Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I, too, strongly support these amendments and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, on having tabled them and on the work and thought that clearly lie behind them. In parentheses, I also thank her and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for their overgenerous comments on my rather faltering earlier contribution. It was extremely kind of them, and I accept it in the right spirit. In referring to Amendment A118, I also want to stress the importance of Amendments A129, A133, A140 and A158—and not to omit Amendment A207. The point raised by that last amendment is extremely important; the noble Baroness may not have laid much extra emphasis on it, but I would do so because we sometimes overlook the fact that we are talking not just about animals formed but about animals yet to come and still unformed. That is an important part of the process of conserving fish stocks. It was a long time ago—in 1912, to be precise—that a French fisheries scientist, Marcel Hérubel, said, in reference to the theory behind marine reserves, ""choose a locality which is both a spawning-ground and a place where such fish as live on the bottom naturally congregate; delimit this area and make its position precisely known, then decree that all fishing shall be prohibited within its limits, and you will have a preserve wherein fish will multiply and grow, a ‘stock’ of utilisable animal material, or, to use the word employed in France, a cantonnement. The utility of such reservations is proved by experience"." The experience of these reserves is growing the whole time. The reserves that have been established in various parts of the world, such as the Californian coast, in the Philippines and elsewhere, show that the fish stocks over roughly a 10-year period or more—the 10-year period is the reasonable span that has so far been studied—grow in abundance significantly. It is desirable that we focus on the opportunity of establishing no-take zones, as the Minister described them. When I said in a previous debate that I thought that the Minister’s heart was in the right place, I should have gone further and said that the Government should be congratulated on this Bill. It is an extremely important step forward and it is likely to be the only step that we have available to us for a very long time to come. Unless we get it right this time, we will miss a great opportunity. That is why I keep coming back to this point. The primary purpose of this legislation is to ensure the conservation of our fish stocks to protect these animals so that they can develop and rebuild after centuries of depredation by man. That is the significance of this measure. We must not lose track of that in order to accommodate other interesting features in other walks of life. I know that they are all important and that we have to do them justice and take them into account; I do not belittle them in any way at all. However, I do not want them to damage the primary purpose of this legislation, or we will miss out on the great opportunity that I thought was a primary objective of the Government. We will be able to learn a lot from the development of the marine reserves. What the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said was absolutely right: we need to consider the movement of fish, which is not confined readily within a clearly defined area, because they will move beyond it. The fish stock that is built up successfully within the marine reserve area will spread out beyond that and provide happy hunting ground for fishers. It is natural that that should happen and I do not deny that it will happen. One question that arises from that—although it does not reply, pace the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to the point about the black hole or the white hole of the Isle of Man—is that there may well be a gap between the protected zones of the United Kingdom and the protected zones of the Irish Republic within the Irish Sea. What will then happen? Will other national fishing fleets enter the waters and make happy pursuit of the increasing fish stocks that our protected zones are liberating to the wider ocean? I do not know what debate or discussion is going on within the European Union on issues of that kind. This country in particular has had experience of the marauding instincts of other national fishing fleets when they trespass on our national fishing waters. That ought not to be allowed, particularly when we establish a sensitive network of fishing reserves. I hope that this can be addressed in some way at EU level and that we will ensure that the whole operation, when the zones are established, is correctly policed. I am assuming that on this latter point—I know that policing comes up in other respects—satellites will be used and that the MMO will have access to satellite information for marine reserve protection. I strongly support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and I hope that the Government will give them their full support as well.