Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Norwich and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I rise to support all the amendments in this group but I will focus my comments on Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to which I have added my name in support. I would also value hearing the rest of this debate.

On Amendment 10, I reiterate the question I asked at Second Reading: what steps are His Majesty’s Government taking to safeguard marine protected areas, and why are they not taking the IUCN’s recommendations seriously by excluding MPAs from extraction in the Bill?

I will not rehearse the valuable arguments that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has already made on whether we have a robust regulatory framework on MPAs. From the evidence she has provided, I am greatly concerned about whether that is the case. Certainly, the new Rosebank field overlaps with the Faroe-Shetland MPA—a fragile ecosystem and marine environment. Excluding MPAs from the licensing rounds altogether would ensure their protection and that is why I support Amendment 10.

According to the Government’s own figures, only 44% of protected features in MPAs are currently assessed as being in favourable condition. We have rightly set ambitious and strong targets to protect species and restore natural habitats: 70% of MPAs need to be in good condition by 2042 and 30% of the sea must be protected for nature by 2030. Unamended, the Bill risks making this far more difficult to achieve. Meeting these targets will be ever more challenging, which sends a damaging message to the international community about how we regard our natural environment.

It also goes against what Ministers in other departments are saying. For example, in January 2023, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, said during the debate on the Environmental Targets (Marine Protected Areas) Regulations 2022 that

“MPAs are one of the most important tools we have for protecting the wide range of precious and sensitive habitats and species in our waters … Establishing this network is an important step in achieving our goal of conserving our protected species and habitats. Now that they have been designated, we need to increase the protections for these valuable marine environments to help them recover, which is why we are setting this target”.—[Official Report, 24/1/23; col. GC 31.]


So, in one part of government MPAs are a valuable tool to achieve our national and international commitments.

There is further evidence. While he did not refer to MPAs directly, when Defra Secretary of State, Steve Barclay, announced the closure of sand-eel fisheries in the North Sea and restrictions on bottom trawling, he commented that:

“Protecting the environment is fundamental to the prosperity of our country and our new commitments will drive forward our mission to create a cleaner and greener country for all”.


Are we really doing what is adequate to protect our marine environment? I do not believe that we are, because we are playing fast and loose with marine protected areas at the moment. We need joined-up government around our commitments in this area. As your Lordships know, there are so many environmental impacts from both surveying and drilling, including habitat loss and damage; the noise from seismic surveys, which was illustrated for us at Second Reading; and oil spills, toxic vapours and the release of toxic chemicals, with a wide range of impacts on flora and fauna, including skeletal deformities. It is so important that we take all this into account in our thinking about the Bill. It is of course separate from the combined impact of further extraction of fossil fuels and the related carbon emissions on this, our single island planet home.

The Bill as it stands puts at risk the marine habitats found around our shores. We have marine protected areas for a reason; the clue is in the word “protected”. I once again ask His Majesty’s Government not to jeopardise their commitments to MPAs and, by supporting this amendment, to exclude them from surveying and extraction in the Bill. I happily support Amendment 10.

Moving on, I also support Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, because a skills passport would facilitate workforce mobility between sectors. One of the key arguments put forward repeatedly at Second Reading was that jobs would be impacted and that, if we did not have this Bill, further job losses would occur. The reality is that the North Sea is a declining basin. New licensing is unlikely to prevent the ongoing decline of jobs in the oil and gas sector. More than 200,000 jobs, both direct jobs and those that support the oil and gas industry, have been lost in the past decade, in spite of around 400 new drilling licences. A skills passport would facilitate that mobility, enabling people to transition from the oil and gas sector into other sectors.

Further, a green skills retraining plan, as proposed by this amendment, would assist those wishing to transition in using the valuable skills they already have so that they can flourish in a new sector—sectors that will be emerging and coming on stream yet far more into the future. Currently, oil and gas companies are not required to provide retraining or support for workers. This measure would be something of such foresight for them to do. A skills passport would help this work- force navigate the transition to net zero so I support Amendment 2.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee of my declaration of interests, in particular my being a trustee of the Blue Marine Foundation. I support not only Amendments 1 and 2 but the previous two that we have been talking about.

First, I congratulate the Government on the fact that we have these marine protected areas. The Government have also reached out to what might be called the “confetti of empire”; we have, in fact, created an increasing number of marine protected areas around the world. This is leadership by Britain, which is now being followed by others: the French are keen to do similar things. We really have led the world on this; in fact, it was this Government, under a previous mix, who did it. We have this background.

We then have the marine protected areas rules and suchlike, which have been quoted clearly. The words of my noble friend Lord Benyon are particularly germane to this discussion. However, I must remind the Government that they had to be sued by the Blue Marine Foundation to stop bottom trawling off Dogger Bank, one of the most important areas that we have. It was only the court case that managed to get a change in the Government’s attitude. This matter is not an exact parallel but it suggests that the instinct of government is not to protect, although the legislation of government demands protection.

Therefore, I say to my noble friend the Minister: there is a real issue here for him, not least because there are two different concerns about the Bill. At the moment, we are not concerned with the first, which, I remind the Committee, is mine. It is that, by passing this, we have given up our leadership in the world on the expansion of gas and oil exploration; that is a great sadness and turns its back on some very real progress made by previous Conservative Governments.