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Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I have had the pleasure of debating with the noble Earl on many occasions. I am very glad that he is not on this side now. Is he really saying there has not been consultation between departments in the past when Private Member's Bills have been introduced?
The Earl of Caithness: No, my Lords. I have introduced a Private Member's Bill to your Lordships' House. There is always consultation with departments. That is perfectly natural and usual. However, a Bill of this nature is unusual as a pure Private Member's Bill. It has been mostly written by the Government, so it is much more of a government Bill than a Private Member's Bill. It is good to see my old sparring partner from the European Commission and this House and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
If we are to proceed with the Bill, it needs strengthening. It will be easy for lawyers from both sides—the environmental side and the port side—to attack the Bill as it stands. They will inevitably benefit. The Bill needs to be clarified, particularly on the environmental side. Much could be done that is not done in the Bill. There has been a substantial retraction from the environmental aspirations of my honourable friend in another place. That was done by the Government. We should review that and examine many of the environmental areas. There should be exclusion zones against the fishers and certain types of shipping. There should be protection to maintain rights of access to and from ports. We also need better provision for review and for change of circumstances.
It would probably be extremely difficult to create another Felixstowe, given the amount of legislation. Felixstowe has done wonders for the economy of south-east England and for the whole of Britain. We want to preserve the right to establish a new port to take advantage of new opportunities.Who wrote the Explanatory Notes? I understand that the Government did not write them. It would be helpful to know who did and what authority they have, as that will influence the amendments that we table.
I apologise again for having to slip away early to catch the plane north. At least Scotland is not burdened with the Bill.
11.45 a.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has a good flight to Inverness and that his stay in that beautiful part of the United Kingdom will cheer him up a bit and enable him to return to our deliberations in a slightly more positive frame of mind.
I declare an interest as vice-president of the Council for National Parks and a supporter of other non-governmental environmental organisations. I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for the patient way in which she has waited for the debate and her dogged determination to ensure that we have proper time for a sensible debate. What are Fridays for, if not to have the space for a sensible debate rather than bemusedly discussing issues in the early hours of the morning?
The Bill is welcome. As the Wildlife and Countryside Link has argued in its Marine Charter, the seas around the British Isles are a particularly special asset to value and protect. Our marine environment supports many thousands of jobs and industries and is a place of enjoyment for millions of people each year. It is home to a particularly rich maritime cultural heritage and is one of the most diverse marine environments of any country in Europe.
However, there is a developing crisis, which makes urgent action imperative. The crisis is evidenced by, for example, dramatic declines in fish stocks, which now face collapse, increasingly litter-strewn and oil-covered beaches, the poisoning of marine mammals by toxins and the disappearance of natural sea defences such as wetlands. Other signs of stress include the build-up of radioactive substances in sediment, the impact of sex-changing chemicals on marine life, threats to human health and cultural heritage and changes in sea condition as a result of climate change.
The Bill will be judged by its effectiveness in helping to meet such challenges. However, effective action for the rest of the British Isles beyond England and Wales is also essential. The Bill can be only a beginning. There is an indisputable and pressing need for long-overdue measures to secure a comprehensive and integrated approach to management of the marine environment as a whole—a point well made by English Nature. In that respect, the Government's recently published strategy for the conservation and sustainable development of that environment is timely.
In the mean time, however limited our consideration of the Bill, it is important for the Government to convince us that the current complexity and dilution of responsibility, evidenced in the confusing number of authorities with different priorities, is being overcome. They must also convince us that there will be adequate arrangements for enforcement and that legislative aspiration will not remain little more than just that because of a shortage of resources to turn the legislation into convincing action.
As a resident of a national park and as a vice-president of the Council for National Parks, I have seen the immensely important role that they can play in bringing different interests together and ensuring effective co-ordinated management. It is far from clear to me why the Government remain so reluctant to look at the relevance of the national park model for the management of the marine environment.
There are other issues on which we need reassurance from the Government. For example, can we be certain that the required laudable commitment to sustainable development in Clause 12 will not, in a perverse way, lead to decisions by Ministers not to confirm sites which are clearly of special interest? In connection with Clause 9(2), can we be left in no doubt that competent marine authorities will be expected to take full account of the advice of the nature conservation bodies about whether an operation is likely to damage the special interest of a site? Can we be told exactly how the Bill is expected to play its part in the regulation of sea fisheries which have the potential to damage marine sites of special interest? It is worth noting that these are three issues on which, for example, the Countryside Council for Wales, among others, is understandably exercised.
There is no doubt that this Bill is an indication that we may at last be inching towards a meaningful environmental and heritage strategy in our legislative concerns. As such, it is to be commended and those behind it congratulated. But surely it is self-evident that unless we are unforgivably to fail our grandchildren and their descendants, we have to change our mind set in politics from one of policy beginning to take the environment into account to one of an overriding central and muscular political commitment to the environment, and indeed to heritage, against which almost all other legislation has to be tested. Time is certainly not on our side.
11.52 a.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, in the 32 years I have sat in your Lordships' House, I have always welcomed the very few and far between occasions when a noble Lord has said that someone else has said all that he is going to say and he is not going to repeat it, and then actually sat down. It has not happened very often: it is going to happen now.
