The North Sea under Pressure (EUC Report)

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, like most Peers serving on EU Sub-Committee D during the preparation of this report, I am no longer on the sub-committee, or on the EU Committee. In passing, I should say that it is absurd that the quality of House of Lords committee work, arguably our greatest input to UK and EU life, should be sacrificed on the altar of Buggins’s turn—but I shall say no more and start again.

Like most Peers on Sub-Committee D during the preparation of this report, I was amazed at the urgent need for action on the planning of our marine environment. Anyone who has been to sea, out of sight of land, will probably have a vision of a vast and extensive watery desert, with no sign of human activity anywhere, either on the surface or under it. Little do they know that there is a host of interweaving and sometimes contradictory activity going on; the landscape is constantly changing and getting more crowded.

For a start, our knowledge of our seas is poor; no formal map of EU marine territory exists, or even certainty about where member states’ responsibilities begin or end. There are sometimes gaps and sometimes overlaps. Imagine having parts of England devoid of any planning controls or regulation; imagine the mayhem and possible environmental degradation that would soon appear—or, possibly worse still, imagine if two different authorities reckoned that they were both running the same bit of countryside. Again, I would foresee chaos.

Then there is the fact that our seas are already in a state of some disarray; many commercial fishing stocks are not assessed, and many biodiversity features and characteristics are unknown or not assessed. There is no current overview of the spatial extent of human activities. There is little co-ordination of data, which every member state is bound to produce under the marine strategic framework directive.

The reason this is so serious is because change is happening so fast. It is almost out of control and, unless we know what we have, there is no incentive to manage that change. For instance, there is change from climate change. This includes higher sea temperatures and increased acidification. We were told that in recent decades acidification has been happening 100 times faster than in the past 55 million years. Higher temperatures have resulted in the movement of species northwards by more than 1,000 kilometres. Meanwhile, 39% of assessed fish stocks in the north-east Atlantic—which includes the North Sea—are overexploited. I might add that in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea that figure is 88% of stocks, so we are quite good compared to others.

Eutrophication remains a problem, particularly at the entrance to the Baltic. Around the shores of Europe, 34% of sea birds are not in good status. Marine litter is accumulating, particularly microplastics which are building up in the food chain. I think it would be true to say that the ecological boundaries for sustainable use of our seas are currently unclear.

Meanwhile, the potential for growth in human activity, particularly in the North Sea, has never been greater. North Sea blue growth, as it is called, is a recognisable phenomenon and already represents a gross value added of at least €150 billion and employs about 850,000 people. For Norway, which is outside the EU, the direct and indirect GVA is about €50 billion, mainly based on the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas sector around the North Sea employs nearly 600,000 people. The shipping industry in the North Sea handles 648 million tonnes, with direct employment of 60,000 and a GVA of €11 billion. Shipbuilding amounts to €5 billion GVA and 64,000 jobs, and probably double those figures if marine equipment activities are included. The cruise and ferry sector promotes 10,000 jobs in the North Sea, which is about the same as the growing coastal protection sector—that is sea defences to you and me. Fisheries are in decline as overfishing of species continues, but still employ 100,000 people.

Meanwhile, new industries are on the rise. The UK is leading the offshore wind growth, with our Government’s 2020 target of nine gigawatts or 3,000 turbines, twice what we have now, which they hope will rise to 30 gigawatts by 2030. Sea-based aquaculture is on the rise, as is marine mining and gravel extraction, along with the cultivation of algae and, of course, energy production from tide and waves. Possibly the biggest new disruptors of the North Sea seabed are the numerous electric cables needed to enhance the connectivity of Europe while at the same time bringing power back from the wind farms.

So noble Lords can see that there is already a lot of activity in the North Sea, and this can only increase, along with the incompatibility of some of the activities. Fishing and cables do not always work together, particularly where the dreaded beam trawling is involved. Neither do wind farms and shipping go well together—or, for that matter, gravel extraction and environmental conservation. Meanwhile, the lack of any real understanding of the cumulative impact of all this led one of our witnesses to say that,

“if you ask me whether our marine ecosystems are healthy, I would not be able to answer that question”.

There is, it appears, actually quite a lot of information being collected by both the public and private sectors, but there needs to be more effort to harmonise the methodology between member states and also to analyse the cumulative effect, disentangle the replication and from there put in place international co-operation to implement an effective planning and control system. However, it goes without saying that it is only by collating and understanding the evidence that we are ever likely to promote the necessary action.

I would have to say that the North Sea Regional Advisory Council is a very good example of where international voluntary co-operation has transformed what could have been a disastrous situation vis-à-vis fisheries, but I do not believe that for the multifaceted blue growth I have been describing we can rely totally on voluntary co-operation. There are just too many parties to get around the table and too many interactivity compromises to be made. The situation is also too urgent. We desperately need some form of international planning with a degree of oversight and even compulsion.

However, we were told by our Government that their marine planning was still at an early stage. I am glad to see by their response that this is beginning to change, but any planning we do must be aligned with neighbouring member states, and this alignment should be an urgent priority of the Commission. It, too, seems to have been given a wake-up call by our report, and that is good to see as our report was targeted at Brussels and at European action. However, I do not believe that the Commission should dictate from the centre exactly what should happen and where; rather, it should drive a North Sea forum composed of all the relevant stakeholders and, above all, it must fund the forum. The successful North Sea Regional Advisory Council, which I mentioned, only just pulled through because Aberdeen County Council, of all bodies, funded it in its early days—to the eternal credit of Aberdeen and the everlasting shame of the EU.

Apart from the funding, I believe that the necessary decisions should follow the principles of polycentric government whereby, with a central driving force and firmly enforced principles from the EU, which really has to grip this one, key management decisions should be made as close as possible to the scene of the events and the actors involved.

I commend the report and suggest that both the UK Government and the EU need to grip this exciting agenda before the environment suffers—or, indeed, the blue growth itself gets cut off in its prime.