Marine Management Organisation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) on securing the debate on such an important issue for her constituents. I thank other hon. Members for their contributions.

The Marine Management Organisation was created just 18 months ago, with cross-party support. As a non-departmental public body, it carries out its function with technical expertise, impartiality and transparency, and at arm’s length from Ministers, but it is accountable to both Ministers and Parliament. At the outset, I pay tribute to the MMO and to its staff. Its remit is very diverse. It continues to mature and is tackling a range of challenging issues. It manages our fisheries; it is delivering marine planning; it is working with others to create and manage a network of marine protected areas and to carry out marine licensing. Within its broad remit, the MMO is required to manage its activities with the objective of making a contribution to sustainable development, in a consistent and co-ordinated manner and taking account of all relevant facts and matters.

The MMO’s decisions should be impartial and based on best available evidence, taking into account the potential benefits and anticipated adverse impacts. It also needs to ensure that its decisions comply with statutory requirements under UK and EU legislation and are consistent with our international obligations. All that sounds straightforward in theory, but the decisions that the MMO has to make, whether about opening and closing fisheries, licensing construction or applications to the European fisheries fund have real-world impacts and directly affect people’s livelihoods, something that I believe the MMO is acutely aware of. The MMO will never be able to please all the people all the time, and decisions will sometimes adversely affect some more than others, but for that reason the MMO stresses the importance of transparency and impartiality. The MMO has been exemplary in ensuring that the information it bases its decisions on is publicly available, and it is helpful for people to be able to see how it makes its decisions, particularly when they are relatively controversial.

One cornerstone of the 2009 Act was to introduce a streamlined licensing system and marine planning in order to contribute to the sustainable development of our seas. That streamlined licensing system was introduced in April, the first marine plans will be in place in 2013 and, to guide the MMO, DEFRA has produced statutory guidance on sustainable development. It refers to the UK marine policy statement, which was adopted in March as the framework for planning and decision making in the marine environment in order to ensure a consistent approach throughout the UK and to contribute to sustainable development.

At the same time, DEFRA produced the description for the marine planning process in England so that the MMO could take it forward and produce subsequent guidance on how marine planning will work, and it is an absolute priority of this Government to ensure that, when we view our seas, we do so holistically. For too long we have looked down the silos of fisheries, conservation or marine licensing, but now, at last, we are developing the means to look at the marine environment as a whole. That is long overdue, and it will assist the constituents of my hon. Friends and others, who at the moment have to follow an entirely application-led process. Marine planning, like terrestrial planning, will be a great advantage to them.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman refers to involvement with other parts of the United Kingdom, and there is an impact on the devolved Administrations of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, because they have responsibility for fishing, so can he confirm that he will consult the devolved Administrations to ensure that there is a uniform approach to fishing?