I would like to associate myself with all that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has said. I would like to add that my party, the Green Party, is very much in favour of this long overdue Bill. At Committee and Report
stages I shall do my best to see that it goes forward. I will cast my vote against any attempt to sideline or change it in a major way. I very much welcome the Bill. I thank those who have brought it forward and I sit down.11.53 a.m.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, in rising to speak on this Bill I declare my interest as a patron of the British Wind Energy Association. As a director of Clipper Windpower, a company that is based and operates exclusively in the United States, we may well consider devoting future investment to offshore wind projects in the United Kingdom, but this activity is not in our current portfolio. I am also executive chairman of Consort Resources Ltd which has interests in offshore UKCS gas production. I do not intend to concentrate my remarks on issues to the potential benefit or disadvantage of the oil and gas industries.
My concern, my contribution, is based on my long-standing interest in the marine environment and my life-long commitment to the importance of renewable energy, strengthened during the years I worked as a Minister for the Environment in the late 1980s and Minister for Energy in the early 1990s.
It is the case that the Bill before us has a title which will appeal to everyone. No rational individual can be opposed to marine wildlife conservation. The headline is indeed the best part of the Bill, matched only by the conviction and excellent intentions of its proposers both in your Lordships' House and in another place. I agree with them that we have a duty and an imperative to protect our marine habitats in the same way as we should devote resources to protect the offshore environment for future generations.
My principal concern is that the Bill can be seen as representing an ad hoc piecemeal approach to the conservation of marine wildlife, which, in the context of the work already announced and commissioned by the Government, fits uneasily with the well co-ordinated international collaborative work programme taken forward at Bergen earlier this year. Consequently, it is in danger of becoming muddled, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, alluded, with other work and particularly with the important Bergen work programme and marine conservation and thus risks being compromised by the passage of this legislation at this time. I argue that there are important initiatives in train as a result of Bergen, which make this well-intentioned Bill potentially piecemeal, potentially unnecessary and pre-emptive and which may ultimately be inconsistent with the Government's approach to marine conservation generally; namely, the pathway, target, objective route best encapsulated in the phrase "environmental management".
The North Sea conference in Bergen promised an integrated approach, recognising that a holistic approach was required by all member states. It is right that marine wildlife conservation is quite properly heading in the direction of the target, objective pathway approach that I have mentioned. Ministers in
Bergen in March of this year emphasised the need to take as a priority an integrated eco-system approach to the management of human activities affecting the North Sea. The important point is their recognition and agreement that considerable further work was required before new national legislation could effectively reflect results of that important work programme.The work programme to which I refer was detailed in Section 1, paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Bergen declaration. Together these paragraphs constituted an important 13-point plan, which include research and information gathering, shared integrated expert advice and assessments of the North Sea, designing and implementing a strategy for achieving dialogue with all relevant stakeholders for the development and implementation of the eco-system approach, and much more.
This is no insignificant work programme. As the basis for future policy formulation at national and trans-boundary levels in Europe, it has considerable merit. But even fast tracked, it is recognised in paragraph 7 that this work will take time. The Ministers,
- "agreed that by 2010, relevant areas of the North Sea will be designated as marine protected areas belonging to a network of well managed sites, safeguarding threatened and declining species, habitats and ecosystem functions".
It is therefore my firm view—here I am in total agreement with my noble friend Lord Caithness—that this Bill is in danger of pre-empting this process; a process which eschews new designations, although the declaration acknowledges, as will the House, the designation-based approach to the Wild Bird and Habitats Directive.
Committed to implement the ecosystem approach, the first priority of Ministers was to develop,
- "focused research and information gathering which address the driving forces of North Sea ecosystems variability".
However, my concern does not end with the importance of the timing of this measure, for I believe that there are a number of issues in the proposed legislation which are flawed. Not only is the legislation before us at the wrong time, but it may be the wrong Bill at the wrong time. The fact that this Bill is necessarily limited to the territorial seas of England and Wales is a case in point. It is essential that any legislation we consider on this subject addresses marine wildlife conservation in all United Kingdom Continental Shelf waters.
I have already mentioned the importance Ministers attach to stakeholders in our coastal waters. Interestingly, in the Bergen declaration, there is specific reference in Section 9 to "the promotion of renewable energy". Section 68 is worthy of your Lordships' consideration and is welcomed by all of us who seek a thriving offshore wind energy business. This paragraph is strong endorsement from Bergen for
offshore wind energy, which has already been blighted by over-lengthy, prescriptive, legislative processes in the UK.If we are to be anywhere near the Government's target for renewable energy sources by 2010, we shall have to depend on a flourishing, well financed offshore wind energy industry. Yet this Bill provides neither clarity of responsibility nor the framework necessary to see the accelerated development of offshore wind projects. For example, the British Wind Energy Association, the DTI and Crown Estates have readily appreciated, in planning for offshore wind energy developments, that there is no magic to the 12-mile limit. What should be addressed is the entire ecosystem of a discrete bio-geographical area. European law recognises this through the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive which will become UK law in the foreseeable future.
Additionally and against this background, the notification process as drafted could damage the prospect of offshore wind energy achieving its potential contribution to the UK energy mix.
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