Virtual participation in proceedings commenced (Order, 25 February).
[NB: [V] denotes a Member participating virtually.]
9:25 am
Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes made to the normal practice in order to support new hybrid arrangements. Timings of the debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate, so there will be a suspension between each debate. I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive at the start of the debates in Westminster Hall, and Members are expected to remain for the entire debate, although I am aware that one Member has to leave early for an important meeting, which is perfectly understandable.
Members are visible to each other at all times, whether attending physically or virtually. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall clerks at westminsterhallclerks@ parliament.uk. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I would also like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated masks should be worn in Westminster Hall unless you are speaking. Members attending physically who are speaking in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery and move on to the horseshoe when seats become available, as they can speak only from the horseshoe, where there are microphones.
That this House has considered World Oceans Day 2021.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The Earth is a blue marble. Over 70% of its surface is covered by water, and the algae that live on the surface account for more than 50% of the oxygen we breathe. So far, the ocean has absorbed one third of all human-created emissions, and regulates our climate. Our oceans are too big and too important just to be the domain of MPs like me, who are blessed with a constituency with a sea shore. The oceans are home to over a quarter of a million known species and another 2 million as yet unknown, and they are the main source of protein for more than 1 billion people.
United Nations World Oceans Day is a celebration of the potential of our sea, and this year’s theme is life and livelihood. Globally, fishing supported some 39 million jobs in 2018, and the UK’s fishing industry alone is worth almost £1 billion to our economy. In my North Devon constituency, many local businesses and families rely on the maritime economy, and we need to revert to sustainable fishing practices to ensure that we use those precious resources in the best way possible. Additional jobs, fish and associated economic benefit could be derived if our fish stocks were restored to their maximum sustainable yield.
Conservative Governments have led the way for the UK to become a global ocean champion, with our extensive network of marine protected areas. However, we could make use of our post-Brexit freedoms to ban bottom trawling. Research suggests that emissions from bottom trawling alone could be as high as those from all UK agriculture.
Why does that matter? Our seabeds are significant carbon stores, or sinks. When they are disturbed by bottom trawling or dredging, or even by anchors being thrown overboard, the stored carbon becomes resuspended in the water, and potentially escapes back to the atmosphere as CO2. Over 200 million tonnes of this blue carbon are stored on the UK’s ocean floor—a third more than is held in our stock of standing forests.
Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)
Before I call Kerry McCarthy, I should say that colleagues will be aware that there are around 10 Back Benchers who want to speak. If Members take five minutes each, we will all get on great.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing the debate and on an excellent speech. I do not think there was anything in it with which I could disagree.
Sadly, World Oceans Day has increased in importance each year as our seas fall victim to the impact of climate change and our abuse of our planet’s precious resources. Like the hon. Lady, I have signed up to be a blue carbon champion in this Parliament as part of the project run by the Marine Conservation Society and Rewilding Britain. I also support the WWF Ocean Hero campaign. I pay tribute to all those groups for their campaigning, along with the likes of Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, Surfers Against Sewage, and Pew, to name but a few.
The challenges facing our oceans are huge and numerous. Rising temperatures, overfishing, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, bottom trawling, bycatch and extreme weather events are wreaking havoc on our ocean environments, threatening the rich biodiversity within them and the livelihoods of those who depend on the blue economy. The prospect of deep-sea mining is also deeply alarming. Our oceans’ resources should be protected, not plundered, and I am pleased that we are proceeding with caution on that front, but I would be very concerned if, on the basis of the current evidence, any licences for exploitation were granted. I know that they are up for review soon, so I hope the Minister can offer us reassurance on that point.
