Antarctic Bill

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Simmonds]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your guidance. I was trying to put the implications of new clause 1 into context. The Antarctic treaty has 50 signatories, and the UK is one of the core 28 countries that play a positive role, and we intend to continue to do so.

I shall turn now to the amendments. On new clause 1, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) that the Government have prepared and made available a full impact assessment for this Bill. The impact assessment was independently reviewed by the Regulatory Policy Committee, which determined it was fit for purpose and that the costs and benefits of the Bill had been adequately assessed.

The most likely monetised costs to arise from the Bill were identified as additional premiums for insurance cover, which my hon. Friend rightly mentioned, and one-off costs to any operators who will need to update their equipment or plans to deal with an environmental emergency. The insurance industry was consulted, and it was suggested that additional insurance premiums to cover the costs of responding to an environmental emergency would probably either be minimal or non-existent. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud made that point. Given the level of insurance already required by operators and vessels in Antarctica, it was suggested that that was the case for both small and large operators.

The one-off costs to operators of updating their equipment or plans was also deemed small, given that the vast majority of UK operators already meet the requirements.

[Oliver Colvile]

Has my hon. Friend considered how many people might want to visit Antarctica, and what the various consequences might be?

[Mark Simmonds]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have carefully assessed the number of scientists and tourists who might visit Antarctica, and if my hon. Friend is patient, I will address his point in detail later.

It is also essential to ensure compliance with the Bill’s provisions. As that will be achieved through the existing permitting system, the additional administrative costs will be negligible.

One non-monetised cost of the Bill might be that operators adjust their plans to avoid highly sensitive or remote areas. Training time may also be needed in respect of any equipment obtained for potential response action. Again, however, such non-monetised costs are not expected to be significant. The main non-monetised benefit is that the Bill will reduce the likelihood of an environmental emergency occurring in the Antarctic through effective forward planning and providing a deterrent to potential irresponsible behaviour. The Bill will also reduce the environmental damage caused by any environmental emergency that does arise; simplify permitting procedures for non-UK nationals; and improve the conservation and preservation of UK historic monuments and sites in Antarctica.

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I also have to say to my hon. Friend that the UK has demonstrated clearly its commitment to the implementation of marine protected areas in the Southern ocean. Earlier this year, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands announced one of the largest sustainable marine protected areas in the world, covering its entire maritime zone. I must put on the record the fact that that process was begun under the previous Government, and we have continued that important focus. So I hope that I have reassured my hon. Friend on his points about new clause 1.

[Oliver Colvile]

Last night, I was at the Royal Geographical Society attending a reception and talk by a number of the military who had just come back from a trip to Antarctica. If new clause 1 was introduced, would it not do quite a lot of damage by discouraging the military from going down there and doing research? What about those scientists who go down, too? Will it have an impact on them?

[Mark Simmonds]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He will be aware that one of the exclusions under the Antarctic treaty concerns military operations in the Antarctic, although we have a presence there. We have a rescue vessel in case anything goes wrong and aspects of the Navy are there in relation to the Falkland Islands and the assistance we provide to them. There might well be problems for scientific research and the military if new clause 1 were implemented, which is one of the reasons I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North will withdraw it.

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[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. I appreciate that, not only because the Liberal Democrats are part of the coalition Government, but because it is good to know that all parties support the Bill. I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s comments earlier on the Opposition’s support for the Bill. The Bill is important precisely because we all care about the future of Antarctica and recognise its vulnerability, as well as its awesome size and climate. The widespread agreement on the Bill is therefore impressive and reassuring to me and to others who have worked on it.

I also appreciate the number of people who have congratulated me in one way or another on the work that we have done thus far. I reassure the House that I will not stop trying to ensure that the Act—if the Bill becomes an Act—is used as an instrument to encourage other nation states to do what we have done and underline the need to protect Antarctica for the foreseeable future. In my book, that means a very long time.

