Oral Answers to Questions
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
The UK works closely with Europe and the US to promote a strong transatlantic partnership. It is vital for our security and prosperity that we work with the Trump Administration to promote transatlantic unity through NATO. Since July’s NATO summit, we have urged allies to increase defence spending and have encouraged the US to recognise the significant allied progress.
Mrs Murray
May I welcome the efforts my right hon. Friend has made in his role to strengthen those ties and ask in particular what assessment he has made of the security and intelligence co-operation between our two countries on which so much of our peace and security depends?
Sir Alan Duncan
The intelligence co-operation between our two countries is enormously valuable. It proceeds regularly on a basis of complete trust and adds importantly to the security of the wider world.
UK Relations with Taiwan
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I, too, refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I would like to speak about my relationship with Taiwan. I visited Taiwan at the invitation of the country in 2011 and, more recently, in 2015, in cross-party delegations on both occasions. I am really surprised to see that the shadow Minister is alone on the Opposition Benches today. I am surprised that the Opposition Members who enjoyed those visits with me have not wanted to share their ideas about our relationship with Taiwan.
In Taiwan, I was fortunate enough to meet talented politicians and dynamic businesses and to learn more about their cultural heritage. I also saw for myself what a beautiful island it is, especially around Sun Moon lake. If Members have the opportunity to visit Taiwan, I encourage them to do so, because it truly is a beautiful place.
A true relationship between two countries goes two ways, and I am absolutely delighted to announce that the Taiwanese ambassador is due to visit Cornwall next month. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), I hope to introduce him to local politicians and to our creative and diverse home-grown businesses throughout Cornwall. I hope also to show him some of our heritage—after all, we have a world heritage site for our mining—and I hope that the ambassador and his team will be able to see the beautiful landscape that Cornwall is known for, so that, with the new direct flights, we might encourage tourism both from Cornwall to Taiwan and from Taiwan to Cornwall.
It is through such friendships, and a true working knowledge of each other’s country, that we can build the true, positive relationship we need with Taiwan as we leave the European Union and start building trading relationships around the world. I look forward to continuing to build that relationship with Taiwan. Taiwan deserves it and the United Kingdom can provide it through friendship.
Peter Grant
We do not have to be here long to realise that we have to learn to think quickly on our feet.
Mention has been made of the important place that Taiwan has as a trading partner for the United Kingdom. That applies in particular to Scotland. Taiwan is our third or fourth biggest export partner. I heard one hon. Member say “third”, so I will say “fourth”. Perhaps it depends on what we count as exports, but they are about 10% of the UK’s total exports to Taiwan. Beverages are the single biggest export from the UK to Taiwan. The vast majority, of course, is proper whisky made in the only place in the world that has the right to call anything whisky. We allow them to import some cheap imitations from other parts of the United Kingdom, but we make sure that quality and quantity go together.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that Scotland provided equipment to Taiwan so that it could produce its own whisky? Perhaps that is why Taiwanese whisky is of such good quality.
Peter Grant
Imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery. I have no doubt at all that the expertise both in designing the plant and in including the secret magic ingredients can be exported—methods can be taught—but it is still simply not possible to make proper whisky anywhere outside of Scotland. Those who believe that the Taiwan whisky is the best in the world also think you can make whisky in places such as Ireland, and I believe even Cornwall has had a go.
The economic ties that we have with Taiwan are important not simply because of the export business. Interestingly, I note that for the past 10 years the UK has had a substantial trade deficit with Taiwan. Given that a trade deficit with some countries in Europe is used as an excuse for severing ties with them, it seems strange that the big trade deficit that we have with Taiwan should somehow have the opposite effect. We want to increase and strengthen those links. There seems to be a contradiction or an inconsistency.
As far as the Government of Taiwan are concerned, the Scottish National party welcomes, as we all do, the progress that has been made. It is hard to believe it is only 30 years since Taiwan was under full martial law. It has made a lot of progress since then, which has not always been easy. You cannot change from dictatorship to full democracy in a generation without encountering difficulties along the way. We must recognise that for a lot of the time the Government of mainland China have allowed Taiwan to develop in its own way, although at times they have interfered to an extent that I think is unacceptable. I hope the Minister will agree with that.
Nobody has yet mentioned the arrest and detention of Lee Ming-che, a human rights activist from Taiwan who disappeared in March when he entered China. Within the past four or five weeks Chinese television has broadcast him confessing to sedition and endangering the security of the Chinese state. After six months’ secret detention by the Chinese authorities, most of us would confess to almost anything. We can only wonder what pressure was put on him. He has confessed to planning a website and encouraging people to oppose some of the policies of the Chinese Government, and to distributing literature that criticised the Chinese Government. In other words, he confessed to doing things that all of us do every day of our lives and that people in Taiwan are used to being allowed to do.
Perhaps we should ask the Chinese Government to take note of the fact that economic development in Taiwan has gone on at the same time as the increase in democracy and increasing liberalisation of society. As has been mentioned, Taiwan is the first place in Asia officially to accept the principle of same-sex marriage. I hope that is an example that will go forward elsewhere in Asia.
It was suggested in an intervention that we should look to export arms to Taiwan and look for more military involvement, but I think that would be a disaster just now. The last thing the United Kingdom needs is to find more places for military adventures and more places to sell weapons, when we have no idea how and when and against whom they might be used in future.
For obvious reasons, I can identify with the idea that Taiwan is recognised as a country that is not yet a country. It is a nation, but it does not quite have full state recognition in the United Nations, for example. On the future status of Taiwan, it is important to consider the wishes and the will of the Taiwanese people. Far too often in such circumstances—we can certainly see it from the Chinese Government—it becomes all about what is in the strategic interests of China, which would like to integrate Taiwan more fully into China and to use it as a military base, for example. Whether we are talking about the long-term constitutional status of Taiwan, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands or anywhere else, the ultimate question should always be: what is the will of the people? It is clear that for the time being, the will of the people of Taiwan is that it should not be further integrated into the People’s Republic of China.
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
I truly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for introducing the debate, and I am relieved that he recognises that it is not in the interests of Parliament—let alone the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—to upset other nations. However, I also recognise the early bid by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) to join the diplomatic corps—perhaps as a Taiwanese whisky ambassador to somewhere like Antarctica. That might be the way forward.
I thank all members of the British-Taiwanese all-party parliamentary group for their valuable contributions to this vibrant and important debate. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), North Cornwall (Scott Mann), North East Cornwall—
Mark Field
Would my hon. Friend bear with me for two seconds? I just wanted to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont)—the new boy in our midst. He is a Freshfields alumnus, as am I, and I think his wise words on the legal matters were well received by the House.
Mrs Murray
It is not for me to correct the Minister, but my constituency is South East Cornwall.
Mark Field
I am sure that battles in Bodmin and elsewhere were fought over such matters. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I actually know her constituency rather well; close friends of mine have lived in Lostwithiel over the years. It is a very beautiful part of the world. Whether one is from Taiwan or any other part of the world, it is well worth visiting. It is not quite as beautiful as my constituency of course, but that is another matter.
Before I address the UK-Taiwanese relationship directly, I remind hon. Members of the British Government’s policy on Taiwan, as was set out by the Opposition, and will summarise where things stand with regard to Taiwan’s relationship with China and, indeed, the rest of the world. The British Government’s long-standing policy is that the issue of Taiwan should be settled by the people on both sides of the Taiwan strait. We therefore call on both sides to continue to engage in as constructive a dialogue as possible.
