Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, whose work to preserve part of the coast in Hampshire has been an inspiration. I welcome this Bill, as do other noble Lords, as well as the process of pre-legislative scrutiny. Some were disappointed that not all our suggestions were taken up, but if you are a realist you would not expect that anyway. Nevertheless, some were taken up. I declare an interest as an academic interested in the atmosphere and the ocean. I am also a former head of the Met Office. On the timescale of this House, marine issues are evidently becoming important, as this is the second major debate on marine issues in the last 10 years. If one wants to go back to a serious debate on marine issues, perhaps one must go back to April 1853, when Lord Wrottesley gave a long and learned disquisition on the nature of the Gulf Stream. I do not think that I have ever read a better description of the Gulf Stream. The point about his great analysis was that we did not understand the Gulf Stream as well as the Americans did, which is why their ships were able to cross the Atlantic faster than ours—they followed the Gulf Stream exactly. To catch up with the Americans, we needed the Met Office. That was the debate that established the Met Office. The first head of the Met Office was the illustrious Admiral Fitzroy. I shall come back to the United States and the prominence of marine officials in a moment. The purpose of legislation, as the Minister said when we began, is to institute political measures that will materially improve people’s lives, our culture, the strength of society and—as a necessary condition, we now know—the natural state of our planet. Therefore, as with climate change legislation, this Bill’s Explanatory Notes might well have started with a clear statement to the effect that the state of the marine environment is unsatisfactory and getting worse. This was clearly stated on 25 June by Mr Richardson of the European Commission. It is an endless puzzle to me that the NGOs that give us much useful advice do not make this important point. We are well below what Mr Richardson described as a state of ecological health. To the first line of the Bill, which says that the purpose of the Bill is to, "““Make provision in relation to marine functions and activities””," I would add the words, ““in order to return the seas to ecological health””. That is the purpose of the Bill. Of course, many Bills do not have that kind of direct statement, but surely legislation should say why it is needed. Mr Richardson’s other important point on that day in our pre-legislative committee was, positively, that through strong, scientifically directed measures, ecological health could be restored. That is, obviously, the purpose of the Bill. Indeed, the UK has excellent marine scientists, engineers and technologists, who will be able to achieve this goal. The Bill might state this more clearly. It is important to recognise that the situation that we face in the deteriorating marine environment is shared by most other major countries. Around the United States, the condition of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico is serious, as is that of the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Yellow Sea in China. I was in Hong Kong last week, where the serious nature of the problem there was depicted. We are in the same position as other countries. All these countries recognise, too, that this situation is compounded by such effects of global warming as the acidification of the sea, sea-level rise and so on. In dealing with climate change and previous environmental problems, legislation has been strong and visible through measures that have been introduced, with clear areas of responsibility and leadership. In that respect, the Bill creates the Marine Management Organisation. The question is whether the MMO will provide the kind of leadership and co-ordination that other major environmental agencies have had and continue to have in the UK. I am thinking of organisations such as the Environment Agency—it was good that we had a former director of the Environment Agency here this afternoon—the Food Standards Agency, the Met Office and now the climate change committee. The issue was discussed with the Secretary of State at the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. He gave an ambivalent answer on whether the head of the MMO would be the champion of the seas. However, on 3 June, the acting head of the MMO gave a very encouraging response. He described the MMO as being a champion of the seas and said that it would have a co-ordinating role with technical agencies such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and Natural England. This responsive co-ordination leadership role is particularly important, as we are in a situation when things are changing. One of the features of sea-level rise is that it leads to much more rapid changes in, for example, the bathymetry—the depth of the ocean. We cannot rely on checking this once every 100 years, as sometimes is the case; we need to have satellites to do it every year, as the Dutch and Belgians are doing in studying their coastline. As my noble friend Lord Whitty and the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, recognised, measures for adaptation and mitigation along the coast will have an important impact on the environment. Therefore, the MMO will have a high-level, responsive and co-ordinating role. There have been noises saying that this is the job of the Minister, but I believe that Ministers are very busy and will not be able to do it. We need to have the kind of official leadership