As I have informed the House, I visited Antarctica at the beginning of the new year. I went with the British Antarctic Survey, supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I was pleased to have the opportunity to go there for several reasons. The first was, funnily enough, to understand more about why this measure really matters. That became increasingly obvious the closer I got to Rothera, the main base of the British Antarctic Survey, where we have up to 90 people working in various ways.

This is a good opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the British Antarctic Survey. What it does really matters. I would like to emphasise the extraordinary amount of scientific research that is undertaken at Rothera and on other bases. We were there for only five days, but we looked at all sorts of research projects. For example, there is research into the future of the Southern ocean, its role in absorbing carbon, its changing food chain and the changing temperatures of the water at different levels. All of that matters because we need to know how our changing climate is influencing things and what the consequences might be for that continent and the various crustaceans, fish and other wildlife living in and around Antarctica. It was impressive and encouraging to see that the work being done to study the ocean is of such huge value in terms of science, research and commitment.

[Oliver Colvile]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware of this, but in the very depths of the waters of Antarctica, creatures are still being discovered. I do not know whether the British Antarctic Survey talked to him about that. It is important not only that we carry out a large amount of research in that area, but that we do not endanger those species.

[Neil Carmichael]

Absolutely, and I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Not only is he right about the new discoveries, but another interesting point is that existing marine life is taking a different shape in terms of breeding and growth and so on because of the changing temperatures. All that is part of the science that we need to see, which, of course, has been helped by really interesting technology, most particularly a glider—for gliding through the ocean, not the air—that is able to co-ordinate its own pathway and send valuable signals back to Rothera about what it is finding throughout the ocean, from top to bottom and along the bottom. We should be taking note and celebrating that kind of research and science. There was other scientific work as well.

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[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generous intervention. I must emphasise the pride that I take in Britain’s leadership in this area. We have led from the front, and we continue to do so. If my Bill is passed, I will ensure that that work continues through the activities that I will undertake. I will do that even if it is not passed—although I hope it will be—because I am determined that Britain’s leadership should continue in all the areas that I have described. I am very proud of it.

I was particularly proud to visit the British club in Antarctica, where Sir Ernest Shackleton based himself during his attempt to rescue his men nearly 100 years ago. That whole building is laden with history. It was fascinating to walk into a room that had remained relatively unchanged since he was there making those decisions and bold moves to save his men, and showing exemplary leadership and commitment to those he led. It was quite moving. Sir Ernest Shackleton is another example of the tremendous leadership that this country has demonstrated, both personally through people such as him, and nationally through our overall direction of travel on that continent.

We must also salute Captain Robert Scott. Yes, his reputation took a slight dip, but people are quite properly recognising the sheer enormity of his achievement in getting to the south pole. Also, while he was going there and attempting to come back, he was still committed to carrying out scientific research. It is not often remembered, but it should be noted that temperature changes and other data were being collected right up to the end.

[Oliver Colvile]

Is my hon. Friend aware that Plymouth was Captain Scott’s home town? The Plymouth marine laboratories have done an enormous amount of research on climate change, and there is a great tradition in Plymouth of ensuring that that continues to happen.

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[Neil Carmichael]

I have no immediate plans, but it is important that we are properly represented at such gatherings. I know that the Government will ensure that their views are expressed and their contributions made—given the Minister’s excellent performance, we can be confident of that—but my hon. Friend makes a good point. As I have said already, I am committed to ensuring that other nation states do the right thing, behave in the right way and take the appropriate steps to improve and protect Antarctica.

Political leadership is extremely important and it is right that Britain plays a significant leadership role, because we were one of the first nation states to show an interest in Antarctica and have been consistent on it ever since. We have always conducted ourselves responsibly—I do not expect to be contradicted on that—and we should be encouraging others to follow that example.

We debated the Bill in detail on Report, but it is important briefly to canter through its key parts.

[Oliver Colvile]

Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with the Irish? I understand that they have not been quite as quick to sign. They have accepted what they need to do, but they have not signed. I am concerned about why they have not done so. Have there been discussions with the Irish Government?