EU Membership: Economic Benefits
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Stephen Gethins
I will make some progress.
Scotland’s renewables industry is thriving, with no thanks to this Government, but a huge amount of thanks to our co-operation with our European partners, which has created a huge amount of benefit.
Stephen Gethins
I will happily take an intervention from a Conservative Member—they are all helpfully badged.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Can I help a little? I say to people who are going to speak very shortly and want to remain on the list: if you intervene, I am going to drop you down the list. Make your minds up—you cannot have it both ways at the expense of everybody else.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I want to make a short contribution about the effect of the EU on the economic viability of our fishing industry and to congratulate the fishermen who have taken part in the flotilla on the Thames today to make sure we hear where they stand.
Our fishing industry is a ghost of its former self. Before we joined the EU, we had a successful, viable fishing industry all around the coast. I remember seeing fishing boats in south-east Cornwall moored three or four deep along the quayside. I do not see that today. Although fishing is no longer the largest employer in Looe—tourism is—people come to traditional fishing towns and expect to see fish being landed. A highlight they often mention is tasting fish and chips from one of the award-winning restaurants or buying fresh catch from fishmongers such as Pengelly’s in Looe. Where would tourism be without our fishing?
In 1971, just before we joined the EU, we had a thriving fishing industry bringing home millions of tonnes of fish and directly employing over 21,000 people. Last year, it caught about 600,000 tonnes and employed under 12,000 fishermen. According to a report co-ordinated by the New Economics Foundation, there was a 12% fall in the number of fishermen between 2003 and 2013. My late husband, Neil, was one such fisherman. He was forced to fish alone on his boat as a result of economic pressures arising from reducing quotas while still trying to meet the costs of increasing insurance, harbour dues and landing charges, not to mention repair costs and gear replacement.
The report attributes the decreasing employment to a decline in the number of vessels owing to the forced scrapping imposed by successive Governments to meet the artificial targets from the European Commission and to vessels investing in new technology—the latter might be true for larger vessels, operating with several deckhands, but is certainly not the case for small fishermen like Neil. It was a simple economic decision taken because he often could not land and sell the fish that swam into his net. The report also says that the trend of declining numbers of fishing vessels and fishermen is likely to continue.
The report does not mention the declining fish quotas that the EU sets each year. Haddock is just one example. The UK gets 10% of the total allowable catch, while France gets 70%, and the same applies to many other species in many other areas. Would hon. Members go into a bank alongside a French person, each of them with a bundle of notes to the value of £70, and throw £60 into the wastepaper bin, while the French person invests it all? That is effectively what fishermen in Looe are being forced to do today because of the quota share-out agreed by the EU in 1983 known as “relative stability”.
Bob Stewart
Everyone in the House knows the sad story of my hon. Friend’s husband. How much increased capacity would the fishermen of Looe get were we to leave the EU?
Mrs Murray
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will come to it in a moment.
I will not get into arguments with those who want to remain, further sacrifice this great industry and abandon the economic wellbeing of our coastal fishing towns, which would be disproportionately affected. I cannot say that Neil died as a result of the common fisheries policy, but I can say that it contributed to the economic pressure he felt when deciding to fish alone. We talked about it and decided that it was better that he work alone in less rough water than work in storms to provide for two families.
I say we throw our fishermen a lifeline. Our Fisheries Minister has been to Brussels and seen for himself how little he can deliver through horse trading in the Council of Ministers over proposals put forward by the unelected European Commission. I say, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), that if we vote to leave, the Minister could make the decisions that apply to fishermen in the UK’s 200-mile median line limit.
As someone who has lived and breathed the UK fishing industry for 30 years, I say there are no economic benefits to UK fishermen from EU membership. About 92% of UK fishermen are calling for the UK to leave. I say we throw them a lifeline, vote to leave and take back control of our 200-mile line—80% of the total EU pond. We would not necessarily have to say to member states, “You can’t come and fish in our waters”, but it would be on our terms, not those arising from horse trading among 28 states sitting around the EU table debating proposals from the unelected, appointed, bureaucratic European Commission in Brussels.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Mr Hendrick), and I agreed with most of what he said.
When we started this process, if I had been split down the middle I was 49% for leave, and 51% for remain. Today, I am 127% in favour of remain—don’t worry, I haven’t got my figures from the leave campaign. Two reasons have got me to that position. The first is just looking at some of the facts. I am a south-west Member of Parliament. In the first quarter of this year, we exported goods worth £9.7 billion from the south-west to the EU. Some 64% of all exports from the south-west go to the EU. In my constituency, 5,249 jobs are reckoned to be dependent on trade with and membership of the EU—one of the highest, if not the highest, in the county. On a conservative estimate, 45,000 jobs will be at risk in my region were we to leave.
The average take-home pay in North Dorset, leafy and beautiful as it is, is £16,500. It would be a dereliction of my duty to vote in any way other than to protect and to preserve that. I am not one of those ideologues who wishes to sacrifice, on some altar of so-called sovereignty, the livelihoods of my constituents. Sovereignty as an abstract does not pay the mortgage, does not pay the rent, does not pay the bills and does not put food on the table. I would not be able to look my constituents in the eye and say, “But don’t worry, we’re free and all the rest of it, so we can starve in our own independence.” What a marvellous, marvellous legacy to leave!
Mrs Sheryll Murray
I relied on fisheries to pay my mortgage and put food on my table for my children. Will my hon. Friend look me in the eye and say he is happy to sacrifice an industry for the EU ideal?
Simon Hoare
In the first instance I would not say that our fishing sector has been sacrificed, but I have to think about agriculture. We are all absolutely right to look at this issue from the perspective of our constituents. Agriculture, in particular the dairy sector in North Dorset, would not be able to survive without the continued, guaranteed, politically colour-blind support the EU provides to British agriculture.
There are two specific things I would like to say. The first relates to the absolute lack of clarity and united vision from the leave campaign: Albania, Norway, the World Trade Organisation, something like the North American Free Trade Agreement, we can stand alone, imperial preference, let’s bring back the corn laws—whatever it might happen to be! Somehow or other we have an arrogance, which I think was probably the death of a lot of our industries some years ago, that we have a right to sell to the rest of the world, in particular Europe, on terms to our satisfaction, and that they should feel jolly grateful that they are allowed to buy our product. The global marketplace does not work like that anymore. We have to earn our living.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I feel a bit of a lone voice because I am going to speak in favour of voting to leave next week. It is very important for me to do so because I believe that Labour Members’ comments about a Tory Brexit betray the fact that they are not listening to the British people. The vote next week will quite clearly be very close, but at least half of the British people have had enough of the EU and want to leave. By calling this a Tory Brexit, Labour Members are just not listening to the many millions of British people who have genuine concerns about our current relationship with the EU.
This debate, however, is about the supposed economic benefits of our membership of the EU. I will address one very specific point in that regard. According to the House of Commons Library, in 2016 Britain is forecast to give £20.5 billion gross and £11.2 billion net to the EU, so we will be getting back some money from that £20 billion. No one can deny that that will be a large sum of money, and there are various opinions about how it could be spent, but only if we leave will we get to decide how it can be apportioned.
Part of the money we get back from the EU comes in the form of economic development aid. The constituency in Cornwall that I have the privilege of representing is one of the areas in England that benefits the most from that aid. Over the past decades, Cornwall has received hundreds of millions of pounds in regional growth funding from the EU.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
I believe Cornwall has been getting around £65 million a year since 2001.