As an island nation and with so much of the world’s seas and oceans falling within our territorial waters, the UK should lead the way on the issue. We hear talk of ambition with the 30by30 target, but what we have in reality is marine protected areas that are little more than paper parks, as the review by the Environmental Audit Committee found in the previous Parliament. As with the Fisheries Act 2020, the Government have been actively stripping marine protections out of legislation. I welcome the Benyon review and the announcement on highly protected marine areas, but I am slightly cynical about what that will mean in practice. I hope it represents an improvement on the marine protected areas.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on having the foresight to secure this important debate on World Oceans Day. Although the world’s oceans are an enormous stage, they are all interconnected. Whatever happens in one place can have global implications. If someone somewhere gets it wrong and manages a particular fishery or coastline irresponsibly and recklessly, everyone can suffer, but if we get it right somewhere, in however small a way, there is the potential to spread benefits, opportunities and good practice around the world.
My apologies, Mr Hosie, but I am going to be parochial, in that the focus of much of what I will say is on, in or off my own backyard—the UK waters of the East Anglian coast. In October 2019, the East Anglian fishing industry came together with local councils, Seafish and the New Anglia local enterprise partnership to produce the Renaissance of the East Anglian Fisheries report. With Brexit about to happen, the report made recommendations as to how to revitalise the local fishing industry.
Some of those proposals have had to be revised as a result of the outcome of Brexit negotiations, which were a disappointment to so many. However, Brexit provides the opportunity to manage our own waters in a better, more responsible way, and I will briefly highlight five areas where we can do that for the benefit of the marine environment and local people in coastal communities.
First, we need to review our marine governance arrangements. The UK has a complicated, multi-layered and multi-bodied system of marine management. That often leaves fishermen annoyed, frustrated and irritated as they find themselves being inspected by different officials from different bodies carrying out the same checks for the same reasons within days of each other.
Secondly, we need to put in place a comprehensive marine planning system that enables us better to manage the many activities that take place in UK waters. Those waters are becoming crowded places with many competing and conflicting uses—for example, wind farms, cables, marine protected areas, extraction of aggregates, capital dredging, the disposal of sediments, and a wide variety of fishing activities. The UK was one of the first countries in the world to legislate for a comprehensive marine planning system that would enable us better to manage those often conflicting uses. However, there is much work to be done and our exit from the EU gives us the opportunity to get on and do it.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie, and I thank the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing and leading this important debate to consider World Oceans Day.
I am the Member of Parliament for Gower, and I am very proud of the Gower peninsula and all it has to offer. A precious and diverse seabed surrounds the peninsula—we must consider that on World Oceans Day, and work with our fishing industry—and the Gower constituency is renowned for its salt marshes, its cockle beds and its environment.
When we talk about plastics pollution, it is important to consider the many organisations that help to keep our beaches and our seabeds clean, as well individuals, such as young Sonny in my constituency, and community groups such as Pennard Community Council, which go out and keep their precious areas clean. They are to be commended for their hard work, but the Welsh Labour Government are also to be commended, because it is so important that we work together across the four nations to protect our seabeds. The UK marine strategy is already backed up by secondary legislation and works across all four nations; however, in its current state, it is no longer fit for purpose. There is a focus on indicators rather than action, and insufficient accounting for the increase in the effects of climate change on our seas. This year, the United Kingdom has a prime opportunity to set a new mandate for our marine strategy: to restore and safeguard declining coastal ecosystems and to demonstrate global leadership in ocean recovery.
I, along with many other politicians, support the Ocean Hero programme: it was really important that we were there to speak to the World Wild Fund for Nature about the problems that we have on our seabeds. We have to take control now, and understand that we have to change to move forward. “Blue Planet”, as many have mentioned, was an eye-opener for so many people, sitting in their armchairs and watching the world around us. We have to look after our seabeds, and I totally support what the hon. Member for North Devon has said in today’s debate. I will draw to a close and say thank you very much, Mr Hosie.
