English Marine Protected Areas: Bottom Trawling and Dredging

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think there has been a Labour questioner so far on this. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his responses on this, but can I ask—I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission—to what extent the security position is also being factored into these discussions? Quite clearly, damage to undersea cables and pipelines is a serious problem and bottom trawling will not help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord would agree that it is important that we have a comprehensive, fair and equitable approach to the way that we protect our marine environment. The noble Lord mentioned discard rates; at present, it is the case that the Cefas observer programme wants to provide estimates of the discard rates for a variety of quota species, including using methodologies aligned with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea standards. Looking ahead, we want to implement a remote electronic monitoring programme, which involves installing cameras on vessels, which is expected to enhance our understanding and really understand the landscape of good behaviour and bad behaviour. In the meantime, I say to the noble Lord that we believe that the approach that we are taking is ground-breaking, but it is in line with what has happened before under the previous Administration. We are taking a whole-piece approach to this important issue.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister knows that the UK has 377 marine protected areas, of which only 38 are fully protected. Can I just clarify that the 42 that the Government are consulting on are different from the 38? Surely the Minister can tell us when the consultation will end?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness sets out, the consultation has 42 MPAs, and 41 of those have bottom-towed gear restrictions proposed. As I understand it—I will write if this is not the case—those are separate from those previous 38. The consultation will close later in the year, I understand, sometime in the autumn, but I will write with further details if that is not the case.