Steve Double
I thank my hon. Friend for that—I was about to make the point that over the past 10 years or so Cornwall has received around £600 million in economic development aid. But we need to remember that that is not EU money. The EU does not actually have any money—there is no magic EU money tree. It is our money, which we give to the EU. It converts it into euros, then converts that into sterling to give back to us, except that it gives it back with a whole load of strings, bureaucracy and red tape attached about how we can spend it.
The fact is that that money is not working. It was meant to create 10,000 new jobs in Cornwall. In fact, in the past 10 years or so, it has created around a third of that number. That Cornwall has now qualified for a third round of EU funding demonstrates that the funding is failing. It is not lifting the Cornish economy as intended. It is not raising wages or the standard of living in the way it was designed to.
Famagusta
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Mr Burrowes
I should declare an interest as a member of the Conservative Friends of Cyprus, which recently visited the country, returning at the weekend. Cyprus has a Conservative President, President Anastasiades, who has taken a very sensible view of the sovereign base areas. Indeed, an important agreement was reached with the British Government on appropriate property development to support Cyprus on the road to economy recovery. This was a very pragmatic and appropriate use of those base areas, showing a keen understanding of the ongoing strategic interests of those base areas for wider security in the region. I think Cyprus is in good hands, and we hope for a comprehensive settlement, which, together with our ongoing strategic interest, could make Cyprus a beacon to other nations, providing the stability the region needs so much.
This House has conducted a number of debates on Cyprus, many of which were secured by me and by other hon. Members whom I see here. What makes this particular debate different is that we have a substantive motion, and I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to it. The basis of the motion is, in many ways, public support, with a petition signed by 50,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots being presented to the Prime Minister back in 2012. It follows up the declaration of the European Parliament of 14 February 2012, calling for the return of Famagusta. If such a motion can be good for the European Parliament, it can certainly be good for our British Parliament.
We often say in this place that our debates are timely. That is certainly true of the motion before us—not just because six of my hon. Friends who are in their places today have just returned from a visit with the Conservative Friends of Cyprus, but because the two leaders of Cyprus are undertaking an intense period of negotiation this month to reach a settlement to the Cyprus problem.
Our meetings with both Greek and Turkish Cypriots revealed an encouraging positive approach to the talks. Indeed, Ambassador Andreas Mavroyiannis, the Greek Cypriot negotiator, described it as the “best chance ever”. Very pertinently, he said that if we do not succeed now, “we may never succeed”. That echoes the Foreign Secretary’s remarks a couple of months ago, who also has great timing as I understand he will be visiting Cyprus on Thursday. He said that the stars were “optimistically aligned” to create the chance for a settlement, the like of which we have not seen in decades. I thus look forward to hearing the Minister affirming the Government’s support for the comprehensive settlement, which we need as soon as possible.
Why the particular focus of this motion on Famagusta? The reason is all too clear, as it was to my hon. Friends who were in Cyprus on Saturday and saw for themselves, as I did, very visible on the beach of Famagusta the fenced-off area of Varosha.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I declare an interest, too, because I accompanied my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on the recent trip to Cyprus. Famagusta has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and they would play a strong part in the economy. I know that because my constituents in South East Cornwall also have some beautiful beaches. Will my hon. Friend join me in encouraging both sides to come to an agreement so that we do not see these beaches divided by a dreadful barrier, with part of Famagusta being a ghost town?
Mr Burrowes
My hon. Friend speaks with some experience about tourism and the beautiful coastlines that benefit from it. She is right so say how important it is that Famagusta, which previously generated 53% of Cyprus’s tourism, should no longer be a ghost town— a sharp contrast in what was the jewel of the Mediterranean. Every day that Famagusta remains as it is is a day of injustice, which is why we must not tolerate it. While we appropriately recognise and support the comprehensive settlement, we must recognise that Famagusta and its return is a key element in facilitating such a settlement.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
During our visit, we saw churches desecrated and graves robbed. Does my hon. Friend not think that a settlement would help the people of Cyprus to rebuild religious tolerance and understanding in all the communities on the island?
Mr Burrowes
I agree. There is much sadness on what is a beautiful island. There are humanitarian issues such as religious and cultural destruction, and the issue—which may well be mentioned later—of missing persons and the need to find truth for relatives who still have no information about their loved ones. There is also the humanitarian issue of Famagusta, which demands all our attention and demands justice.
I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government support the motion. He would not have to be too bold, because he would have the backing of the Prime Minister, who wrote to me on 29 June 2012 about the petition which, in effect, referred to this motion. He wrote:
“we fully agree with the principle behind it; that measures to build confidence between the communities in Cyprus can have great value in facilitating efforts towards a comprehensive settlement. “
He also wrote:
“We fully support all the relevant Security Council resolutions, including UNSCR 550 and UNSCR 789.”
So there is the Prime Minister’s backing. The Minister simply needs to say that he agrees with the Prime Minister.
Time is short. Others wish to speak, and I shall leave it to them—with your leave, Madam Deputy Speaker—to raise a number of issues that may go beyond the motion. Let me end by saying this. I left Cyprus at the weekend, along with a number of my hon. Friends. Many people who visit a tourist destination such as Cyprus leave with souvenirs such as duty-free goods—they may even try to leave with tortoises—but I brought back a list of questions for the Prime Minister, which I shall now read.
Will the Government support access for experts to Varosha, so that they can assess the damage and the requirements for restoration and regeneration? If we are serious about the return of Famagusta and a comprehensive settlement, we should be serious about enabling experts to go there now.
In relation to our guarantor powers, will Britain indicate that external countries’ guarantees have no future following a comprehensive settlement? Do the Government stand ready to help following settlement negotiations when intractable issues may require Turkish co-operation?
There has been good bi-communal progress on the issue of missing persons. The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus is an exemplar, providing support in areas of conflict across the world, working not only with other committees in directing that support, but with lab technicians from both communities. It has done painstaking work in seeking information and DNA that can be linked with missing persons. There has been good news recently: the Turkish army is to provide access to 30 military bases over the next three years, which will provide important information. Will the Government go further, however, and continue to ask the Turkish Government to provide information that is still being kept in their archives? Relatives of missing people rally here in Parliament every July. Can we persuade Turkey to provide that information about their loved ones?
I do not propose to speak for much longer, because others wish to contribute. This is a historic motion, which not only sets the scene for a general debate, but makes it crystal clear that we stand full square behind a comprehensive settlement that will be good for Cyprus, good for the region, and good for Britain. We can make that a reality if we provide justice for Famagusta and return it to its lawful inhabitants.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on securing this debate and on his brilliant leadership of the recent delegation, of which I was privileged to be a member. I should tell the House that I found none of my colleagues disagreeable on that trip. My hon. Friend exhibited true leadership skills, and if ever an hon. Friend were fit for office, it is he.
I am delighted that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will be responding to this debate, because I know him well, and he is not a Minister who will respond with a lot of waffle. I anticipate that he will agree with everything said in this debate, and given that, as I understand it, the Foreign Secretary will be visiting Cyprus in a short while, the timing of this debate could not be better.
When I first became a Member of Parliament, I was taken to the island of Cyprus. I have no constituency interest at all—very few Cypriots, whether Greek or Turkish, live in my constituency—but when I visited that tiny island I could not believe that it was divided by a green line. This debate focuses on Famagusta and I can best liken it to “Great Expectations” and Miss Havisham. It is very much a time warp. It is very distressing to see the buildings that have stood empty, decaying since 1974, which is an absolute disgrace.