9:46 am
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on having secured this important debate on World Oceans Day. I count myself incredibly lucky that I have been able to see the sea from every house I have lived in, over my whole life—occasionally I had to stand on tiptoe from an upstairs window to be able to see it, but I have always lived in sight of the sea. Some of my happiest memories, both of my childhood and of raising my own family, are of days spent on or beside the water. I grew up with an amazing awareness of what an incredible place the sea and our oceans are, but also with a deep respect for them: not only are they a great place for fun, enjoyment and leisure but they contain incredible power and can, at times, do incredible damage. It is therefore absolutely right that we have this day once a year to remember our oceans and focus on them, and to remind ourselves what a major role they play in our lives and our natural environment.
The UK, as a proud island maritime nation, has always played an important role in global affairs relating to the sea, and it is right that we continue to play a global leadership role now. As others have already said, the UK cannot deal with all of the issues that affect our oceans on its own: it is going to take global co-operation, and it is good and right that the UK plays a leadership role in bringing that together. For far too many years, we tended to see the ocean as this great big dumping ground that we could pour raw sewage into and let our waste end up in, because it was big enough to cope; it would manage; the waste would not have much effect.
However, thankfully, in more recent times we have changed that view, and have come to realise the incredible damage that we were doing to our oceans. As others have mentioned, the BBC’s “Blue Planet” programmes with David Attenborough really brought home to the British public the damage we were doing, and how we needed to change our ways. I am glad that that is happening. Since I was first elected to this place in 2015, I have had the honour of chairing the ocean conservation all-party parliamentary group—which was previously called Protect Our Waves—and working particularly closely with Surfers Against Sewage and other organisations, such as the Marine Conservation Society, to continue to press in Parliament for more action.
In the time I have left, I would like to mention a couple of areas in which I believe we are making progress, but we need to go further; the first is with regard to plastics. We have all been shocked to learn just how much plastic there is in our seas and oceans. The stat that really brought that home to me, which I read some time ago, was that if we did not change our ways by the year 2050, there would be more plastic than fish in our seas. It is good to see the action that is being taken, both by Governments and by other organisations, such as the million mile beach clean that recently took place, through which thousands of tonnes of waste were removed from our beaches. However, we cannot go on relying on beach cleans for ever. We have to address the source, and stop putting as much plastic waste into the seas. That is where a deposit return scheme will play an important part in increasing recycling rates. I am delighted that the Government are committed to that, though we are all a bit disappointed that it is going to take a year longer than we hoped. Let us take that year and ensure that we get a world-beating deposit return scheme; that is the best we can do to increase recycling rates and reduce the amount of plastic thrown away to end up in our oceans.
Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)
We have had a couple of late withdrawals so colleagues can now take up to six minutes.
I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I echo the thanks to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for her excellent exposition of the challenges before us. World Oceans Day supports the implementation of worldwide sustainable goals and fosters public interest in the protection of the ocean and the sustainable management of its resources.
The Scottish Government are committed to conserving our marine environments and protecting natural biodiversity. Evidence of that is that the first no-take zone—the first marine protected area—in the United Kingdom was established in Scotland, in Lamlash bay on the beautiful Isle of Arran, in my constituency. It was established in 2008, one short year after the Scottish Government first took office, after previous successive Governments had failed to offer the necessary support for that to happen.
Thanks to work of the Community of Arran Seabed Trust—or COAST, as it is known—supported by local MSP Kenneth Gibson, no shellfish or fish can be taken from Lamlash bay’s waters or seabed, including the shore area. The University of York found last year that, far from being a paper park, the action of creating this marine protected area had transformed the ecosystem. This no-take zone has been lauded as a great success. What has happened in Lamlash should serve as a template for other marine protected areas.
There is no doubt that human activity has had a significant impact on our seas and oceans. I refer hon. Members to the rapid decline in shark populations on a global scale, because humans have replaced them as the oceans’ top predators. There was an interesting debate here on that issue yesterday. The shark population is being severely impacted by the horrific practice of shark finning, the process of slicing off a shark’s fin and discarding the rest of the still-living animal into the ocean. Unable to swim, it sinks to the bottom and dies a slow and painful death. So much for shark fin soup and other shark fin products. Sharks are essential to healthy oceans for a number of reasons, which I do not have time to go into.