[Neil Carmichael]

That is one Government whom I have not spoken to about Antarctica. I met an awful lot of Irish people yesterday, but we did not actually talk about Antarctica—we talked about art. My hon. Friend is right, however, that we need to encourage nation states to do the same. There is a question not just of quantity, but of quality. We are legislating thoroughly on our agreements under the treaty, but some countries have not been as thorough, and we need to ensure that they become more so. The example of the Netherlands and ourselves is the right one.

Where we are seeing, basically, expressions of commitment to the treaty, we need to see more, and we certainly need to see nation states such as the United States ensuring that they, too, take action. I have already been in touch with environmentalists in the United States to see how we might encourage a proper debate about the issue in Congress. I am working on these things. I intend to encourage all nation states to take the right action at an event later this year, when I hope to gather their representatives and explain what we have done, why we have done it and why they should do the same. That is absolutely right.

Let me continue with my brief canter by underlining the importance of encouraging operators, visitors, tourists and everybody else involved not just to plan for their trip, but to plan contingency measures, to recognise that they have to behave in a properly responsible way and that insurance is necessary just in case things go wrong. If things go wrong, we need to be sure that tidying-up operations can take place in a timely, efficient and comprehensive manner. That is one part of the Bill that we effectively discussed in our debate about clause 5, and quite right too. I think we all agree that it is a good clause and part of that whole process.

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[Oliver Colvile]

Let me start with a quote:

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

Those are the words that appear on the Scott memorial at Murdo Sound in the Antarctic. They appear, too, on the statue here in London, and, I am delighted to say, in Plymouth overlooking the Sound.

I am most grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on introducing the Bill and on encouraging and allowing me to serve on its Committee stage, helping it to reach its current position. I feel that we are within inches of the final yard we need to travel to get over the line and get the Bill on to the statute book.

I have to declare an interest. I am a trustee of a charity that deals with the Antarctic, and I was invited to get involved by Dr David Wilson, the great nephew of Dr Wilson who, along with Captain Scott, Bowers, Evans and Oates, died on the ice on 29 March 1912. As I said earlier, yesterday was literally the 101st anniversary of the Scott expedition’s arrival in the south pole. I am also a vice-chairman of the all-party group on the polar regions, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) is chairman. Until recently, there was, sitting downstairs in the passageway here, an exhibition of a medal called the polar medal, which was produced after Scott’s activities on the ice. When I have walked past it, I have always been delighted to take a little time to look at it.

I pay tribute to Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers for renaming, in the jubilee year, that part of Antarctica unofficially known as the Edith Ronne Land as Queen Elizabeth Land. I think that shows a clear commitment that our country has demonstrated to Antarctica. I am told that the area is situated in the Weddell Sea between longitudes 20°W and 80°W, stretching from the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf to the south pole. That was a very useful thing to do in that year.

I became interested in Antarctica because Captain Robert Falcon Scott, born in 1868, was brought up in Stoke Damerel—as well as being born there—and attended what is now Stoke Damerel community college in my Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, a great son of Plymouth, along with Sir Francis Drake and other great, wonderful naval sailors. Quite rightly, Scott has been rehabilitated as one of Britain’s great national heroes. I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been greatly interested in what has been taking place and has watched it very closely. Last year, when my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) was the Minister of State at the Department for Education, he visited the school to see for himself some of the Scott memorabilia, including a pair of his skis. I am told that quite a large number of them were littered around the world, but I am delighted to say that we have some in Plymouth.

Scott’s tragic expedition was principally to undertake scientific environmental research. There has been a great deal of discussion about whether it was a race between him and Amundsen. I am told, very firmly, that it most certainly was not. Scott conducted his environmental research very effectively. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud told us earlier, the last message that he sent his wife before he died was about his son Peter Scott, the well-known environmentalist and founder of what is now the World Wide Fund for Nature. He asked his wife to

“make the boy interested in natural history”.

Last year the Natural History Museum organised a very interesting and worthwhile exhibition which showed what Scott had been doing during his time in Antarctica.