At the start of the visit, I was very cynical about the prospect of a settlement, because I had heard it all before. As we all know, there is no problem between Cypriots, whether they live on the north or south side. It is when the two mother countries start to intervene that things become challenging. However, I was very impressed by the meetings we had, and particularly with what the acting President and the negotiator had to say. I therefore think that that will be the last time that any British parliamentary group will visit a divided island. I am very optimistic that in two or three months’ time we will at long last see a united island. I therefore again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate on his timing of our trip.
We could go back to 1974 and say that it was a disaster that should never have happened—we can often be wise after the event—and it is indeed a tragedy that those events occurred then and that all these years later the situation has not been resolved, but I have decided that it is no good going on about the past; we have to draw a line under it, as Cypriots on both sides have decided to do.
I was very pleased that on 18 September our Prime Minister met the Greek Cypriot President and there was a general meeting of minds on the issue. I believe there is a need for Turkey to send specific signals through specific actions that would enhance the ongoing settlement process. The recent election of the new leader on the northern side is widely seen as having significantly increased the prospect of a solution.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend agree that this also presents an opportunity for the missing persons to be located and identified? We have seen for ourselves the bones of both Greek and Cypriot persons, which had seemingly been strewn across tables, being sorted in the anthropological laboratory. It should be a priority for both sides to come together so those who lost loved ones can lay them to rest.
Sir David Amess
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, although I have not seen the details of the DNA testing that was carried out on the bones.
Returning to the election of the new leader, his first act on assuming office was to abolish the entry visa for visitors to northern Cyprus. The requirement for such a visa had long angered Greek Cypriots, so this was a very positive move. Of course there are obstacles to overcome, relating to governance, security, territory and—as my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield, Southgate and for Hendon (Dr Offord) have mentioned—refugees. However, if relations continue to be positive, as they certainly seem to be, I am optimistic that with the support of the UK—which I was told over and over again was absolutely crucial—there could be a fairly swift unification, perhaps within two to three months.
The potential impact on Greek Cypriots of the return of Famagusta cannot be overestimated. It would be very significant indeed. It would be an enormous confidence-builder for Greek Cypriots; it would also be an important humanitarian move that would allow the return of 40,000 people to their homes. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) has mentioned missing persons. I think I am right in saying that about 1,500 Greek Cypriots and about 500 Turkish Cypriots are missing.
We were all shocked by the detail of the work that is going into tracing those missing people. We were taken to the laboratories. If any of us had had a loved one whose bones were somewhere in the room, it would have been overwhelming, but we managed to step back because we did not know any of the people involved. I had had no idea of the forensic detail of the work, and the House should know that it is a very expensive operation. The Department for International Development is stretched on this issue, but if there is anyone who could lend financial support to the programme, it would mean a great deal to all those concerned.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend also acknowledge that it is not only the graveyards but the churches that have been destroyed? In my opinion, that is all part of the oppression of the people, and something really should be done to rectify the situation.
Sir David Amess
Absolutely. It was so insulting to see that one of the churches had been turned into a stable. If only we had had the archbishop or his deputy with us on those trips! That would have made it even better. I believe that we could do something about the graves.
We need to endorse the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s mission, which states:
“We work with Cyprus to implement policy on Europe and the single market, building trade for mutual growth. We support all parties in finding a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus and work together to beat international crime and threats to British and international security.”
I would like to commend the Cypriot President for all his efforts on the unification of Cyprus. If all goes well, the island could be a wonderful model for coexistence between Muslims and Christians. Cyprus now has a real opportunity to reach an agreement that would be a wonderful thing for Europe and the world.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
I have not been to Cyprus. It sounds as though I might have missed a really fun trip and that you all had a really positive experience in the last couple of weeks—
Mrs Murray
I have to say to the hon. Lady that it was not fun to see graves that had been destroyed or to see beaches with a great big barrier down the middle of them. It certainly was not a fun trip for me or for any of my colleagues.
Catherine West
I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. Perhaps one feels a little excluded, not having visited Cyprus with the group. On this question, there is no division between us. It should be an all-party parliamentary issue, because we all want the same thing, but one cannot help but feel a little left out of the debate this evening.
I want to talk about the contribution of the Cypriot community—the Turkish speakers and the Greek speakers—to business, to local government, to catering, to IT facilities and services and to our diet in Haringey. The Mediterranean diet and the arrival of fresh fruit and veg on our high streets began the revolution towards a healthy way of life and the move away from the staple of fish and chips towards wonderful vegetables, olive oil and so on. I know that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) will agree that north London has been greatly enriched by the diet that the Cypriots have brought us from the 1970s onwards.
On a more serious note, the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) is right to say that there has been much suffering in Cyprus. I believe that there has been suffering on both sides. Older Cypriots have told me that they want to see some kind of hopeful conclusion to what has been a terrible experience for them, before the end of their lives. They want to see that conclusion for their children and their grandchildren, but it is not enough for them to know that it will happen at some point; they want to be part of it and to see it before they pass on.
There are sticking points, though, and Famagusta is one of them, as are the land disputes. We got close to a settlement two decades ago—
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) not only on securing the debate but on his excellent leadership of the delegation that visited Cyprus a few days ago. It was my first visit not just to Famagusta but to Cyprus itself. It is a beautiful island and the beach at Famagusta runs Cleethorpes a close second.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend not believe that south-east Cornwall comes above Cleethorpes?
Martin Vickers
No. I am afraid that I cannot agree with my hon. Friend, as I am sure she anticipated.
As always in countries where there is conflict and division, it is the ordinary people who suffer. We had the privilege of meeting a number of them over the past few days, including those who suffer what has already been described by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), witnessing the desecration of their churches and the vandalism of their graveyards. That scars them permanently and we must do all we can to improve that situation. It is damaging to not only those individuals but the heritage and culture of the Cypriot island and people.
I will not detain the House unnecessarily, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West has focused on the point about the committee for missing people that I wanted to highlight. This was the second time that I had visited a place such as that which we visited on Friday, where we saw bones and DNA. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) intervened earlier, and it was with him that I visited similar work being done in Bosnia this time last year. It is harrowing and the meticulous work of those involved deserves recognition. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West pointed out, modest resources are needed to maintain and enhance that work and I hope that the Government will look favourably on that request. It need not necessarily involve taxpayers’ money, but could involve donations in kind from the private sector. I am sure that if the work is highlighted to a greater extent donations will be forthcoming.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kelvin Hopkins
I appreciate that improvements have been made to the common fisheries policy, and for that I give some credit to the previous Conservative Minister, but the pressure on him to renegotiate came partly from other hon. Members, including me—
Sheryll Murray
On quotas, does the hon. Gentleman agree, given that, in area 7, the UK gets 10% of cod and 8% of haddock stocks, despite owning 80% of the waters, that the CFP could never be renegotiated in favour of UK fishermen?
Kelvin Hopkins
I defer to the wisdom and knowledge of the hon. Lady, whom we know has a fishing background; she is absolutely right, and I agree strongly with her—not for the first time.
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman has confirmed that that is his view and I imagine it is the view of most Government Members in the Chamber today. They feel that we should not be listening to the views of the CBI, but I believe we should. Its director general has said that the EU
“remains fundamental to our economic future”.
He continued:
“Our membership supports jobs, drives growth and boosts our international competitiveness.”
That should be a central concern for this House and for the Government elected next May.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Ashford for a number of the points he made, and he drew attention also to the views of the Engineering Employers Federation. Its chief executive said just last month that
“manufacturers remain overwhelmingly of the view that our economic wellbeing is inextricably linked to the EU and we must stay in membership.”