9:56 am
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con) [V]
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing the debate as we celebrate World Oceans Day. The topic is extremely important to my constituents in Truro and Falmouth, as well as to wider Cornwall. It is also one of the reasons I came into politics. My constituency has a north and a south coast. We have the gentle, rolling and calm inlets of the south coast, including the port of Falmouth, Portloe and Portscatho, and the dramatic wind-whipped surf beaches of the north coast, including St Agnes, Perranporth and Holywell Bay. St Agnes is home to Surfers Against Sewage, and I thank them for their tireless campaigning.
If you speak to anyone who swam or surfed in the sea in the 1980s and early 1990s, we all have stories of looking down and seeing—how shall I describe it?—objects and matter that had gone straight down the loo and into the sea. Things are generally better nowadays, thank goodness. According to the Marine Conservation Society, 77% of people who visited the sea in the last 12 months said they felt happier and 81% of people who visited the sea in the last 12 months said they felt healthier.
Healthy oceans are vital to life and to the livelihoods of our planet. Ocean protection and the conservation of marine biodiversity are essential for building resilience and adapting to the impact of climate change, as well as supporting its mitigation. Falmouth Harbour Commissioners are actively regenerating the seagrass beds off Flushing, and I went to visit them recently. They are also developing an advanced mooring system to ensure yachts and boats continue to moor there, but that the lines and anchor chains no longer decimate the seagrass beds.
Marine protected areas need to be effectively managed and well resourced, and regulations need to be put in place to reduce overfishing, marine pollution and ocean acidification. Effective management of the oceans, both locally and globally, is fundamental to the future of Cornwall’s fragile but sustainable inshore fishing industry, and I want to echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) about the need to simplify and overhaul our current complicated management system.
I am extremely pleased that the UK has led the way in efforts to secure an international agreement to protect at least 30% of global oceans by 2030. I also welcome the fact that the Government are playing a leading role in negotiations for a new agreement on conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction through the BBNJ agreement. Further commitments are also welcome, including the new £500 million blue planet fund to support developing countries to protect the marine environment and reduce poverty as part of the UK’s commitment to spend at least £3 billion on international climate finance and to protect and restore biodiversity over the next five years. There will always be more that we can do, but we should not underestimate the achievements so far.
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The role of coastal and marine habitats in drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in seabed, sediment, seaweeds, salt marshes and seagrass beds has been somewhat neglected. Increasing blue carbon habitats could result in a reduction of carbon in our atmosphere, while reducing the disturbance of the seabed ensures that it remains stored. As a Marine Conservation Society blue carbon champion, I believe that if we are to meet net zero by 2050, we must consider blue carbon part of the solution, not to mention integrating it in our carbon accounts. Along with other hon. Members, I recently wrote to Lord Deben, the chair of the Climate Change Committee, to ask him to look into the feasibility of making that happen.
My North Devon constituency is home to the first UNESCO biosphere, and today is the 50th anniversary of the Man and the Biosphere programme. Our world-leading biosphere conducts a wide range of ongoing projects, including those investing in seaweeds, seagrass and salt marshes. I am truly fortunate that I spend my weekends in and on the sea, surfing and gig rowing. I live and breathe the ocean. Sir David Attenborough’s legendary “Blue Planet” brought the ocean to all our living rooms, and we now need to link that passion to action to ensure that it is there for future generations.
No wonder 85% of people in England and Wales consider marine protection important to them. Take whales, for example: not only are they delightful to watch when we are lucky enough to see them, but they are brilliant tacklers of climate change. Each great whale sequesters around 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide on average in their lifetime, which is equivalent to the carbon sequestration of almost 1,400 trees.
We need to ensure that we are all aware of the value of our oceans and what lives within them, and be aware that, while the benefits of rainforests are so widely taught, our oceans and blue carbon are absent from far too many curricula.