that we have seen in these other bodies. The other feature of the MMO raised strongly in the pre-legislative scrutiny committee was that it should be a champion for the freeing-up of the exchange of data. The only way in which people will understand and be able to respond is if we have the data. The committee heard from witness after witness that currently there is considerable blockage by fees and bureaucracy. What level will the new head of the MMO be in the Civil Service? Will he be grade 3, 2 or 5? That makes a big difference. Unless he or she is at this kind of level, he or she will not be able to have the role that all sides of the House want. If we cross the ocean and look at the United States, we see that it has a very senior official responsible for the oceans. I know his name, but nobody knows the names of the people responsible for marine policy in the UK. Until recently, Vice Admiral Lautenbacher, a prominent person, dealt with these major issues. As other noble Lords have said, it is important that the UK, with its strategic interests in oceans globally as well as regionally, should be moving in this direction. The United States also has an ambassador for the oceans and fisheries in the State Department, who goes around speaking the truth, as it were, about the terrible state of some of the ocean areas of the world. The Foreign Office has not reached that point yet. The evidence in the United Kingdom and Europe is that marine officials are not being encouraged to speak out, even about these technical issues. Mr Richardson of the European Commission commented after his rather strong—for a European civil servant—statement about the state of the marine ecology that this was his last official engagement and that he was retiring that day. That spoke volumes. My second question is whether, since the MMO is a non-departmental public body, its director will be able to speak out responsibly on marine environmental issues in the way in which the directors of the Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency are able to do. That does not detract from ministerial responsibility; obviously, Ministers are responsible for strategic issues and particular issues of public interest. I will give noble Lords some context. When I was appointed head of the Met Office, the first question that I asked the Permanent Under-Secretary at the MoD was whether I could speak out on scientific, technical and operational issues. He said, ““Yes, but if I hear you on the radio complaining about your budget, you will be fired””, so it was very clear. I hope that the MMO will have similar freedom. The Bill, following many years of discussion and the excellent report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, proposes to set up a network of marine reserves as the means to restore our marine environment. This policy, as witnesses explained, will have to be administered flexibly but within a clear strategy. There will be some parallels with the national parks, which have been a great UK success—many countries have followed them. The parks have had to operate in a diplomatic way with allowance for many different types of activity, depending on their effects on the environment. We have been hearing about those policies with regard to the sea this afternoon. There will have to be continuing monitoring, as the sea is changing rapidly, using remote sensing and extensive communication with stakeholders, including the public. A meeting will be held in Portcullis House in January or February on remote sensing and monitoring the marine environment, as that issue came up in the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. We now have new techniques. It is also important to notice how successful reserves have been in other countries, where they have been welcomed by fishing interests. For example, fishermen in New Zealand line up their boats alongside the edges, as it were, of these marine reserves. The lobsters and so on are developing well in the marine reserves and the fishermen have a good basis for working. Therefore, if administered well, these reserves can be of great benefit both for nature and for fishing interests. Some organisations are calling for a target in terms of the area occupied. I agree with the Secretary of State’s remark to our committee that the targets will need to be considered by the organisations involved and agreed by the Minister. Surely the outcomes from these policies can be defined in the legislation—for example, in terms of the ecological health, to use the EC word, of the whole coastline. Will the Minister consider introducing indicators as part of the objectives in, for example, biodiversity and the state of the fish species and ecological health generally? Will the MMO and/or Defra be responsible for establishing targets for the improvement of such indicators? The point is that we know what they are now; they are going down at the moment, in the words of the officials. We want to hear every year where the indicators are going and when, we hope, they start improving. The blue signs on our beaches have been an important indicator of how this kind of approach can work. Giving responsibilities for broad objectives for environmental monitoring and improvement is the surest way to effective and transparent administration. This legislation is a start, but it needs to become clearer. Finally, as a former councillor, although not a maritime councillor, I am quite sure that the local authorities should be closely involved in establishing coastal footpaths. I welcome the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. I hope that that can be worked into the Bill.