Environmental Targets (Marine Protected Areas) Regulations 2022

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Parminter

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome the target of 70% for the protection of marine protected areas by 2042. Given that the figure at the moment is 44%, 70% is a strong target. For us, the issue with this particular statutory instrument is the monitoring and how we will be clear that we are achieving these targets.

The original consultation said that protection would be monitored by additional reporting on the changes in individual feature conditions. That was then removed from the final targets that we have before us. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked about this and got a bit of a non-answer from the Minister as to why there was this change and the removal of the monitoring of the individual sites. However, I was very grateful that, at the Minister’s meeting with me and colleagues last week, the Bill team were very clear that individual monitoring had been removed because of cost. Ship-based monitoring is clearly a very costly matter. Therefore, the targets today will be monitored by checking the pressures and vulnerabilities of the marine protected areas in general, so there will not be on-ship monitoring.

That is a disappointment, first, because when the OEP last week reviewed how the Government have been doing on achieving their 25-year environment plan, there were a number of areas where the OEP could not assess the level of success because the monitoring was not strong enough. In this area, we are again at risk that the monitoring being set in place to see whether the targets will be met will not, because of the cost, be sufficient to see whether the laudable target will be met. The Minister will be aware of this concern. The EIP to be published at the end of the month is proposing to set interim targets for meeting all the environmental targets that are set. Can the Minister say whether there will be a review of whether the monitoring arrangements for marine protected areas will be sufficient to see whether the targets can be met? Targets without effective monitoring are frankly meaningless.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I apologise for being two minutes 34 seconds late. I was following the Whips’ Today’s Lists, which said 4.15 pm, so thank goodness I came early. Anyway, my apologies for being late.

Reading these targets, I believe that nobody in the Government understands the ocean. It is crucial to our well-being, and these targets are utterly insufficient. The report published last year by the APPG on the Ocean, which I recommend to the Minister and his colleagues, gave excellent advice. The chair of the APPG is a Conservative. It is a good report with masses of recommendations that the Government could take. I hope that the Minister has perhaps already read it and that his team have absorbed it—that would be wonderful—but, looking at these targets, I rather think they have not.

If this Government are going to refuse to stop or even slow down our use of fossil fuels, the ocean and the marine protected areas are crucial because, as we all know, they are a carbon sink that we cannot do without. It is always fine to talk about techno fixes, but let us face it: they do not yet exist. They are wonderful, and it will be great when they happen, but they are, at the moment, science fiction. All marine ecosystems are valuable. For example, seagrass is a wonderful gobbler-up of carbon, but we have depleted our areas of seagrass because of pollution and all sorts of other factors. However, our Link briefing points out that there is no central driver towards such marine habitats and there is insufficient monitoring. This goes against the joint fisheries statement and the marine spatial prioritisation programme, both of which talk about protecting and restoring habitats that store blue carbon. They include seagrasses, mangroves, salt marshes and even algae and macroalgae.

I thank Claire Evans of the National Oceanography Centre, who helpfully pointed out that there is a legislative target that is not being met. As a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UK failed to reach its target of restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020. It was adopted by the UK as part of target 2 of the EU’s biodiversity strategy, and the lack of progress is most pronounced in the marine and costal environment, where habitat degradation continues and restoration remains in its relative infancy. I recommend that the Government not only look at this report from the APPG for the Ocean but talk to the scientists, because they can probably direct the Government in the best way to do exactly what the Government say they want to do.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Parminter

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to open the debate, especially on this group of essential amendments, which really goes to the heart of making the Bill fit for purpose. We must all know that the Bill currently just does not have any bite. We will have all these lovely environmental principles floating around, but no real duties on the Government other than having “due regard”. “Due regard” is a get-out clause. Ministers can easily have “due regard” for something and then make a completely opposing decision, and they know it. That is why they have chosen this wording. It is weaselly, squirming and not worthy of any Government who take the environment seriously.

My Amendment 73 would rectify this by requiring Ministers, public bodies and authorities to all stick to the environmental principles. This would be a clear requirement, so when they do not stick to them those decisions would be judicially reviewable. That is how things should be. It is a simple amendment that would give real clarity, because we all know what the environmental principles are.

My Amendment 75 would flesh out the environmental principles so that they reflect a much broader set of principles, written in simple, understandable language. For example, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle would actually be explained and defined. It would also add things such as using the “best available scientific knowledge”, the principles of public participation and the principle of “sustainability” to take into account the health of present generations and the needs of future generations.

Taken together, these amendments would create an accessible blueprint for our country and for the planet. They would set out the clear environmental principles on which our future would be founded, and require—not simply invite—the Government to implement those principles in all areas of policy. This is the type of legislation that a Green Government would implement, these are the principles that we would apply and these are the ways in which we would make ourselves accountable to Parliament, to the courts, and to future generations. I beg to move.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in the group. Their aim, rather like those of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is to enable the Government to ensure that the environmental principles do the job we need them to do, making sure that environmental considerations are at the heart of decision-making. Indeed, the Explanatory Notes say of the principles:

“The principles work together to legally oblige policy-makers to consider choosing policy options which cause the least environmental harm.”


