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The MMO will be able to deliver the new marine planning system with objectivity and propriety. It will build on experience of fisheries and environmental licensing to deliver more joined-up decisions and a better, faster one-stop service to developers. It will play a key role in integrated coastal zone management by linking conservation with fisheries management and regulating a new flexible tool to enable conservation benefits to be delivered while encouraging important economic developments, such as renewable energy. These are major policies that run through the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. They mostly arise because of the need to deal with the increasing and sometimes conflicting pressures on the sea.
I accept the point that the noble Lord made about a champion, but what is also urgently needed is a referee. That is what we are equipping the MMO to be and why I do not think that the word “Management” is inappropriate.
Lord Tyler: The Minister may look specifically at paragraph 46 of the Explanatory Notes, where the Government state:
- “The MMO is to act as the UK Government’s strategic delivery body in the marine area. As such it will exercise a number of marine functions”.
That is a long way of saying that it will be precisely an agency. The Minister already cited the Environment Agency—which the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, may agree is perhaps the best exemplar and model for the new agency—but it was significant that the other organisations to which he referred do not have “management organisation”, which is, to my mind, a limiting title and inappropriate for this body, as part of their title.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I do not agree with the noble Lord. As I explained, a central part of the remit of the proposed organisation will be to deal with what are often conflicting pressures with the sea and its management. That is why the title “MMO” was developed. It has been asked: what is in a title? A number of the NDPBs sponsored by my department, Defra, have different titles but none the less have the same status. The important matter here is: what is its role and accountability, which we will debate under later parts of the Bill?
I understand that there will often be disagreement about the name of an organisation. Noble Lords are fully entitled to suggest that “the MMO” does not reflect what they think that the organisation is here to do. I reassure them that there has been extensive
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The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked, finally: will the organisation be able to set its own culture? The answer must be yes, of course it will set its own culture. Will it be listened to by government? The answer must be yes, it will be listened to by government. The body has a crucial role to play. I am satisfied that the legislative framework in which it is to be established will ensure that it can do so. I accept that we will not always agree about names, but we can set this organisation up and running to do an effective job.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I was not planning to intervene, because until the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, illuminated what he intended by substituting “agency” for “organisation”, I thought that this might be a debate about semantics, but having heard the discussion I should like to make two contributions from my experience. I declare an interest as a former chairman of Natural England’s predecessor, English Nature, and a former chief executive of the Environment Agency. First, there was all hell to pay in the early stages of the Environment Agency to establish a role for it as a commentator on policy. If an organisation is carrying on regulatory, scientific, research and other functions on behalf of government, it is vital that the practical experience, knowledge and skills developed as a result are brought forward to comment on policy so that government and everyone else may learn from that. Does the Minister see this as a key role for the MMO, because it is a fairly fundamental one? It is crazy to invest huge amounts of money in staff, skills and programmes if you are not willing for the organisation to say things about policy from time to time. The minute you start saying things about policy from time to time, questions begin to be raised about the role of the organisation.
3.30 pm
I intervene partly because the Minister used the word “referee”. If you are refereeing a football game, which I hope I never have to do, between—to show the depths of my ignorance about football—Manchester United and Chelsea, because they are the only two teams apart from Tottenham and maybe Arsenal that I know, you are not expected to have a pretty strong feel for what is right and what is wrong; you are expected to be totally dispassionate towards the two teams and to referee simply on the ground of the rules.
I press the Minister to illuminate us on whether the Marine Management Organisation is entitled to have a view, based on all this knowledge, research and expertise. If it has a view, what is the purpose of it having a view? Who is it standing up for? Who is it
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: That is a very interesting comment. The noble Baroness and I share experience of the National Health Service, and she will know that the debates that we are having about the role of special health authorities and non-departmental public bodies in relation to their sponsoring department are very much the same. She is absolutely right; an organisation that can make its authoritative views known to government on the basis of its experience should not be inhibited from doing so. However, that is rather different from being seen to be simply a pressure group. I do not think that she suggested that; I think that her question was whether the MMO could be an influential body that builds on its work and scientific expertise and all the experience that it can develop and whether government would listen to it. The answer must be yes.
I am not sure that the noble Baroness’s analogy about referees is right. Of course referees are there to apply the rules of the game of football or of any other game, but they do so with a love and appreciation of the sport itself, so I am not sure that she has got her analogy right. I hope that I have reassured her that it would clearly be nonsense for Governments not to want to have an appropriate dialogue with the MMO on all these important matters.
Lord Greenway: I wondered why the Minister was a little surprised when I mentioned at Second Reading that it was my understanding that the Marine Management Organisation was a working title and that the Government were looking to come up with something better. He has since explained what happened with the Minister in another place, Jonathan Shaw.
On the amendment, an argument against changing the name of the organisation is that the abbreviation would be “MA”. We already have an MCA—the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—and to have two marine agencies might be a little confusing.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: To what extent does this body relate to Scotland? Clause 313(4) states that Part 1 relates to Scotland. The Explanatory Notes say that the MMO will discharge a number of marine functions on behalf of the UK Government. That is clear and, so far, the discussion has exemplified that. Recently, the Calman commission on devolution produced its first report. I think that last week it sent to noble Lords a summary of its conclusions to date. It says that the Scottish Government are considering legislating for the marine environment. What does that mean?