In a poll of its members, it found that 85% of member companies indicated that they would like to stay in, rising to 90% of those with more than 250 employees.
Sheryll Murray
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the Bill is not about whether or not we are members of the European Union, but about trusting the British people to make that decision?
Stephen Timms
I say again to the hon. Lady that the question of whether we remain members of the EU is a central one in determining whether we should have a referendum. That was the view set out by the current Prime Minister—the leader of her party—when speaking in Hammersmith on 5 January 2010, while he was campaigning for election and she was supporting him. He said:
“Do I want an in/out referendum? No, I don’t, because I don’t think we should leave.”
That was his view then and I think he is right to link, as he did so explicitly in those remarks, the question of whether or not there should be a referendum with that of whether we should remain a member of the EU. I am saying that instead of two years of political paralysis with the kind of navel-gazing debate envisaged and supported by Government Members, we should be focusing on addressing the economic challenges that face the UK, tackling the cost of living crisis that millions of people across the country are suffering. They have seen their wages fall in real terms since 2010. That should be the focus for the Government elected next May.
Mike Gapes
The hon. Lady will have to wait and see whether there is a vote. I am waiting to see what happens. She will not have long to wait.
There are many flaws in the Bill, and it needs to be significantly improved if it is to be in the interests of our people and our country. I have already mentioned the House of Lords vote earlier this year to change the wording of the question that will be asked in the referendum back to the original wording proposed by the Electoral Commission. I was going to mention the original Government proposal put forward by the Conservative party, but of course it was not a Government proposal; it was a Conservative proposal. I have to keep reminding myself that we are in the bizarre position of having a private Member’s Bill being used as a device for introducing what ought to be a Government Bill. I agree that it should be a Government Bill. We should not be abusing the private Members’ Bill procedure by doing things like this. Many Conservative MPs have been forced to come here today. They have been whipped to come here on a Friday morning and eat bacon butties when they should be out campaigning in Rochester and Strood. Instead, they have to be here because they have been whipped to come and vote on a private Member’s Bill. That is absurd.
Sheryll Murray
The hon. Gentleman might be interested to learn that I am here because I choose to be. I believe in giving my constituents a say, and I trust them to make this decision. Does he not trust his constituents to do that?
Mike Gapes
Yes, and I choose to be here today. I choose to speak in the debate, as I did last year. I am delighted to be speaking up for the European Union and for Britain’s membership of it. My constituents are quite content with the position I am taking on this, and I look forward to being resoundingly re-elected next year. I have to tell the hon. Lady that the Conservative party in my constituency has not even got round to choosing a candidate to stand against me yet. It must be really confident.
I shall return to the Bill. I apologise; I was sidetracked by the hon. Lady’s intervention.
Deep Sea Mining Bill
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 5, line 32, insert—
‘In section 5 (Protection of the marine environment) leave out sections (1) and (2) and insert—
“(a) In determining whether to grant an exploration or exploitation licence the Secretary of State must not grant a licence unless and until it can be demonstrated that there are no indications for likely irreversible and or significant adverse effects as defined by the United Nations’ General Assembly / UN Food and Agricultural Organisation on the marine ecosystems and communities impacted by one or more of these operations. The absence of any such indications must be demonstrated through full and transparent prior environmental impact assessments and strategic impact assessments, which are required to be publicly evaluated and reviewed.
(b) In determining whether to grant an exploration or exploitation licence the Secretary of State must take into consideration the environmental definitions and designations of international bodies, including but not limited to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) scientific criteria for ‘Ecologically or Biologically Significant marine Areas (EBSAs)’, the CBD guidance for the design of representative networks of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and the food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) criteria for the identification of ‘Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems’ (VMEs) and any other related treaties which may come into force.”.’.
The amendment seeks to improve the environmental requirements of the licences that come through the UK state system. I thank the World Wildlife Fund UK for its help in drafting the amendment, which it stresses is not “wildly ambitious”. It does not express environmental ideals that are impossible to achieve, but it is consistent with environmental definitions in existing international treaties.
The deep seas are poorly understood ecosystems and no one knows exactly what is down there. The findings of environmental assessments are not shared, so scientists and non-governmental organisations do not know whether there are things that are new, rare, endangered, or indeed that could be used for other extractive purposes—for example, the pharmaceutical industry might well be interested in what is on the sea bed.
I was concerned that on Second Reading some Government Back-Bench Members who did not see a need to improve environmental safeguards were working on a misguided assumption that, as one said, the environmental effect of mining is not permanent
“and the habitat will return to its normal state after the mining ceases in an area.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 610.]
As we discussed in Committee, however, without better measures in place to protect deep sea ecosystems, mining could cause irreversible damage or have serious adverse effects on marine communities, specifically hydrothermal vent communities, which were only discovered in 1977, and seamounts, which have taken 10,000 years to develop and have low resilience to change. As home to the largest reservoir of marine genetic resources, hydrothermal vent communities are of huge interest to science and pharmaceutical companies, some of which have patents on their products. Mining could destroy those resources before they are understood or even discovered.
The amendment would reverse the burden of proof in section 5 of the 1981 Act, in line with the precautionary principle that if there are indications of likely but uncertain significant adverse environmental impacts, an activity should not be authorised to proceed. The amendment would require environmental impact assessments to be carried out before exploration or exploitation takes place, and for the process to be transparent so that it can be publicly evaluated. That would also address the serious weakness in the system that if a contractor considers the environmental risk of mining to be too high prior to the environmental impact assessment, that concession could still be offered to another contractor.
Greater transparency in the system would also help to address weaknesses in monitoring the compliance of companies with environmental regulations and the terms of licences. It is difficult, as one can imagine, to make site visits in deep sea areas to ensure that work is carried out correctly, and the current process is not properly independent of contractor influence. NGOs will not know whether an activity authorised by licence is damaging, and it would be up to the contractor to stop and self-assess.
I was pleased that in Committee, the Minister—on that occasion the Minister for Europe—confirmed that the Government want a coherent system between the International Seabed Authority’s regime and other international treaties. The amendment also seeks to align the Bill better with environmental definitions and designations of international bodies, which the Bill currently does not consider. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s committee on fisheries defines vulnerable marine ecosystems in the high seas where bottom fishing cannot take place. Those include breeding grounds for orange roughy, which are often fished for around hydrothermal vents—the same areas that could be open to deep sea mining.
Although the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for North East Cornwall, has said—
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I just want to make the hon. Lady aware that my constituency is South East Cornwall.
Kerry McCarthy
I am terribly sorry. South East Cornwall is written in my notes, so I do not know why I said North East Cornwall—territorial ambitions do not stop at the deep seas.
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Indeed, my understanding is that at the moment a company does not even need a licence to explore. Ideally, we would want everyone to go through the ISA regime, and a respectable and reputable company would want to do that and follow the correct procedures, but I understand that there is nothing stopping them doing that. It is an ideological debate that we could have at great length in relation to many different areas of policy. We could look at labour terms and conditions, for example, or health and safety rules. I do not think that we should be involved in a race to the bottom—actually, perhaps that is exactly what we are talking about. We want to ensure that the UK sets an example by requiring companies to act responsibly. Our natural resources are incredibly precious, and I think that we should be taking the lead in trying to ensure that we protect the environment.
