Antarctic Bill

Mark Simmonds Excerpts

Friday 2nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill and strongly support it. I hope it gets its Second Reading today and goes speedily through a Committee that can be quickly arranged so that it can make its way into law.

I have been involved in previous Antarctic legislation in the House and I have dug out my files from the debates on the Antarctic Minerals Act 1989, which fortunately was repealed some years later. I was involved with the introduction of the Antarctic Act 1994, which in effect recognised the Antarctic as zone of peace, as it always had been, and as a place where there would be no mineral exploitation or exploration, but where there would be scientific research.

We should think for a moment of the value to humanity of preserving the Antarctic in its natural form. Because it is such a pristine and fragile environment, it is possible to study the history of the world’s pollution. One can take ice samples, examine levels of lead pollution in the atmosphere, and see the point at which lead pollution decreased because of the removal of lead from petrol in many countries around the world. One can look at levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere and, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) pointed out, the British Antarctic Survey discovered the hole in the ozone layer because it was able to carry out that research in the Antarctic and because it is such a pristine environment. We want to be sure that we keep it that way.

I detected from some of the Members who intervened on the hon. Gentleman a slight degree of xenophobia and nationalism in their approach, but that is a totally unwarranted remark for me to make to any of them. Can we be real about the Antarctic? It belongs to the whole world. There is a significant British claim on the Antarctic territories. There are significant claims on every bit of Antarctica by many other countries, and those claims often overlap. Fortunately, sense has prevailed and there has not been a war over the Antarctic. There have not been ludicrous levels of competition for influence over the Antarctic. Indeed, the treaty principle and the co-operation principle have prevailed.

We should approach the subject on the basis that Britain has made a positive contribution through the work of the British Antarctic Survey, and I compliment that institution. I am pleased that it will not be merged with any other body and that it will carry on its very good work. I am sure the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) will speak about that later. It has been my privilege in the past to visit the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, and a very impressive institution it is, too.

Sadly, like every other Member who has spoken, I have not had the chance to visit the Antarctic. The nearest I came to it was in 1990, when I was visiting Chile to celebrate the departure of General Pinochet, and I thought I would conclude the celebrations by undertaking a visit to the Antarctic. I was all ready to go there, but unfortunately I was forced to return to the House to be one of a very small minority of Members who voted against the forthcoming Gulf war. My party Whips rather wished that I had gone to the Antarctic rather than come back; they may have had similar inclinations ever since.

We finally repealed the Antarctic Minerals Act 1989, which authorised exploration for—not necessarily exploitation of—mineral reserves, and passed the Antarctic Act 1994. We should pay a great tribute to Greenpeace for the work that it did at that time. Once the Bill had been through the British Parliament, many other national Parliaments were required to legislate on the matter, and Greenpeace was assiduous in its lobbying to the extent that broadly similar legislation went through many other Parliaments, including Russia’s, so that eventually, by 2005, we had reached a situation whereby the environmental protocol could be signed, the secretariat could be established, and environmental protection could go ahead. That was very important and very welcome.

There are massive fish stocks in the Southern ocean. There is an international agreement on the preservation of whales, which is strongly supported by all parties in this House, and has been by successive UK Governments, but is not supported by Norway, Iceland or Japan. There are always difficulties in the International Whaling Commission when the Japanese, in effect, try to buy votes to end the moratorium on whaling. An important spin-off from the changed and developing pro-environmental protection attitude to the Antarctic has been the preservation of fish and fauna stocks all over the Southern ocean in a very large area around Antarctica. It is very important to maintain that preservation, because if fishing is allowed and there is a massive fish take from the Antarctic, that will have a knock-on effect further up the food chain on seals, whales and everything else.

However, environmental protection in the Antarctic is now under threat. Only this morning we had the disappointing news that China and Ukraine are opposed to a new protective zone around the whole continent. I think that the renewal conference on the agreement takes place next year in Berlin, and the British Government have taken a very robust view, as did the previous British Government, on the preservation of fish and mammals within the whole region. I hope that the Minister will comment on the prospects for the conference in 2013 and that we will manage to get international agreement on continuing with the current approach to Antarctica.

