Memorandum submitted by the Save Our Seabirds
Charitable Trust (DMB 53)
1. The Trust's first response is to ask
why the House of Commons Committee on Environment, Food &
Rural Affairs which encompasses the whole national entity on these
matters, sea and land, should have opted to inquire into Part
9 of the draft of the Marine Bill and nothing else.
2. It is proposed that Coastal Access should
be run by Natural England, a more reasonable and enlightened body
than DEFRA's envisaged Marine Management Committee which would
be dictatorial and rigid. Natural England would be charged with
expanding the Countryside & Rights of Way Act to make available
to public visitors over 2,000 km more of land than at present,
while double that would be improved. The initiative for this extension
came from the House of Commons Communities & Local Government
Committee which urged promotion of more visits to the seaside
along with national Government intervention in the economic importance
of tourism, a proposal endorsed by Natural England and a range
of consultees. (Annex 4, p 101 and 103 para 14)
3. DEFRA's declared aim is to improve people's
health through more physical activity. The public are already
using the seaside quite extensively. The estimated cost of the
project, years 1-20 at 2006 value is set at £45-149 million
plus costs of infrastructure and maintenance (Annex 4, p.110
Table 2). DEFRA has not predicted how many extra visits to
the coast would be made; respondents to a survey on additional
visits refused to guess. However, estimated benefits per annum
are set at £25.8 million and costs at £8 million up
to 2020. The estimated cost of providing improved Coastal Access
over a 20 year period would be a third higher than simply continuing
to use the current Countryside & Rights of Way Act (p 115,
Table 5). On economic grounds is the expansion of coastal
access justified when there are other more urgent economic and
social needs including costs of protecting the sea?
4. Natural England's role in such a venture
is certainly legitimate, but other relevant professional organisations
are excluded. The people who know most about the marine aspects
of the coast are the Coastguards. The crucial Governmental failure
in the Bill's drafts has been to ignore professionals' specialist
knowledge. Following Edward Heath's and Harold Wilson's handing
over of the British fishing and a large part of the fish-processing
industries to the European Common Market (as it was called then),
Margaret Thatcher's administration placed little value on the
Coastguard and drastically reduced it. New Labour's DEFRA accepts
that devaluation.
On the south east coast now there are only two
stations with full-time paid staff, Southampton and Dover, making
available more cash for other Government projects. Possibly government
administrations rely on Coastguards' continuing love of the sea
which has led many to carry on locally as volunteers, on call
at any time for emergencies, actually employed for only two hours
a month at the Minimum Wage or less, but still monitoring and
caring for their element. For over a year, as DEFRA officials
must surely know because of media publicity, full-time Coastguards
have been expressing dissatisfaction with Governmental insistence
on raising pay at less than the rate of inflation. There have
not only been persistent strikes at the Maritime & Coastguard
Agency against these virtual pay cuts but on at least two occasions,
in April 2007 and at the beginning of this year, members of the
technical Prospect trade union have demanded the departure of
Peter Cardy, Director of the MCA for not fighting for their own
and the MCA's interests.
5. There is no connection in the Draft of
the expansion of coastal access on the one hand and restrictions
imposed for the Marine Conservation Zones on the other. The establishment
of these Zones from 2.2 to 14.7% of coastal sea beds has been
proposed not just by Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation
Committee, but by conservationist organisations starting with
the RSPB which in 2002 through its member, John Randall MP, first
demanded a Marine Bill for its wildlife, supported and followed
by the Wildlife Trusts, the World Wildlife Fund and others. Their
knowledge of their own specialities is not matched by knowledge
of the sea although there are signs that they are beginning to
appreciate the vast complexities of the marine ecology. The restrictions
proposed to protect the Marine Conservation Zones (Part 4,
Marine Conservation Zones, p 149, para 113 (3) (a) (b)) prohibiting
or restricting entry or any movement or other activity by persons
or animals with the same prohibition on any part of the adjoining
seashore (para 4) and in any area within an English inshore region
(para 6) may affect the continuous coastal access route DEFRA
proposes. There is no suggestion of mechanisms by which Natural
England and the Marine Management Organisation will resolve differences.
6. Education of the public on the importance
of marine conservation is rated "low", of the environment
"low to moderate" in this Bill, despite pretty photos
on the glossy booklet accompanying this latest Draft. The sea
still carries some 95% of world trade. However, with the decline
of independent fishing, especially by boats less than 10 metres
long and of the fish processing industry in the last two generations,
public recognition of the importance of our coastal waters has
almost disappeared. Amateur fishing and boating from Marinas are
no substitute for fundamental awareness of the economic importance
of our seas.
The Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust has been
demanding for some time that Governments launch a serious educational
initiative to make up for pedagogical lack of interest in, even
distaste for, the 70% of the planet which is sea and its conservation.
Thirty to forty years ago beach officials and coastguards in coastal
resorts used to put up notices of important vessels passing in
either direction in the Channel and the congested south of the
North Sea. The coastal route would no doubt skirt round ports
and harbours including large container ports like Southampton;
small harbours, of which there are a number along the south east
coast, lack the cranes to prevent pollution from means of discharging,
especially waste oil or oil cargoes so wastes are carried out
to the open sea. Private ports and harbours do no welcome official,
let alone public interest in their operations, as this Draft Bill
seems to recognise.
For a country of islands with no town more than
100 miles from some part of our 10,800 miles of coast, the Save
Our Seabirds Trust is fierce for greater public awareness of the
economic realities of our coasts beyond more land for healthful
walks and appreciation of coastal flora and fauna. Bowing to particular
conservationist pressures, to interests in disruption of the sea-bed
like dredging and planting wind farms, to the strengthening of
EU dominance of the residue of our fishing through the issuing
of licenses by Civil Servants mostly brought up in the last two
generations of basic marine indifference through gestures like
expanding access to our coasts will not raise marine public interest.
The continual movement of the sea due to storms, winds and the
ebb and flow of tides, carrying pollution with it has to be emphasised.
How far will marine fauna, eg porpoises and seals, even in Conservation
Zones continue to be choked with plastic? How far will the public
be protected from sometimes dangerous garbage and wastes on beaches
not least emissions of ships' waste oil which is toxic? There
is urgent need for a fully comprehensive Department of the Sea,
engaging people who, despite EU interference, use the sea professionally.
Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust
May 2008
|