I am sure we would all welcome that, but, as the noble Baroness rightly said, there are far too many caveats and exceptions in this list. My Amendments 76 and 78 refer to four of them, and I would like to spend a little time drawing them out.

The first is alluded to in the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, which is that public bodies are excluded. The policy statement on environmental principles applies only to Ministers. We know that public bodies, of which there are well over 350 in addition to all the local authorities in this country, do the lion’s share of pushing forward government policy throughout the country. It is therefore an omission of some magnitude that only Ministers of the Crown have to pay due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. It seems to me that we would want all public bodies, such as Homes England and other bodies, to take account of this policy statement that the Government intend to prepare.

The second issue about which I have concern is the excessive use of the word proportionality by the Government as a caveat. If the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, were here I am sure that I would agree with him that there are times and places when the use of “proportionate” is correct. I feel comfortable with Clause 16(2) saying:

“A ‘policy statement on environmental principles’ is a statement explaining how the environmental principles should be interpreted and proportionately applied by Ministers … when making policy.”


However, by the time we get to Clause 18, there is a disproportionate use of the word “disproportionate”, which my amendment seeks to remove. It is again trying to curtail the application of the consideration of the environmental benefit.

Those are two areas, but the two I really wish to concentrate on are the exceptions of the MoD and the Treasury having to take due regard of the policy statement. As I said at Second Reading, the MoD has 2% of the land use in our country. It has a third of our SSSIs, which accounts, in this time of football interest, to more than 110,000 football pitches’ worth of the most protected land in its purview and control.

Last year, when the National Audit Office did a review of the MoD that looked at its “taking account of” environmental issues, it said that environmental protection was “a Cinderella service” in the MoD. As it stands, given all these SSSIs on MoD land at the moment, we have to ask: if the Government are going to meet their 25-year environment plan, which says that they want to have 75% of protected sites in a favourable condition by 2042, how are we going to achieve that if the MoD is not involved? At the moment, 52% of the MoD’s sites are not in a favourable condition.

I do not wish Members of the House to think that I do not think very highly of the MoD or its job of national security, because I do. It has proved that it can do a sterling job of environmental protection. I know this because last year, on MoD land near me in Pirbright, it found a very rare and endangered spider called the great fox-spider. It is instances like that, of which there are a number around the country, that show that national security and conservation and environmental protection can go hand in hand.

However, I do not understand why there is this blanket exemption for the MoD to have due regard to the policy statement. The Minister in the other place, Rebecca Pow, said in Committee:

“it is fundamental to the protection of our country that the exemptions for armed forces, defence and national security are maintained.”

That is not an explanation but merely a statement. She went on:

“The exemptions relate to highly sensitive matters that are vital for the protection of our realm”.—[Official Report, Commons, Environment Bill Committee, 3/11/20; col. 969.]


Again, that does not explain what those highly sensitive matters are.

Since I was not very clear what the Minister was trying to get at last November, I wrote and asked the MoD. I received a very eloquent reply in February from the Minister, Jeremy Quin, from which I quote:

“the Department remains committed to its duty to conserve biodiversity and delivering on the extended duty to ‘enhance’ biodiversity within the Environment Bill. These duties are not altered by the focused defence disapplication in the Bill.”

I question what Mr Quin is saying there. This is not a focused disapplication, and I ask the Minister here: if there are good and focused reasons why the MoD needs a specific disapplication, then we are all reasonable people and I am sure we will be happy to see that expressed in the Bill, but as it stands it is not a focused disapplication.

My second point is that the MoD is subject to the climate change obligations as outlined in the Climate Change Act. Indeed, the Climate Change Committee regularly offers structured advice to the MoD on how it is applying its climate change targets. So if it is good enough for the MoD to “have regard to” the obligations of the Climate Change Act, why is it not good enough that the MoD must take due regard of the policy statement on environmental principles?

Finally, although I am probably going on too long, the other issue I am extremely concerned about is the Treasury’s exclusion from the need to have due regard to the environmental policy statement. That means that consideration of departmental budgets and tax spending, which we know are fundamental to delivering the environmental gains, are outwith the consideration of the statement. In the Government’s response to the Dasgupta review—a day in Committee cannot go by without someone mentioning it—the Government agreed with Dasgupta that nature is a macroeconomic consideration and spelled out in some detail what they were doing to align national expenditure with climate and environmental goals. They quoted the duty on Ministers to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles but, perhaps not surprisingly, they did not mention the disapplication for the Treasury. Perhaps the Minister might wish to comment on the discrepancy between the Government’s response to the Dasgupta review and the statement.

I feel strongly that public bodies need to be included within the scope of the policy statement and that the MoD in particular needs to be in scope unless there are very tightly defined exceptions. Excluding the Treasury and all the commitments to departmental spending rides a coach and horses through this measure and frankly, the Government’s aim to deliver the environmental considerations at the heart of policy and decision-making will be wasted.