The timing of the Bill is slightly strange, as was the timing of the 1981 Act. The Act was introduced a year before the United Nations convention on the law of the sea was finalised, although it then took about eight years to come into effect. The ISA will look at its regulations, which will obviously apply on a wider basis, next year, so in some ways the Bill pre-empts that. Perhaps there could have been better co-ordination. It is also slightly strange that we have been talking about updating the 1981 Act since 1982, so it has taken an awfully long time to reach this point. I think we need to drive the agenda forward. I accept that we do not want to disadvantage British companies, but we want to ensure that there is a reputable and reasonable regime in place.
The Government have said that
“the environmental protections in section 5 of the 1981 legislation have proved entirely sufficient, as have the inspections”,
but only two licences have been issued so far, both for exploration. Exploitation of resources is an entirely different matter, and the very purpose of the Bill is forward thinking, to cover licences for exploitation that is at least five years away. In the case of oil and gas, which it will also open the doors to, it is still further away in the future.
If the amendment is made, I do not think that it would make the regime overly burdensome. As I have said, the proposal is moderate and consistent with other international designations. However, it would boost one of the Government’s reasons for introducing the Bill, which is to help to increase the UK’s influence in current negotiations and in determining standards, as I said to the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I appreciate that the ISA regulatory framework is of greater importance because it applies to all deep sea mining, not just those activities that get sponsorship from the UK. In which case, let us apply the environmental standards that we would like to see agreed in the negotiations, rather than keep the 1981 version. They are workable standards that we hope will be applied at ISA level to enable sea bed mining to go ahead without causing irreparable damage. As I mentioned, I did not get a direct response from the Minister in Committee on the level of environmental safeguards that the Government are seeking to get common agreement on during the ISA negotiations, although I was pleased that he made it clear that the international framework can and should be improved, as can section 5.
Sheryll Murray
I thank the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who, along with her colleagues the hon. Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark), for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), tabled the amendment. I know that they all feel strongly about the need to protect the environment.
Coming, as I do, from what I consider to be the beautiful county in Cornwall, I of course sympathise strongly with those hon. Members. [Interruption.] The Minister indicates that I might come from the second most beautiful county, so perhaps I should have referred to the wider south-west. Furthermore, I come from a fishing background, so I know well the impact that pollution can have on fishermen and their livelihoods. I also know that in some of the areas that the Bill relates to it would be very difficult to fish for species such as orange roughy, as the hon. Member for Bristol East indicated.
Since I have been in charge of the Bill, I have learned a lot about deep sea mining. In particular, I have become very conscious of the importance of environmental conditions, which will have to be taken into account once deep sea mining becomes a reality. Of course, we are looking only at exploration. I understand that the UK has issued one licence for exploration, and another one is going through, but exploitation, as the hon. Lady mentioned, is a long way off. I know that the Government are very aware of environmental issues and am sure that they will keep to their commitment to ensure the application of the highest environmental standards. I can assure Members on both sides of the Chamber that I, too, will be very astute to ensure that happens.
Section 5 of the 1981 Act will not be amended by the Bill, except for technical changes to include references to Scottish Ministers. I believe that that is a real benefit to Scotland and the United Kingdom. Section 5 already includes provisions to ensure that protection of the marine environment is taken into account, and indeed is at the forefront of the Secretary of State’s mind, when licences are issued. While I sympathise with the hon. Lady’s concerns, I do not think the amendment is necessary. I understand also that the Minister will raise some technical objections to it and that the Government will not support it. In those circumstances, I hope that she will not press the amendment, so that the Bill can make progress.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
I was interested to hear some of the suggestions made this morning, as I have attended some, although not all, of the consideration of the Bill as it has made progress. The Government completely understand the sentiments that have led the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) to table the amendment —the hon. Gentleman is not in his place today, but he has been an assiduous attendee previously. The Government are committed to ensuring that the highest environmental standards are followed when exploration and exploitation of the deep sea bed take place. As the hon. Lady said, we are often—pardon the pun—in uncharted waters: this is new and exploratory, so environmental considerations need to be at the forefront of our proposals.
As hon. Members will know, the Government were approached 18 months ago by a major commercial company, Lockheed Martin, to sponsor its application to explore for minerals on the deep sea bed. When we received that approach, we took great pains to ensure that the environmental standards were the best that could be devised. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was closely involved, as were two eminent scientists from outside the Government. When the application reached the council of the International Seabed Authority, the environmental aspects were generally praised by delegations. At the meeting of the council last year, when the first discussion of the possible shape of future regulations took place, the Government made it clear that they would expect those regulations to incorporate environmental provisions of the highest standards.
The British Government have already spoken and acted in a manner that will ensure that the highest environmental standards are adhered to, and I know that the need to protect the natural environment has universal support across the House. However, the Government cannot support the amendment, and I shall try to explain why.
Section 5 of the 1981 Act, to which the hon. Member for Bristol East and my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) referred, already includes clear provisions on the need to protect the marine environment. I know that on Second Reading the hon. Member for Brent North suggested that section 5 might not be sufficiently up to date, but we do not believe that to be the case. Section 5 is worded in a general manner and can accommodate changes to environmental perspectives.
Sheryll Murray
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This is a good Bill and an important one for the UK economy. It is also timely. As my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned, in 2012 the UK sponsored its first licence application to the ISA for a UK company to explore the deep sea for polymetallic nodules in the Pacific ocean. No one has learned more than I have about not only polymetallic nodules and cobalt-rich crusts but polymetallic vents and how some of them are dead, while others are smoking and look like they have their own ecosystems—those are the ones we all want to protect.
The UK Government sponsored the last licence issued under the 1981 Act, but that Act is restricted to exploration for polymetallic nodules; it does not allow exploration for other things, which is why it is essential that it be updated. As the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned, the Act predates the UN convention on the law of the sea and the subsequent implementing agreement on part 11 of the convention on deep-sea mining. In some small, niche areas, it is not entirely consistent with the convention, such as on the enforcement of decisions on sea bed disputes in the chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, established under the convention.
It is important for the UK that we put our legislation in good order, not least because we are strong proponents of the convention. It is also important economically. As many UK companies have expertise in the area, it could provide many benefits to the UK economy. I was delighted, therefore, that in Committee we extended the Bill to cover Scotland, which also has a lot of expertise gained through our exploration and exploitation of North sea oil. It will also benefit my own part of the country in the south-west and south of England. Plymouth university and Southampton university have departments looking into and gaining a lot of expertise in this area, which is unknown to many of us.
Sea bed mining has enormous potential. Scientists know that lying on the sea bed, at great depths, are valuable new sources of nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese and rare earth elements. These metals are being mined to extinction on land, so we need to find new sources. Metals such as nickel, used in superalloys, cobalt and manganese, used in energy storage technology, which will obviously benefit everybody, and rare earth elements, which are strategically important, are used in low- carbon technology, lasers, sub-conductors and many telecommunication applications. There are large quantities of these metals, and it is right that the UK benefit from its share of this groundbreaking new technology, which I hope will benefit UK companies considerably.
On 11 March last year, the Prime Minister attended an event at the ExCeL centre celebrating the granting of an exploration contract by the ISA to the UK. He spoke of the benefits to the UK and of the supply chain jobs likely to be created across the UK. As I mentioned, he said that jobs could be created not just in Plymouth and Southampton but in Portsmouth, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle and Aberdeen, in sectors such as engineering and the manufacture of high-tech remotely operated underwater vehicles and ship stabilisation systems. He also said that that was estimated to be worth up to £40 billion to our economy over the next 30 years. At this point, I should correct some information that I gave in Committee: I said that it would be worth £30 billion by 2030.