I am proud that the UK, through leading the Global Ocean Alliance and co-chairing the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, is pushing to protect at least 30% of the global ocean in marine protected areas and through other effective area-based conservation measures by 2030—the 30by30 target.
It is great news that this morning the Government have announced plans to pilot highly protected marine areas in English waters, creating sites where all activities that could have a damaging effect on wildlife or marine habitats would be banned. The independent Benyon review concluded that such HPMAs would have an important role to play in helping the marine ecosystem to recover. The Government have my full support in taking those steps.
Biodiversity is also crucial. With 90% of big fish populations depleted, and 50% of coral reefs destroyed, we are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished. As the UN states when referencing World Oceans Day:
“To protect and preserve the ocean and all it sustains, we must create a new balance, rooted in true understanding of the ocean and how humanity relates to it. We must build a connection to the ocean that is inclusive, innovative, and informed by lessons from the past”.
Connect to the ocean we must. I frequently collect litter on our beaches and am horrified by the volume of plastics, microplastics and nurdles on North Devon’s beautiful beaches. The tragic situation with the container ship in Sri Lanka last week—it caught fire and spilled its cargo into the ocean—has brought nurdles something of an unwanted fame, but it highlights the fact that we are indeed shipping those pellets around the world in containers that end up in our seas. Is that what we want? If not, what are we going to do to change it?
Plastic pollution is visible and tangible, and we feel we can do something about it by picking it up, but so much of what is going on in our oceans is not visible. Sewage pollution is another challenge along my constituency coastline. I was one of the MPs to support the Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), and I am delighted to see so much of it incorporated in our landmark Environment Bill, which yesterday received its Second Reading in the House of Lords.
I also hope that introducing the debate will reduce the pressure on my inbox, as I receive an abundance of emails from constituents linked to the Surfers Against Sewage campaign each time the water quality is reduced in North Devon. I very much hope further steps will rapidly be taken to reduce the discharge into our rivers, which ultimately reaches our oceans.
Blue carbon is part of the solution, not part of the problem, when it comes to achieving net zero. I hope that today’s debate offers a chance to focus not just on what we have achieved, but on how much more there is still to do to restore our oceans and to optimise their link to our lives and livelihoods.
As the hon. Member for North Devon said, we need a proper commitment to outlawing destructive practices such as overfishing and bottom trawling, and we need sustainability to be put at the heart of our fisheries strategy, with the ramping up of monitoring and enforcement. The Government must also press forward with a ban on the detonation of munitions, as those detonations harm marine life, and the adoption of less damaging deflagration techniques. We need to think long term about ocean protection, setting out how we can reach net zero emissions in our marine activity and developing a blue carbon strategy to rewild our oceans, protect blue carbon stores and develop low carbon fisheries and aquaculture. I am glad that the Marine Conservation Society has called for exactly that today.
As chair of the recently formed all-party parliamentary group on small island developing states, I have been speaking regularly to nations that have contributed least to the changing of our climate, but which suffer the worst effects of that. Rising sea levels are an existential threat to many small island developing states, as are climate-related extreme weather events. Those nations rely heavily on the blue economy for food, resources and tourism, and they have been badly hit by covid and the closure of countries to tourism in the past year.
Small island states desperately need support for ocean conservation measures and climate change adaptation, including natural climate solutions such as restoring mangroves and coral reefs. During sessions of the group, it has been really interesting to hear that instead of giving money for the building of concrete sea barriers, it would be far better to rely on natural carbon solutions. Reforming access to climate finance and investing in the blue economy—for example, through debt-for-climate swaps and blue bonds—will be central to that.
This is a pivotal year for ocean protection with the convention on biological diversity, COP26, and the global ocean treaty being negotiated internationally. We know that our oceans have an immense capacity to heal themselves if they are given the space to breathe, but that requires us to be much bolder at home and abroad to ensure that those precious resources are protected and restored. When we talk about ocean protection, it is obligatory to talk about “Blue Planet”, which, as I never hesitate to point out, was made by the BBC’s natural history unit, based in Bristol. As Sir David Attenborough said last year:
“We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our Blue Planet. The future of humanity and indeed, all life on earth, now depends on us.”