Yesterday evening I went to a reception and lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. Some members of the military who had been on a very similar expedition to Antarctica explained to me how difficult the climate is down there. They said that people must be incredibly fit in order to survive. I am delighted to learn that there are now a number of global positioning systems so that we can have much better records of what is happening to the atmosphere.

Captain Scott’s legacy is highly commendable, and it is a very big legacy as well. Should the Bill become law, I shall be proud to be able to play a small role in the safeguarding of our environment in one of the most important parts of the world.

Last spring, shortly before the Scott centenary memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral—it was addressed by the Bishop of London, who did an incredibly good job—I went to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), where I visited the British Antarctic Survey and looked at some of its work. I am delighted that it has been decided not to get rid of the British Antarctic Survey and merge it with the Natural Environment Research Council, and that the BAS will retain its own distinctive identity.

During my visit, I learnt that—as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said earlier—the BAS had drilled 800,000 years into the ice, taken out that ice, and was analysing what had happened to the climate over those 800,000 years. It is still conducting that analysis. I even had an opportunity to touch some of the ice, which made me feel that I had touched 800,000 years’ worth of our climate. That work has had a major impact on the whole climate change story, which I find incredibly interesting. It convinced me that things are indeed happening to our atmosphere which are having significant effects.

The BAS concluded that for the vast majority of those 800,000 years there had not been much climate change, although there might have been some global warming, mainly owing to slight tilts in the earth’s axis. However, it also found that during the 300 years since industrialisation began, there had been a significant amount of acidification of the atmosphere, which had produced much of the climate change. Acidification produces rain, which falls on to the earth or into the sea, where it is having a major impact on our fishing stocks. There are signs that some of the plankton and krill on which fish feed are moving. The Bill is important because it seeks to ensure that we are much more environmentally friendly, and I hope that the Foreign Office and the British in general will be taking the lead in that.

When I was a child, I was always taught that the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic was that the Antarctic was land surrounded by sea, whereas the Arctic was sea surrounded by land. Moreover, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud will know, penguins live in the Antarctic and polar bears live in the Arctic. Those are quite good ways of remembering which is which. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has read “Penguins stopped play: eleven village cricketers take on the world”, a book about a man who played cricket in every continent, including the Antarctic. I believe my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) has also played cricket in the Antarctic. Recently, devotees of Sir David Attenborough will have watched the much-acclaimed “Frozen Planet”, which was very informative, too.

There is an enormous amount of tourism in the Antarctic, and unless we are very careful, at some stage there will be an accident. If so, the ferry or cruise ship operator involved should be held responsible for clearing up all the damage. We must not, however, discourage scientists from going to the Antarctic, and we should encourage parts of the Government to use it for training purposes.

I am delighted this Bill will be enacted, and that it will ensure tourism operators are held responsible for any accidents under on their watch.

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[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important that children learn about Antarctica—not only about Captain Scott and Shackleton but about the environmental requirements? Should we not be pushing the Secretary of State for Education to ensure that that is very much included in the national curriculum?

[Jake Berry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I certainly will not be pushing the Secretary of State to ensure that it is included in a very crowded national curriculum, but he makes a valuable point and I commend him for the work he has done with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to ensure that we recognise Captain Scott, who is, of course, one of Plymouth’s most famous sons. My hon. Friend has been a real champion of ensuring that that legacy, that great British history, gets into schools, and that we talk about and take pride in it. We should take pride in it because we are a buccaneering, adventurous nation and I like to think that spirit still lives on within us. By telling young people about that great history, we ensure that we shall be the people who cross the frontiers in the future, whatever they may be.

Speaking of frontiers, when I was putting down some thoughts about what I might say this afternoon, I happened to be watching an episode of “Star Trek”, which I noted has a very similar form of governance to that of Antarctica—global co-operation not driven by money, and demilitarised. I am pleased to say that it is not science fiction; we actually see that co-operation—everyone working for the good of an area—today. We do not have to look for “Star Trek: The Next Generation”; we can see it today.

