Crown Estate Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Perran Moon Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Pippa Heylings]

I will speak to amendment 8, which is similar to amendment 6. It would strengthen clause 3 by ensuring that sustainable development is properly defined within the Crown Estate’s framework document and that this definition explicitly includes a climate and nature duty.

The Crown Estate plays a pivotal role in the management of our land, seas and natural resources. It is well known for its ambition around nature recovery. It is a key player in our offshore wind expansion, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management, but in areas in which there are multiple competing uses and values, including fishing, marine protected areas, and even highly protected marine areas. Therefore we need reassurances, as were obtained in the other House, that clause 3 does not just require commissioners to keep under review their impact on sustainable development without clearly defining what that means in practice.

I must acknowledge where this amendment started in life, which is with Baroness Hayman’s work in the other House. After much debate, it was agreed that sustainable development must be kept under review by the commissioners, but with a reference to the framework document in which a definition would be provided. Baroness Hayman said:

“What matters is the impact we have and how much we have shifted the dial in terms of what the Crown Estate achieves in support of the Government’s climate and nature objectives.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 November 2024; Vol. 840, c. 1448.]

This amendment seeks to provide clarity and accountability for what was agreed verbally in the other House—that the definition would not be on the face of the Bill, but would be in the updated framework agreement. We need that to ensure there is a consistent benchmark against which decisions can be assessed, in line with the public duty to our climate and nature targets. As the definition within the framework agreement would specifically refer to, those are the climate targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the nature restoration goals under the Environment Act 2021.

This would mean that the Crown Estate cannot simply pay lip service to sustainability; it must actively contribute to decarbonisation, biodiversity protection and the UK’s broader environmental goals. Climate change and nature loss are economic risks, as well as environmental ones. Embedding clear, enforceable sustainability duties in the Crown Estate’s framework, according to our existing legislation, will ensure that its investments and operations support long-term resilience and prosperity. This amendment strengthens the existing clause. It does not seek to define it on the face of the Bill, but assures us, as happened in the other House, that the definition is within the framework agreement.

[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.