Professor Tasman Crowe:

That is a good question. Subject to some of the tweaks we have been talking about, like the “up to 30%”, the citizens’ assembly had a strong view that there should be 30%, so that “up to” certainly weakens that a little. We spoke about the diffuse and complicated nature of the governance structures and the fact different Departments have a stake in biodiversity and the marine environment, and it is difficult to envisage a process by which everyone is working in a more cohesive and co-ordinated way.

One of the strong pushes from the citizens’ assembly was that there should be more joined-up thinking. As I said, that is a real challenge and it is difficult to do that. However, some mechanism by which there is a guiding authority that helps to shape what gets done by different Departments would be something the citizens would have been looking for in their recommendations. The Bill goes some way towards that. I am not sure if it was head 14, concerning the existing authorisations, but there is a process there through which the Minister is able to engage with the other Departments that have strong authority to change things in the marine environment.

That is where that is happening. One could argue that it is not happening strongly enough but one could also argue that it is happening in a realistic and pragmatic way given the system we operate in. I do not know which way I would fall in that discussion.