Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

In introducing Part 5, my noble friend Lord Greaves said that this is the heart of the Bill, and I absolutely agree with him. The question for the Government is whether they want it to be a strong heart or a weak one. That is what these amendments seek to examine. They concern the highly protected marine reserves and the question of ecosystems. I recognise and share the frustration among speakers to the previous group of amendments that the groupings are quite difficult. I do not blame the staff who had to group them in this way because either we were faced with a group of 19 amendments or they had to be degrouped. Because of the confusion between the ecologically coherent sites that noble Lords spoke about before the dinner break and ecosystems, there is some confusion which I shall address later in my contribution. That is what led to the difficulties over the groupings. That said, we heard some splendid contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, laid the ground very well. Again, the question for the Government is whether they want a strong or a weak heart for the Bill. I take the Committee back to the comments of the Joint Committee on the draft Bill to remind us of exactly what the difference is in the definition. I shall quote from paragraph 108: ""Highly protected marine areas prohibit all damaging activities including, dumping, dredging, construction and the extraction of all resources. Multiple-use marine protected areas permit activities as long as they do not impact on the biodiversity interests of the given site"." It is clear that we have two kinds of site, one with much stronger protection than the other. A weakness of the Bill is that it does not recognise that there is a place for both. I think that the Government could make the choice. Indeed, their own advisers from Natural England have defined the difference, and I shall quote their definition because it is interesting: ""An MPA is an area of sea that is protected or managed to ensure that activities do not damage or cause disturbance to habitats, species and ecological processes … Highly protected Marine Reserves (MPAs with no exploitation or development) are an essential component of an ecologically coherent MPA network"." It might sound like an academic difference, but it is much easier to explain when we look at exactly how Defra intends to implement what we are calling marine conservation zones. In the helpful notes to Part 5, it explains that, ""the levels of protection are to depend on site-specific conservation objectives, and some MCZs are likely to require significant restriction of activities, effectively creating highly protected marine reserves"." The word "effectively" is critical. If we go with the current proposal that Defra licenses a system of MCZs in a less and less generous way, eventually when it denies all licences that will be the equivalent of a highly protected marine reserve. That is one way of doing it. However, there is a difficulty with that approach. It fails to recognise the science behind the fact that there is a strong case to be made for having some highly protected marine reserves simply in their own right, because, as Members of the Committee have said, the sea in conservation terms is in a bad state. It needs to recover. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Eden, quoted from the interesting evidence gathered by PISCO, which is an international body drawing together scientists from all over the world. The science for having some highly protected reserves is irrefutable. Scientists from 124 marine reserves around the world studied and peer reviewed them and came up with these figures: that in the highly protected reserves, biomass—that is, the mass of plants and animals altogether—increased on average 446 per cent. The density—that is, the number of plants and animals in a given area—increased on average 166 per cent and the body size of animals increased at an average of 28 per cent. That is important because the size that the animal reaches is critical to how much it will breed. Finally, I turn to species diversity. The number of species increased by an average of 21 per cent in the sample area. It is impossible to obtain such incredibly dynamic results from an area that is suffering from a number of licensed activities. Scientifically, if we want to make a big impact on improving the ecological state of the sea, that is the way to go. I went to the Lundy highly protected marine reserve, where Natural England showed me some of the effects of it being a no-take zone—effects that are agreed by the fishermen as well, who fish all around the zone on the outside of it, because the fish stocks have increased so dramatically. It is hard to see why the Government are resisting having some highly protected marine reserves. The other effect of carrying out what the Bill proposes, as the Minister will realise, is that all the commercial interests will carry on applying for licences only to find that they are rejected all the time and the MMO will have to keep receiving the licences only to find that it is having to carry out all this paperwork in rejecting them. How much simpler it would be to accept the science of the places that should be highly protected marine reserves and say that nothing will be licensed in that area. It is for the scientists to decide how many there should be and where they should be, but it would be a far better approach to say that there should be some. If we go back to the lessons of Lyme Bay, the Minister would agree that that started out as trying to protect the sea corals and the Minister tried to designate small areas. In terms of protection, that did not work and it created a much bigger argument about what could and could not happen. He ended up designating the entire area for the purposes of protecting what initially was one species. The difference between an ecologically coherent approach and an ecosystem approach is difficult to pin down. You could have an ecologically coherent system of marine conservation zones which were not highly protected. It might be one, for example, where basking sharks moved between the zones. A number of things might happen in the network, but it would be for a species that you were trying to protect. An ecosystem approach suggests that you are protecting the entire system, from the very smallest larvae or flora in it right the way through to the biggest creature. That is what an ecosystem is: the biggest creatures feeding off the smallest. If you fail to protect it all the way through, including the habitats, you will never end up with the ecosystem as it should be. The final amendment in the group, Amendment 207, is from Buglife. Although it might seem a very particular amendment, referring as it does to invertebrates, eggs and larvae, it is very important, because it underpins the idea that those small very things are the bottom of the food chain. The amendment simply probes whether "animal" as defined in the Bill includes all those creatures. This group of amendments asks that the Government make quite clear what their objection is to having highly protected zones as of right, because the approach which they have in mind of withdrawing the ability to issue licences gradually will make the whole process more opaque and more difficult to implement. I beg to move.