The Prime Minister welcomed the identification of more than 80 United Kingdom companies with relevant expertise with which the UK contractor might be able to work. He also welcomed the industry workshop event that had been arranged to follow the ceremony of the granting of the contract.
I thank the Government and individual Ministers for supporting my Bill, and I thank experts in the Department who have taught me an awful lot about deep-sea mining—about a world that lies at an even greater depth than that in which my late husband used to tow his fishing nets. I also thank the staff of the Public Bill Office for assisting me again. This is the second time I have spoken on Third Reading of a private Member’s Bill: I did so last year as well.
I can assure Members that deep-sea mining is not fracking, and does not involve any of the techniques that are associated with land-based mining. Specifically, deep-sea mining for polymetallic nodules involves no excavation of rock. It involves no use of explosives, and the nodules lie on the sea bed very much like the fish that my husband used to harvest in his nets. The techniques that are used to mine the nodules are likely to involve scooping or vacuuming them up. I do not pretend that the process will be environmentally neutral, but it is potentially less environmentally damaging than land-based mining for the same minerals.
Kerry McCarthy
I appreciate what the hon. Lady is saying about the mining of polymetallic nodules—she may well be about to deal with this point, which I believe she covered on Second Reading—but are not the additional forms of exploration and exploitation allowed by the Bill potentially more environmentally damaging, given that they would involve a great deal more than just scooping nodules off the sea bed?
Sheryll Murray
The hon. Lady is obviously psychic. I was indeed about to deal with that point.
Mining for polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich crusts is a different matter, because it would involve the excavation of rocks. Mining for those minerals is even further off than mining for polymetallic nodules, and in that context the principles that might apply to nodules would have to be considered again. I am determined, and I know that the Government are determined, to ensure that the highest environmental standards will be applied to any exploitation of the minerals to which the hon. Lady has referred, and she has implied that she shares that determination. I can inform her that international regulations governing the exploration of those minerals have been agreed and were in place in advance of the issuing of any exploration contracts, and that various regulations have continued to be reviewed and updated in the light of new developments and considerations.
I think that I speak for both this Government and previous Governments in saying that the United Kingdom prides itself on taking a close interest in these matters. We have observed that interest since the passing of the 1981 Act. The Bill updates and modernises our existing legislation following the ratification of various treaties. The United Kingdom was one of the first states to sponsor a commercial company to undertake exploration, and I trust that we shall be able to demonstrate the highest regard for international law by passing my Bill.
This is a good Bill, and it is important for the United Kingdom’s economy. It is all the better now following the passing of amendments to extend its provisions to Scotland. We engaged in some interesting and thought-provoking discussions on Second Reading and in Committee, which were all the better for the points raised by the hon. Member for Bristol East. There is clearly a common understanding of the fact that the exploitation of minerals in the deep sea is beyond any state’s jurisdiction, and will inevitably take place in the future. It is, therefore, important for the United Kingdom to be at the heart of it, and to assist the development of international regulations on deep-sea mining. I am glad that the Bill appears to have general cross-party support, and I hope that that support will continue in the other place.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to deal with some of the technical aspects of the Bill when he sums up the debate.
Kerry McCarthy
I do not intend to speak for long. Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). It is always challenging to take a private Member’s Bill through all its parliamentary stages, not least when the Bill contains as much technical detail and covers as many new areas as this one. However, I understood from the hon. Lady that this was her second experience of the process. She is a great deal luckier than I have been, because in my nine years as a Member of Parliament, I have never been successful in the ballot for private Members' Bills.
We on the Labour Front Bench do not oppose the Bill, because we accept that deep sea mining is inevitable. We could not prevent or even delay it even if we wanted to. We agree with the Government and the hon. Lady that it is important for the United Kingdom to be at the forefront of the benefits to be had from the industry. However, we want to be at the forefront not just because of the business opportunities afforded to the UK, but in order to be able to determine standards for ourselves rather than leaving it to others who may not consider environmental protection as important as we do.
I understand that the Government conceded privately that the Bill was not needed quite yet, and perhaps was not quite ready. A number of amendments in Committee extended its provisions to Scotland because discussions had not yet taken place. We accept that this Bill is a work in progress, but we think that it is, perhaps, a little bit rushed. It could perhaps have been dealt with as a Government Bill. We know the Government have supported it from the outset and, given that we have very little legislation going through Parliament at the moment, we had an ideal opportunity to discuss this as a Front-Bench Bill on the Floor of the House with several days of debate.
Sheryll Murray
May I clarify a point the hon. Lady has made? This Bill was going to be presented with or without Scotland measures. The amendments to include Scotland were introduced because that would be of great benefit. It is my Bill and I am leading it through, and it would have been presented without Scotland measures if necessary.
Kerry McCarthy
My point was not specifically about the Scottish amendment. I was just using that as one example to make my point. The discussions with Scotland took place, or were finalised, after the Bill had been introduced. My understanding was that the Government had conceded that, and, because the ISA regulations are being debated next year and because of other developments, the Bill might be slightly premature and a little bit rushed. It might have been given more consideration. We are where we are now, however, in terms of the parliamentary process. I hope the other place has the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill in detail and perhaps make further amendments that would improve it.
I want to make one further point, which arose from the Committee discussions. It remained unclear how the finances of this will work and whether the UK would in fact get a share of the profits. We have been told that this is very much about wanting the UK to benefit from being in the vanguard of the exploration. As has been mentioned, the Prime Minister has claimed that sea bed mining could be worth a staggering £40 billion to the UK economy over the next 30 years, although I have not seen any detailed analysis to support that estimate.
I appreciate that it is slightly jumping ahead of even where the ISA is currently at, because it has not drafted its regulations yet, but the issue of operator profits is critical to this debate. I understand that the UK would benefit from corporation tax from those UK companies or foreign companies, such as Lockheed Martin, with UK subsidiaries which get sponsored by the UK, although once their profits have been understandably offset by their exploratory costs and the costs of environmental assessments, this amount could be quite limited. Certainly in the case of UK subsidiaries, profits may go to the parent company, but unlike the tax regime on North sea oil revenues, the British Exchequer will not be plugged into the profits, as the riches of the sea bed do not belong to the UK; they belong to what is described as the “common heritage of mankind” and those resources do not belong to any one state, and no one state would have the right to claim ownership.
Returning to my point about this Bill being slightly premature, I understand that there are discussions about a possible sovereign wealth fund, created from a fee that could be charged on output. That could be used for the benefit of developing countries, but again discussions on this are at an early stage and we do not yet know much about it. Again, I would have liked to have had more clarity on this. More than 30 years have passed since we last considered legislation on this topic with the 1981 Act. Given that it has taken us so long to get to the point where we are revisiting the matter, I would have liked to have had more clarity on that issue and on the environmental issues. We are where we are, however, and I hope when the Bill gets to the Lords there can be more clarity. We will support the Bill at this stage, however, because we think that if deep sea mining is to go ahead, there ought to be some sort of licensing system in place.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench. She raised an interesting point about what would happen to the proceeds of mineral exploitation, and it deserves further consideration because the situation is not as straightforward as it was with North sea oil. We should examine exactly how this country will be able to benefit. Are we going to benefit directly, or jointly with other countries across the globe?
I rise to support the Bill. I supported it on Second Reading, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) for piloting it through to Third Reading. To do that once is quite an achievement, but to do it twice is particularly remarkable, and she should be congratulated on that, and on succeeding in the ballot twice.
Sheryll Murray
My hon. Friend may be interested to know that the reason I believe I was selected twice was because I used the same number twice: 336. Our first fishing boat which we had brand-new was FY 336. I do not want anybody to steal that number in future ballots.
