Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, with this amendment we move back to what I think we agreed in Committee was, for many of us, at the heart of the Bill. This is the part that deals with marine conservation zones. I have brought this amendment back, first, because I believe that the terminology is, in itself very unhelpful in discussing what is meant by marine conservation zones. Secondly, the Government are still denying the MMO a vital tool in the box. I thank the Minister for sending the various pieces of draft Defra guidance around; it was very helpful. Having said that, it increased my fear that the terminology is mixed up here; it really should be better defined in the Bill. In the beginning, when we talked about marine conservation zones, we were just talking about something that would improve dramatically the conservation effort in marine areas. There were some impassioned speeches, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, in Committee. I will not rehearse all the reasons why we should have this strong effort towards conservation. However, there are zones in the Bill that can be designated as marine conservation zones at the moment, but all sorts of activities can still apply to take place within them. That is fine; there are many places where lots of activities may still be applicable. There may be one sort of fishing denied and another sort admitted. There may be no dredging at all. Recreational activities may be fine. There is a whole gamut of things. However, then we come to those places that I think the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, referred to in Committee as "pristine". The Defra guidance now has a new word for it, which is "naturalness". These are places that really have not been disturbed at all. If you have a zone that really exhibits that, and which has lots of rare species and all or many of the other things that Defra has on its list, surely that place has a claim to being a highly protected marine zone, where it is pointless to apply for a licence because you simply should not be granted it. Any human activity that encroached on the place would spoil it. It should be in the MMO’s power to designate such a zone straight away. I think that there is still confusion around this subject. Defra’s guidance, Delivering Marine Conservation Zones and Marine Protected Areas, refers to marine protected areas’ benefits for fisheries. The place that it quotes, again and again throughout this—and under benefits for tourism—is the Lundy no-take zone. If there is one example of a highly protected area, this is it. You cannot extrapolate everything about marine conservation zones from one highly protected area. It would be terrific to achieve the objective of all our seas being as they are around Lundy. However, when the Government talk about designating marine conservation zones, it is not a realistic aim at this point to say that this is where they believe that they will be, even by 2020, let alone 2012. Lundy is a particular place. There will be other places around the coast that scientific evidence will show should be a highly protected zone. That is why the Bill needs to give this tool to the MMO, so that it can say that most places that demonstrate good reasons and scientific evidence for having particular protection will simply be marine conservation zones, where licences can be applied for and may be granted if they will not be damaging. However, there will be a few special places that should have absolutely nothing granted that will damage their naturalness or pristineness at all. For example, around Lundy, you cannot even drop an anchor; you must attach to a buoy. I am interested to hear why the Government want to deny the MMO this one very important tool. It has been proved internationally. Every time that the benefits of highly protected areas are widely quoted, it is because they are very highly protected and there is no human activity in them. The Wildlife Trusts produced a very attractive brochure, Marine Reserves, which covered what they had campaigned for. The section "Do marine reserves work?" mentions 160 of the world’s most eminent marine experts assessing work and deciding that full protection is critical to achieve the full range of benefits. It highlighted that the last point is the important one. The full range of benefits may not always be possible for social or economic reasons, but where the science is driving you to say that an area deserves the full range of benefits, it deserves full protection. I ask the Minister to accept that there is a difference in definition and that it is a waste of everybody’s time to have people apply for licences and go through the whole bureaucratic process that they would for one sort of conservation zone; and to accept that there should be a few of these particularly special areas that are recognised by this one particular designation. I beg to move.