect had no impact?