I note that our territories have their own money. The Minister spoke about the profits from that going to support the British Antarctic Survey. I am an avid collector of coinage and I was going to make an offer to any Member who has been to Antarctica to swap me, pound for pound, some currency. I look particularly at my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, who I am sure came back with pockets full of it. I have never seen any currency from our territory there and I would be pleased to have a look at it.

I shall focus on two further aspects—first, the work of the British Antarctic Survey. We heard earlier about its fantastic work on ice cores, which provides the most persuasive evidence of the problem of global warming in this country. The problem is man-made, created by the burning of thousands of years’ worth of carbon within 200 years of industrialisation. I encourage those nay-sayers who say that global warming is a myth and unproven to look at the work on ice cores showing the changes in our atmospheric make-up and global warming.

Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey were the first to discover the hole in the ozone layer. I was a young man when that was discovered, and it aroused my first interest in environmental issues. I thought I was making a great contribution when I invested in a Vidal Sassoon hairspray that, rather than using chlorofluorocarbons, was operated by pumping. I was pleased to see just a few years later that CFCs were banned. That was an enormous contribution and shows that a continent on the other side of the world can make a huge impact on environmental policy and thinking in our country. The continued work of the British Antarctic Survey is to be welcomed.

My final point is about the hugely important “polluter pays” principle in the Bill. When the Environmental Protection Act 1990 came into force, there was a great kerfuffle among lawyers about whether environmental surveys of properties would devalue them and make them unmortgageable. To some extent that has happened. That is a case where the “polluter pays” principle has failed. I can give an example from my constituency. Brenbar crescent in Whitworth, the site of an historic town gas works, was thought to be polluted and there was concern about the value of properties there. Given that the town gas site closed some 80 or 90 years ago, it was not possible to find the original polluter.

One of the great advantages of the Bill is the speed at which we will be able to act to get the polluter to remediate the damage that they do to a pristine environment. That is particularly important when we see the increasing tourism to the Antarctic. In 1992 there were fewer than 9,000 tourists. In 2012-13 there were 26,000 tourists. That is a huge increase in the number of people visiting the amazing and awesome place that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud described. I can see that it is attractive, but we cannot let that attraction and the commercial gain of tourism companies degrade the environment.

That is why the insurance clause, clause 6, is so important. Any of us who have booked a holiday know that it is not unheard of for travel companies, operators and shipowners to go out of business. We cannot allow self-insurance and the Bill does not do so, but if we look to the proper international shipping and insurance market to ensure that we get protection, we can enshrine the “polluter pays” principle and make sure that when an incident occurs—they happen too regularly already—the money is readily available and we do not have to argue about which country should clean up the pollution. If it is in the British Antarctic Territory, should it be cleared up by Britain or the Chilean Government? We are not having such arguments. There is a clear line of liability leading back to someone who has the resource, the desire and the ability to pay.

With 100,000 bird species, flora and fauna, the Antarctic is not a desert or a desolate land. It is somewhere we must work hard to protect. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) spoke about the new discoveries of creatures there this year. It is amazing to think that on a planet where we think we know everything about everything and all the animals under heaven, we can still be surprised to find things in this amazing environment that are new to us. We have to be very careful that we are not losing species before we even know they exist, because then we will not know we have lost them. It is important that the Bill proposes a ban on commercial fishing, because there is a danger that that will take hold in the area because it is such a rich resource.

Finally, I want to speak about the Royal Navy’s contribution to the area. We all believe in this House, I am sure, that we have the finest armed services in the world. I have been involved with the armed forces parliamentary scheme and have had the great privilege of seeing some of the work undertaken by members of our armed forces, particularly the Royal Navy. We might be complaining today about the icy conditions outside, but the lowest recorded temperature in the Antarctic is minus 85°. We must pay tribute to those serving on HMS Protector, who are spending long periods there, on HMS Endurance, on HMS Scott and on other Royal Navy ships that go to the area to police it and to rescue people who find themselves in trouble. I want to record my personal thanks to and admiration for members of our armed forces who ensure that the global co-operation on keeping Antarctica safe, non-politicised and demilitarised continues.