Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

I speak to my Amendment A135A and I want to touch on Amendments A136 and A140A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. He and I will probably cancel each other out tonight as we are taking different views on considering socio-economic factors in the designation of marine conservation zones. I entirely understand where he is coming from, but I would like to try to persuade him that he is wrong. I have tried this once privately and failed, so I shall now try publicly. Clearly, having a network of marine conservation zones which protect the areas of the highest importance for conservation is an absolutely central part of this Bill. It is one of the elements of the Bill for which we have argued for many years. If this were to be a weak part of the Bill, it would take the heart out of it because it originally started as a conservation Bill and has only recently become a Bill on which everything else has been hung. I want to look at the history of creating marine protection areas in the UK. The Minister referred to this, so he knew he was going to get it in the neck on this argument and we may as well carry on. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 the designation of marine nature reserves was dismal—that is the only word to use. In more than 25 years, only three small sites have been designated. The big problem was that, at the time, there was huge pressure against designation from socio-economic interests. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, would say that that was the time to face up to them, to get them out into the open and to take a balanced view, but in reality all that happened over the 25 years was that it was almost impossible to get a designation through. My second point is how we overcome what, in the case of the Wildlife and Countryside Act provisions, was virtually a veto by socio-economic interests. How do we ensure that we do not end up with a network of sites where no one can envisage some socio-economic requirement which would mean that they can be selected? In the process to be adopted for designation of MCZs, there will be a strong regional role and a strong consultative role. The risk is that the poor Minister, in making a decision, will be heavily lobbied by socio-economic interests of all kinds and he will be put in the position that Ministers were in for 25 years under the previous rules where he will find it impossible to move ahead. Scotland will stand out like a shining beacon in all this. Under the Scottish provisions, its conservation zones will be designated entirely on scientific conservation criteria. We are already seeing a difference between the four countries. On the terrestrial environment, not only is there not a requirement to take socio-economic conditions into account at the time of designation of sites of special scientific interest, but in the case of European sites, for special areas of conservation and special protection areas under the Natura 2000 series, it has been tested in law that socio-economic conditions may not be taken into account in selecting those sites. The process is: let us identify and designate those sites which are really important for nature conservation and, when we know the nature of proposed management activities or planning and development activities, it will be possible for the planning authority and, ultimately, the Minister to do the balancing act between socio-economic conditions and the importance of the site and so make decisions about the management of the site or the development and planning proposal which has come forward. Alas, if the Minister does that at a point of abstraction, when people are saying, "This may be important in a socio-economic way for the future; we might want to put a wind farm here; we might want to put a tidal barrage here; there might be aggregate extraction here; or this may be an important fishing area", the Minister will have so many reasons for not designating that he will find it jolly difficult to designate. Marine conservation zones have been heavily misunderstood because they are not areas where no development is planned or no economic activity can be permitted. There will be many economic activities which are perfectly combinable with the conservation interest of a particular site, depending on what that conservation interest is, but the appropriate time for that balancing decision to be made is when one knows what economic development is being proposed. There is a huge signalling role in designation. Having already signalled to people that, whereas in the marine environment in general socio-economic requirements may well be incredibly important, in this bit, most of the time if they are in conflict we will want the conservation of natural features to win out. That signalling activity is very important to make sure that people exercise ingenuity in looking at where they can direct their socio-economic development away from the most important sites for nature conservation, the places that are irreparable, the jewels in the crown, which is what SSSIs are in the terrestrial environment. I was trying to think of a good example. Noble Lords may remember the Salisbury bypass, which I am glad to say I campaigned against and which was never built. It ran perilously close to damaging Salisbury Cathedral. It went through the water meadows and could well have had an impact on the cathedral. If we had not had a designation for that cathedral and we had been operating the system that would exist in the marine environment, the Minister would have been saying, "I wonder if we should protect the cathedral because, actually, the road is jolly important too". I do not think that any noble Lord would ever suggest that some of the wonderful heritage treasures that are subject to the highest level of protection would ever be traded away for socio-economic purposes. They are designated simply on their heritage value, not on whether they are in an area that could get a bit crunchy in terms of planning and development. My belief is that the marine conservation zones—and I refuse to believe that we will have a huge number of them—that will make up this important network ought to be designated on their scientific evidence-based conservation value alone. That is why I tabled Amendment A135A and which is why—I think I have probably said enough—I would not support Amendment A136, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, which says that account must be taken of socio-economic reasons. Although I approve of the Sandford principle in some circumstances, Amendment A140A, which is a Sandford bastardisation—if that is not an unparliamentary word—seems to insert it at the wrong time. It is saying that we might not designate something because of socio-economic conditions but, if there is a bit of a push and a shove, perhaps the environmental objectives should prevail. If that is the intention of that clause, designating on the basis of choosing those sites that are most important for conservation would have a similar net outcome, so perhaps I could persuade the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that Amendment A135A is better than Amendment A140A.