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: At Second Reading, I promised to send noble Lords a memorandum relating to devolution and the points raised. Alas, having received a draft at the weekend, I made some changes. I will write to Members of the Committee later in the week. I apologise that it is not available today. Perhaps I may respond briefly to the noble Baroness, although I could respond at some length. On the general working together of the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, there was a meeting of the joint ministerial committee over the summer and autumn. I assure the noble Baroness that the UK Government and the devolved Administrations committed themselves to working constructively to ensure that there is an integrated and joined-up approach to the new marine legislation and its implementation.
The Marine Management Organisation is being established with a core purpose to deliver planning, licensing, fishing management and enforcement functions in the waters around England and the offshore area for matters that are not devolved. My understanding is that the Scottish Executive intend to set up Marine Scotland to deliver marine functions in Scottish territorial waters and for devolved matters in the offshore area.
Baroness Byford: I thought that the organisation being a champion of the seas would come up in later debates, so I may be too early in my remarks. As someone who sat on the Joint Committee, there was a strong feeling that the MMO should have greater powers than those in the Bill. I should be grateful if the Minister would enlarge on that. He also mentioned that it will not have a strategic role, but is a delivery body. Some of us would like it to have greater power and more teeth than it has now. If the Minister thinks that this matter will come up in later discussions, I am happy to wait. Since the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about the organisation in a broader context, I should like clarification.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: That is a fair question. It is true that later amendments will come back to this point. In this first amendment, I seek to reassure the Committee that the role of the Marine Management Organisation is not simply to be a referee in the terms that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, suggested that I had said. It will have to deal with critical issues and pressures from many sources. We should not be under any misapprehension that it will have an extremely challenging job, but it will act within the strategic direction given by Ministers, in particular through the marine policy statement. That is how accountability will be discharged to Ministers and thence to Parliament. In so doing, it will become an authoritative body that will be listened to carefully and, I strongly suspect, play an influential role in the development of future policy. While I understand what noble Lords are saying, my problem with the concept of a champion is that it has the suggestion of a pressure group about it. This has to be an authoritative body acting within the statute and on the directions given to it.
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Lord Clinton-Davis: Am I right in saying that the maritime unions have raised no objections to the name of this organisation?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I am not aware of any objections, but if I find that members or potential members of staff have raised them, I will let noble Lords know. We have done well to get ourselves past 3.30 pm.
Lord Greaves: We have done so without any filibustering from me, and for that reason if for no other, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in the debate. I am particularly grateful for the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, which go to the heart of what the debate on the first few parts of this Bill will be about. That is because there are conflicts about the concept of this organisation, so we need to understand the issues. The Joint Committee said that the purpose of the organisation is ambiguous, so I do not apologise for raising this essential issue at the beginning of our consideration; it will be a thread that runs through all our debates.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that, although I have been fighting the Conservatives for most of my political life, that fight, because of the area I come from, has been nothing like as hard as my fight with the Labour Party. It is also true that some acronyms become household terms—the BBC is a good example. That reminded me of the acronym SDP which was very successful from the branding point of view, although whether the SDP was successful in other ways is something on which noble Lords will have views. However, most acronyms are used only by the members of elite or specialist groups who know about their area. That is a fact of life. If this organisation becomes known as the MMO, 95 per cent of the population will not have the slightest idea what it stands for. I have to say that if the Scottish Parliament is going to call its body Marine Scotland, it understands the skill behind naming organisations rather better than whoever came up with Marine Management Organisation.
This body is going to be a quango operating alongside the Environment Agency and Natural England, to name two obvious examples. However, terrestrial quangos, if I can call them that, operate in environments filled with people who champion their causes. We have parish, district and county councils, regional bodies, Members of Parliaments and all sorts of other organisations whose job is to promote issues. The sea is used by people who value the marine environment and economy, but of course do not live there. They go out to sea and then come back to where they live. That is a particular reason why the Marine Management Organisation, despite its clumsy title, has to be a champion of the seas.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Do not the number of letters sent to noble Lords by organisations concerned with the issues he has raised suggest that this powerful group of bodies is able both to raise them now and will continue to do so with the establishment of the MMO?
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Lord Greaves: That is true, just as it is for terrestrial environment issues. Lots of people write to us about quarrying in the Peak District. There are companies that think that it is their right to do it and want to continue doing so to provide jobs. There are people who think that it is a scandal. There are all kinds of points of view. For any issue or area of interest, there are, quite rightly, always pressure groups. They are a vital part of democracy. However, the seas are not a democratic set-up; no one lives in the seas or stands for them as elected people—and many unelected people—do for any particular region, area, borough, city, town or parish on land. This is important. These matters will run as a great thread through this debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Gaza
Statement
3.45 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Malloch-Brown): My Lords, with permission, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. The Statement is as follows.
