Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), because he has a distinguished record, of which he can be proud, of commitment to marine conservation in and around the UK over many years, and of negotiation in Europe and internationally. I congratulate not only the Government on introducing the Bill, the campaign organisations that have been behind it for many years and many Members, but the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who many years ago promoted a private Member's Bill that certainly helped to highlight the issue. I often describe the seas around the UK as a rather damp piece of common ground, on which there are layers of competing interests and conflicting demands. Of course, it is extremely damp, because, apart from on the coast itself, it is wet all the time. Leaving aside the brief and discordant note of disappointment that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) cast, I endorse his highlighting of the many issues that I hope we will have the opportunity to debate in Committee. I hope that the Minister in Committee will be receptive to several issues that need to be probed still further and to which I shall return in a moment. I shall illustrate my remarks with two recent events. The first event took place yesterday, off the coast of my constituency. The 18-ft vessel of four marine biologists tipped over near Land's End at the Runnel Stone when they were setting pingers to explore the impact of certain activities on cetaceans. One of my constituents, Dr. Nick Tregenza, whom I know very well and who is, in fact, my former GP, was thrown into the water along with the three others. Fortunately, some inshore fishermen were not far away and came to their rescue, but, had the marine biologists been in the water for much longer, we would have been talking about a loss of life. The two local fishermen, Andrew Pascoe and Jesse Walter, arrived in two separate boats and took them to the RNLI lifeboat, which in turn took them to the nearby fishing port of Newlyn. Two of the biologists were taken to hospital, and one, who is ill, remains there. I spoke to Nick Tregenza earlier today, and the moral of the story is that, although the relationship between marine biologists and fishermen is often characterised as one of perpetual conflict, over recent years they have come together, as symbolised by fishermen saving the lives of marine biologists off the coast of my constituency only yesterday. They support each other and recognise each other's position much more than they did 10 or 15 years ago, when I first entered the House. The second event took place a year ago, on 9 June 2008, when 26 dolphins rather inexplicably became stranded on the south coast of Cornwall around the Falmouth and Percuil area. Last month, we received a report from the UK cetaceans strandings investigation programme. Although it found that no definite cause could be identified, it drew attention to high-intensity acoustic activity from naval sonar in the region just before the event. Those two things are not necessarily connected, but Nick Tregenza, who is an expert on cetaceans, tells me that they can easily become spooked by such activity, which can affect them for a long time. We can only speculate about what happened, but today's debate has drawn attention to the activities of fishermen, who have been caricatured as the villains causing the most damage to our seas, and we need to look rather wider. Fishermen are engaging much more constructively in the processes under discussion to protect the future of sustainable fishing. Cetaceans are highly sensitive and fragile animals. Around the coast of Cornwall and south-west England, there is a small group—only 12 in number—of bottlenose dolphins, despite there being 400 miles of coastline in the area. With the exception of an 18-year period from the 1980s, bottlenose dolphins have lived in the area since time immemorial—a point that I made in a debate on 6 February 2008. We need the Bill, because other parts of the world, from New Zealand to Canada, have similar legislation, and it is working. We are an island nation and, given our location and dependence on the sea, rather unique in Europe. Marine wildlife is in a seriously fragile state, with population decline and, in some cases, stock collapse, and there are new pressures from offshore wind, tidal and wave energy, which we knew nothing or very little about just 10 or 15 years ago—hence the need to act. Other industries are also developing, and the technology available to the fishing industry is much more powerful now than it was 20 years ago. I want to comment on the need, in some cases, for a higher tier of protection. I also want to discuss the extent to which socio-economic consequences need to be considered in the designation and planning of marine conservation zones, the territorial extent of the Bill and its relationship with the common fisheries policy—which has already been addressed on a couple of occasions—the importance of the proper management of the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities in the six-mile zone, and coastal access. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), who is no longer present, referred to the concern felt by many about the designation of the MMO and the impact that it will have on the current staff of the Marine and Fisheries Agency. I wrote to the Minister earlier in the year, and he replied on 6 February:""There will be little practical difference for the staff in this change e.g. pensions provision should not change and MMO staff should be able to apply for Civil Service posts."" However, concerns remain despite the reassurances that I have conveyed to my constituents in the sector, and it seems that there is more work for the Government to do. The Secretary of State did not mention Finding Sanctuary, an organisation that was established to identify potential candidates for marine conservation zones. I commend the work of Finding Sanctuary and the other bodies that are already doing that work. In an intervention on the Secretary of State's speech, I spoke of the importance of providing more protection for particularly fragile, vulnerable areas within MCZs. Notwithstanding his reassurance, it is clear that the conservation bodies that have campaigned for legislation remain unconvinced that the Bill as it stands provides the level of protection they want. As I have said before, it would be wrong to characterise fishermen as being interested only in plundering the stocks of the sea. Let me give an example of which the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe should be well aware. Fishermen in my area have been campaigning for many years, saying "Please save us from ourselves by closing the fishing grounds in the Trevose area"—which is off the north coast of Cornwall—"during the early spring months each year." It has been done, and as a result foreign vessels have been kept out, along with the UK vessels that wanted to protect the spawning grounds off Trevose. That is already paying dividends in stock recovery.