Thirdly, fisheries management and marine conservation must be properly integrated in the marine planning system. Until now, that has not been possible as both were part of the EU legislative framework. Thus, we have a disjointed management system that is out of step with the UK’s ambition to be a global leader in marine conservation and marine management.
Fourthly, we need a system that better understands and better manages the impact of displacement, which can have devastating consequences for the marine environment, small-scale fishermen and coastal communities.
My final point is that we should do something different. We should involve the fishing industry—fishermen—in decision making. The sustainable future of the fishing industry depends entirely on healthy fish stocks. Fishermen have unparalleled local knowledge, and it makes sense to work with people with knowledge. To involve them in decision making would be in keeping with the spirit of World Oceans Day.
The other issue I want to touch on is that of sewage discharged into our seas. It is the reason Surfers Against Sewage began their campaign 30 years ago. We have made great progress, but we still need to go much further. Raw sewage is still far too often discharged into our waterways, ending up in the sea, or is discharged directly into our seas.
I welcome the Government’s agreement to adopt new measures in the Environment Bill that will better enable us to hold water companies to account, but we need to ensure that the legislation has real teeth to hold them to account and take the necessary action to stop discharging raw sewage into our seas. I plead with the Minister to ensure that the Environment Bill enables us to do that in an effective way. I am delighted to have made this short contribution to today’s debate. Let us all continue to work together and provide global leadership, particularly in this year when the G7 summit and COP26 are being held in the UK, to ensure that we work together around the world to nurture and protect our oceans.
The ocean is home to most of the earth’s biodiversity, but human activity is threatening its ecosystem. We all know of the great damage being caused in the seas by sea blasts, a dreadful legacy of war. The way we dispose of munitions is hugely detrimental to our seas and the sea creatures that live in them. It does not have to be that way. We know that low order deflagration is an effective and much less environmentally damaging alternative.
On World Oceans Day, let us all give more thought to the good we can do as a species by reducing our extractive and destructive activity in the seas and oceans, and how we can perhaps repair some of the damage we have done by letting the ecosystems of our oceans recover, repair and regenerate, free from our interference or with much less interference from us. The oceans and seas, like the world, do not belong to us. We have inherited them, just as future generations will go on to do. Sometimes, I think we can forget that.
COP26 provides us with an opportunity for fresh impetus on that and so many other environmental issues globally. We need to ensure that we are sharing expertise to promote and protect natural habitats, clean up our oceans and work with international partners for better commitments to climate action to make sure our oceans and seas are sustainably managed and biodiversity is conserved. Let us try and leave our seas and the natural world in better shape for future generations. What has happened in Lamlash bay is a tiny snapshot of what we can do as a species if we have the political will. That, surely, is our duty.
Turning to the wider point of water quality, we know that it is essential for life on planet Earth. The pollution of our rivers and oceans has had a huge detrimental effect on us and our wildlife. Thankfully, because of the extensive lobbying by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the Government have committed to publishing a plan by 2022 to reduce sewage discharges, to report to Parliament on progress and to place a legal duty on water companies to publish data on storm overflow operations on an annual basis. The legislation will also require the Government to set legally binding targets for water quality.
The earth is warming at a very worrying rate. Increasing ocean temperatures affect all marine life, causing coral bleaching and the loss of breeding grounds for fish and mammals. They affect the things that we rely on from the ocean, threatening our fish stocks, as I mentioned earlier, causing more extreme weather and accelerating coastal erosion.
I am delighted that the Government are accepting the recommendations of the Benyon review and intend to designate highly protected marine areas as soon as possible. I hope the Minister will assure us that, as we host the G7 in Cornwall this week and COP26 in Glasgow later this year, there is a real push for ambitious and accelerated action to improve the quality and biodiversity of our oceans.