As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Stroud, the history of the Antarctic is interesting for many reasons. Obviously, there is the huge narrative in popular British history about the role of Scott and the amazing hardship that his expedition faced—as did other expeditions such as those of Amundsen and many others. There was a form of competitive exploration going on, and there was always a danger that the Antarctic could become a base for military and spying activities, and so on. Indeed, there were suspicions about many of the bases that existed around the Antarctic.

However, things change and move on. The international geophysical year of 1957 began the development the Antarctic as a zone of peace and of research, and that narrative has carried on ever since. I hope that we recognise that the world needs the Antarctic as the Antarctic is. We must learn the lessons of its history and recognise its fragility. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, if we continue to allow our planet’s natural environment to be so damaged and we get a massive melt from the Antarctic, we will, quite simply, all drown as a result—it will be the end. We must not only learn the lessons but carry them through into actions that we take later on.

Throughout the passage of the legislation in 1989 and 1994, and at the time of the environmental protocols, there was concern about the fragility of the environment of the Antarctic and the increasing number of ships that go there and the eco-tourism that takes place. The clean-up following the development of the environmental protocol meant, for example, that non-native species, including dogs, were removed, as were all the other dangers of pollution and contamination. However, if a plane crashed over the Antarctic, which would obviously be a disaster, it would be very hard to extract anyone from it, because the distances are so great and the environment is so hostile.

An even greater danger is that if one of the many tourist vessels crashed into an iceberg or another vessel, or developed a serious fault, the spillage of diesel or other fuel would be catastrophic because it would not disperse or evaporate as quickly as it might in warmer waters, and the pollution would be very serious for a long time afterwards. The quality of vessels that are allowed to go to the Antarctic is subject to conditions and there are strict requirements on the protective measures that they have to undertake. Nevertheless, we must be cautious about the number of visits and the degree of irresponsible tourism that could well develop. I am not accusing the British Government or any of their agents of promoting that, but it is a danger. Importantly, the Bill would place even stricter requirements on British tour operators or anyone else going to the Antarctic.

I would be grateful if the hon. Member for Stroud or the Minister could clarify whether the Bill would apply only to someone from Britain who is in an area of the Antarctic that is not part of the so-called British claim or would apply equally to any part. Likewise, we can pass a Bill in this Parliament only for UK national jurisdictions, or for companies based in or operating in Britain, or for British people using their services, but it is obviously possible that tour operators or other vessels could go to the Antarctic from other jurisdictions. Am I right in assuming that if the Bill becomes law, as I hope it will, the legislation will then have to go through the Antarctic environmental protocol process to enable it to become part of the international agreement?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

For the sake of clarity, the purpose of the Bill and, in particular, the liability annex, which is the key point that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, would come into effect only once all the countries that are part of the Antarctic treaty have gone through the ratification process.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thought that that was the position, and I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying it. I assume that he will tell us later that if the Bill becomes law, the British Government will work very hard for that agreement to happen by lobbying all the other parties to it.

I welcome the Bill, which is a huge step forward. I welcome the work of the British Antarctic Survey. I counsel Members not to get involved in some kind of international rivalry. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Governments who are trying to undermine the environmental protection provisions, but that is not to say that there are not many people in those countries who understand the case for the Antarctic to be for ever a zone of peace, for ever demilitarised, and for ever a world park that we can all appreciate and learn a great deal from. If we in this Parliament pass this Bill, we are giving the signal that we support the work of the British Antarctic Survey, that we support the Act that we passed in 1994, and that we do not wish to be party to the destruction of the Antarctic or, crucially, the natural wildlife that exists all around it.

We have made progress. We in this country no longer exploit whales—that is completely banned, as it is in the majority of countries around the world. However, the commercial pressures of tourism and to exploit the natural resources of the Antarctic and the fish in the whole region are huge. Robust action needs to be taken by national Governments, international treaties and the Antarctic environmental protocol in order to preserve the place for what it is—a wonderful place of beauty. It is, obviously, a risky environment and it is an environment at risk. It is up to us to preserve it for all time, which surely ought to be our main focus in discussing this Bill.