Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I too welcome the Bill. A century ago the waters around our islands were places where hardy, professional fishermen made a tough living and where our parents and grandparents regarded the ferocity of the seas from the safety of Victorian piers and promenades. There was greater popular enthusiasm at that time for the health-giving properties of cold sea water and bracing sea air than there is today, but that was before the days of central heating and cheap flights to the Costa Brava. Today it is a different story. A UK population that is roughly twice what it was a century ago and advances in technology that make our surrounding seas much more accessible mean that the pressures on our coastal environment, particularly the coastal seas, are enormously increased. At sea, we have seen the development of major oil and gas fields, of seabed pipelines, of networks of submarine telephone cables, of a profusion of commercial and private leisure craft and the development of a fishing industry, both domestic and foreign, that is so efficient that, if unconstrained, our fish stocks would be wiped out in a decade. The new century brings new challenges as well: marine wind farms and the possible commercial deployment of devices to harness the energy of tides and waves. Furthermore, the abandoned gas fields of the southern North Sea are likely to be the sites in which carbon dioxide, trapped at fossil fuelled power stations, will be stored. Even further ahead, the North and Irish Seas are likely to be the routes of major electrical inter-connectors that link remote offshore and near-shore land-based renewable energy sites to the south, where much of the energy is consumed. We are going to be making very full use of our neighbouring seas indeed. As my noble friend Lady Young pointed out, all of this is happening in an environment in which there is a complicated and subtle interaction between the plants and animals in, around and above the water. The complexity of this environment means that we have to treat it with enormous care and that the risk of unwittingly doing serious damage to systems that we do not understand is real. Not very long ago, a seafloor cable was laid across the mouth of the Wash. It appeared to be located where it could do little damage. Only subsequently did it emerge that it had disrupted the life-cycle of shellfish, which, in their mature state, were found in beds some tens of miles away. Whether we like it or not there has to be a coherent and internally consistent regulatory system for this complex and important part of our immediate environment on which we are imposing an increasing load. The present Bill seeks to provide such a regulatory framework through the Marine Management Organisation. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the myriad of competing interests will necessarily be easier to reconcile, but the decisions of the MMO should at least be made in a fuller understanding of their wider consequences for the various competing interests and for the marine environment itself. These competing interests will also have to recognise that, very often, there is no best or even good answer to the problem of competing agenda, but simply one that is, at least, fully informed and, one hopes, the least bad. I have a couple of specific points on the Bill today. Both have been touched on by other speakers. The first is the welcome inclusion of sustainability among the objectives of the MMO. It would be highly desirable for the Bill to make it clear that this did not simply mean the sustainability of the UK marine environment but included sustainability in the broader national context. One could, for example, imagine a situation in which meeting a national requirement appeared to have some adverse consequences for the local marine environment. It might be the need for a new submarine cable to bring ashore electricity produced in an offshore wind farm. It would be unfortunate if the MMO interpreted its remit so narrowly that it disregarded national need as well. Similarly, if we deploy wave energy machines offshore, we should not be surprised if the clean sandy beaches, inshore of the wave farm, are no longer quite so sparkling clean. It is the energy of the waves that washes away the mud and, if we extract the energy offshore, the less may be available inshore to clean the beaches. As they say in Yorkshire, ““You don’t get owt for nowt””. This means that we have to recognise the wider environmental implications of any development. In this context, it would be useful, as both the noble Baronesses, Lady Byford and Lady Hamwee, on the Benches opposite pointed out, to be clearer about the relationship of the MMO with the Infrastructure Planning Commission set up under the Planning Act. The present Bill is a long one and I cannot claim to have read every word, but I was not able to find any reference to the point raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Byford and Hamwee, with reference to chemical or physical pollution of the marine environment and whether this comes from land sources or sources at sea. At present, these are the responsibility of a diversity of organisations and it would be useful to have it clarified at some stage whether these responsibilities would be, in part, subsumed by the MMO or whether this is an interface that the MMO has to manage. In conclusion, I repeat that I have no doubt that this Bill is needed but, once more, the devil will be in the detail. I declare an interest as President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, as a director of Falck Renewables but, above all, as an enthusiastic walker who is overjoyed at the prospect of a continuous coastal path, although I recognise that it may be a long time in coming.