Antarctic Bill
Debate between Philip Davies and George Hollingbery(11 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend might well be right and I look forward with interest to what the Minister has to say on that point. I do not doubt that the Minister is a good man, and very sensible, and I am sure that there are particularly good reasons why the clause is necessary. I am not saying that the Minister has got this wrong and that we should delete clause 5 as a result. My amendment is a probing amendment, as I suggested at the start of my speech, to identify why we need the clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is more of an expert on these matters than I am—I am a mere layman, but as a layman it was interesting to me that these provisions already seemed to be in place and it seemed that we were, in effect, double legislating and reinventing the wheel.
The advice on environmental impact assessments that is already on the Foreign Office website states:
“Please note we will not normally authorise activities for non-scientific purposes which are likely to have more than a minor or transitory impact on the Antarctic environment.”
The thrust of my argument is that the measures in clause 5 are perhaps already in place. Let us look at what is already in place. Annex I to the protocol is already in legislation as part of the 1994 Act. It is all about environmental impact assessments. When we talk about how important they are and say that that is why clause 5 is necessary, it seems to me that that argument is based on the fact that we are starting from scratch when we are not.
I do not intend to read out annex I—I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you would neither wish me nor allow me to do so—because it would take an awful lot of time, which I would not want to take. If anyone were to read annex I to the protocol on environmental protection, they would see that it is pretty comprehensive. It states that itself and I am not in a position to doubt it.
George Hollingbery
I am not a lawyer, unlike a good many colleagues in the House today. Are the offences specified in clause 5, particularly the penalties detailed in subsections (8) and (9), already specified in a previous Act or are they enactments of punishments that may be used if the Bill is passed that would otherwise not be available?
Philip Davies
To be perfectly honest, my hon. Friend has got to the heart of my amendment. That is not particularly clear. The Bill might go further or the provisions might already be covered—I am not entirely clear. That is the purpose of my amendment: I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify what is covered by existing legislation and what, if anything, is new and necessary. It might be the case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North suggested, that what we are putting into legislation today is needed to encourage all the other signatories to catch up with the UK Government. I genuinely do not know, which is why I think that amendment 2 is a useful probing amendment to allow the Minister to make it abundantly clear why we need this clause.
Annex V to the protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty, which is already in place, is about area protection and management. That seems to me to be covered by clause 5. Annex V contains several definitions, including (a), which is of an appropriate authority, (b), which is of a permit, and (c), which refers to a management plan. That seems to me to encroach totally on the territory of clause 5. Annex V states:
“‘Management Plan’ means a plan to manage the activities and protect the special value or values in an Antarctic Specially Protected Area or an Antarctic Specially Managed Area.”
It seems to me, particularly from what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North was saying, that that is exactly what clause 5 seeks to do, yet the provision is already part of the 1994 Act.
The objectives in annex V—I reassure you, Mr Speaker, that I am only picking out highlighted parts of this, and I do not mean to go through the whole thing, but it is relevant to the point I am trying to make about why we need this clause—