“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a Statement on the appalling situation in Gaza. The fighting continues, but the bald statistics of the rising death toll do justice neither to the scale of the suffering nor to the ramifications of the conflict. I said at the UN last Tuesday that the crisis was an indictment of the international community’s collective failure, over years and decades—not just months—to bring about the two-state solution that offers the only prospect of lasting peace in the Middle East, but there are also more proximate causes of the current conflict.
The Gaza truce of June to December 2008 was less than a ceasefire. More than 300 rockets were fired into Israel. Eighteen Palestinians were killed in Israeli military incursions into Gaza. The humanitarian situation in Gaza went from bad to worse as the Israeli Government restricted the supply of goods, fuel and aid into Gaza. The political negotiations for a viable Palestinian state proceeded too slowly. The immediate trigger for Israeli military action on 27 December was the end of the truce. Hamas refused to extend the lull, and instead fired almost 300 rockets into Israel between 19 and 27 December. Those rockets and the hundreds fired since were a cruel choice by Hamas to target Israeli civilians and to reject again the fragile peace negotiations that had been taking place between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government since the Annapolis conference in late 2007.
However, whatever the trigger, the immediate consequence of Israeli military action over the past fortnight is also very clear. More than 800 are dead, many of them civilians, apparently more than 250 of them children—the most terrible statistic of all—and thousands injured: the horror of war on top of months of deprivation. The quartet envoy, Tony Blair, went so far as to call the situation in Gaza “hell”. The shortages
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Today I met a group of leading independent NGOs which are active in delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza. Every day these NGOs have to decide whether it is safe for staff to work in Gaza. Tragically several have been killed or injured. Their concerns bear reporting in this House. Sixty trucks a day are currently entering Gaza, which is less than one-sixth of the 400 necessary. The current three-hour daily pause in fighting, while better than nothing, is deeply flawed in its practical effect. The blockages on people leaving Gaza for medical attention are profound. Extremely serious allegations about the conduct of both sides during this conflict have been made by the ICRC and others. These allegations must be properly investigated.
Since the beginning of Israeli military action in Gaza, both the Prime Minister and I have called publicly and privately for an immediate ceasefire. On the first day of the conflict the United Nations Security Council, with the support of the British Government, called for an “immediate halt to the fighting”. The EU presidency also called for “an immediate end to hostilities” and described the use of force as “disproportionate”. The British Government support this view.
The emergency meeting of EU Foreign Ministers called, with my support, on 30 December for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, urgent humanitarian steps, including opening of crossings, and action on the illegal traffic in arms and their components into Gaza. On 3 January we said that the escalation of the conflict to include a ground offensive would cause alarm and dismay, as well as more death and destruction.
These issues were at the heart of three days of negotiation last week at the UN. Our priority was for a loud, clear and unified message to come from the UNSC. This was achieved in UNSC Resolution 1860, introduced in Britain’s name and the product of intensive unified work by Secretary Rice, French Foreign Minister Kouchner and myself, working to find common ground with the Arab League delegation, led by His Royal Highness Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia.
SCR 1860 is clear in its call for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire leading to full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. It also denounces all acts of terrorism. It summarises well the agenda of action of the British Government in the search for a ceasefire and sets out authoritatively what the international community expects to be implemented. This is what the Prime Minister and I have been working on over the weekend and will continue to focus on this week.
First, relief is needed for the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza. Emergency aid is essential, and Britain has added £10 million to its aid contribution since the conflict began. We will continue to support the United Nations, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent and other international agencies that have the infrastructure and expertise to lead the humanitarian response in Gaza. But international aid agencies need the wholehearted support of the Israeli Government, and I urge the Israeli Government to
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Secondly, there need to be security improvements—above all, a curb on the trafficking of illegal arms into Gaza. These armaments are the source of fear for hundreds of thousands of Israelis, some of whom I talked to in Sderot in November. They are also a threat to any prospect of Palestinian reconciliation, designed as they are to entrench the power of Hamas in Gaza in defiance of President Abbas’s call for “One Authority, one source of security”. I spoke twice yesterday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit on this issue and commend Egyptian efforts to develop further action on this front, and I urge that the direct talks between Egypt and Israel be brought to a conclusion as soon as possible.
Finally, there is a political imperative to re-establish the unity of the Palestinian people under the leadership of the PA. I continue to be convinced that the division of Palestinian political authority needs to be addressed. Egypt and the Arab League continue to mediate between Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions. The aim must be a strong Palestinian Authority speaking for all Palestinians, committed to the two-state end and peaceful means upheld by the vast majority of Palestinians. So the resolution is clear. But the passage of the resolution on Thursday night New York time was followed within hours by its rejection by both sides to the conflict.
The resolution calls on all states in the region to support peace efforts. The Prime Minister and I have been in close touch with the Israeli Government since the onset of this crisis. The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Defence Minister argued strongly against any UN resolution. Their argument is that there can be no equivalence between a democratic state and a terrorist organisation.
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