Mr Nuttall
When I enter the ballot next year, if I get into the Lobby before my hon. Friend, I will specifically not choose 336, and I will urge all Members on both sides of the House to try to avoid that number because it has obviously brought my hon. Friend great success. I know it is particularly poignant for her.
The deep sea bed is one of the last unexplored areas of our world. In previous centuries mankind has gone off exploring the world in pretty much an unregulated and uncontrolled manner, but that is not the way the modern world operates. It is right that in the 21st century before mankind goes digging around on the deep sea bed causing who knows what sort of damage, a framework needs to be put in place to ensure that the exploration is carried out in a carefully controlled manner and causes as little damage as possible to the delicate ecosystems of the deep sea bed. The plethora of international agreements and our own domestic legislation seek to do that.
There is a danger, however, that in putting together our own domestic legislation, we put in place licence conditions that companies see as too onerous, too complicated and too prescriptive, and consequently those companies will not come to the UK to obtain their licence approval; they will go to countries whose legislation is, perhaps, less prescriptive than ours.
Sheryll Murray
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Does he also agree that there is the potential of companies moving their whole operations from the UK to other countries?
Mr Nuttall
There is that risk if exploration companies decide and form the opinion that our legislative framework is too onerous, prescriptive and complicated. I hope that that is not the case. Certainly, it would not have my support or the support of the Government or anyone in the House if we felt that it was the case. There is a delicate balance to be struck between trying to protect the environment, maximising revenues and encouraging exploration for the benefit of mankind. They are all worthy things to do, and the Bill in its own way seeks to strike that careful balance. It is not an easy task to pull off, because if we go too far in one direction, we will upset something else. There is a balance to be struck between mankind exploiting for the benefit of us all the resources that are in the deep sea in the other parts of the world and protecting the environment that is down there. I sincerely hope that this Bill will receive its Third Reading and that when it reaches the other place, it will have a speedy passage. I wish it well.
Mr Swire
I wish to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray)—and not, as she was erroneously called, the hon. Member for North East Cornwall. I think North Cornwall currently belongs to our coalition partners, but I am sure that at the next general election she, like all of us in the south-west, will be doing everything to ensure that if she does not actually personally occupy that part of Cornwall, there will be a member of the same party who does. It is worth putting on the record that it is the only seat in Cornwall—[Interruption.] There is of course St Ives, which is extremely vulnerable to the Conservative surge.
Sheryll Murray
My right hon. Friend will wish to know that, currently, our coalition partners hold St Ives, St Austell and Newquay, and North Cornwall. The Conservatives currently hold—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Lady will resume her seat. Before the Minister continues, let me say that that has nothing to do with the Third Reading of this Bill. I know that it is Friday and that the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady are looking forward to getting back to Cornwall, so if we could concentrate just on the Bill I would be a very happy Deputy Speaker.
Sheryll Murray
With the leave of the House, I just want to put on the record once again my thanks to the Minister and the Department’s helpful officials. I am also very grateful for the help I received from the Public Bill Office and thank the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for her contribution.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Phil Wilson
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman intends to speak later. I know how vocal he has been in the region on this issue, but not in the Chamber.
One area that we could consult on is foreign direct investment in the north-east, which is important to the region. Let me explain why we should consult those organisations that promote such investment. Since 1992, inward foreign direct investment flows to the EU have doubled and the UK has become an attractive investment, with the second largest stock of foreign direct investment in the world, although it has fallen since 2010. I will come on to that later and explain why this Bill undermines future investment.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow so many powerful speeches.
I want to read a quotation from Wikipedia, about what happened to
“the properties of the people involved in the uprising”.
The article describes how
“they killed all cattle and other animals, burnt homes, property and even the salt in their possession during the repression. Paddy fields in the area of Wellassa were all destroyed. The irrigation systems of the duchies of Uva and Wellassa, hitherto the rice-bowl of Sri Lanka were systematically destroyed. They also massacred the male population of Uva above the age of 18 years.”
That was a quotation about us, the British, during colonisation.
It is clear that Sri Lanka has had a difficult history and things have happened that today we judge as crimes. Change is beginning and I would like to see the intergovernmental conference as a key point in that change—a time when people go to Sri Lanka and say, “It is time for change. If you want to be part of a modern, inclusive world, then this must not happen again.”
We could sit back and take a view from 10,000 miles away, but then there would be little chance of our being heard. Instead we could go to Sri Lanka, meet its various people, and give the message that there is a better, democratic and inclusive way, which works. That is why I wish the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Minister a good and successful trip next week.
Deep Sea Mining Bill
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Mining is not a new industry, certainly not for us in Cornwall. There is a saying, “Wherever there is a hole in the ground, there will be a Cornish miner at the bottom of it.” With over 4,000 years of history, the Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape became a world heritage site in 2006, and I was very proud to be a councillor on Caradon district council when that was decided.
The Cornish have emigrated all over the world to give their expertise in mining, and today have vibrant communities as far afield as Australia and New Zealand. They still celebrate their fantastic Cornish pride and heritage in those communities.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I cannot remember whether I picked this up in 1981 when the Deep Sea Mining (Temporary Provisions) Act 1981 was passed by this House, but I think I am right in saying that most of the exploration that has been going on under the international authority is in the central Indian basin of the Indian ocean, and in the northern part of the Pacific ocean, in the Clarion Clipperton zone. If there are Cornish miners there, I send them my best wishes; I hope they are swimming well.
Sheryll Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I am sure that they still pride themselves in taking their lunch in the form of a Cornish pasty: the pastry protects what is inside from dirty hands. Pasties are something else that we Cornish people are extremely proud of.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
I hope they withstand high pressure.
Sheryll Murray
Absolutely.
It gives me great pride as a Cornishwoman to take this Bill forward in Parliament today. The concept of deep-sea mining is not new, but as we make technological advances, this new industry is fast becoming a reality, and I am keen that Britain should be at the forefront. Everyone will know of my interest in the sea and the marine environment, and no one is more aware than me of the deep sea’s potential in contributing to the great expertise for which we are world-renowned. The United Kingdom is well placed to benefit strategically, economically and in employment terms, and to influence how deep-sea mining is taken forward.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing the Bill to the House. Is the Bill necessary because technology and particularly robotics miniaturisation mean that deep-sea mining can be done remotely so it can be done by an individual or an enterprise rather than its requiring governmental assistance?
Sheryll Murray
My hon. Friend is partially correct. The Bill is all about exploitation. We have the potential in about five years’ time to start looking at exploitation. It is much better that the United Kingdom should control the licence applications because we must be able to control the environmental situation in which exploitation and exploration are carried out.
Sir Peter Bottomley
My hon. Friend probably already appreciates that we must change our provisions because the 1981 Act was passed before the establishment of the authority in Kingston, Jamaica, and we must meet our international obligations. It may also be worth observing briefly that economics matter. When some years ago the price of metal commodities was going up, everyone thought that digging down into the oceans would be a good idea. Now that the commodity prices are not quite so high that may not happen, but at some stage the cycle may turn again and we may find some commercial exploitation.
Sheryll Murray
We are seeing a shortage of some metals, and the deep sea provides the opportunity to gather metals that are needed, particularly rare earths.
The UK is well placed to influence how deep-sea mining is taken forward, what standards should apply and how to minimise the impact on the environment. In 2012, the UK sponsored its first application to the International Seabed Authority for a UK company to explore for polymetallic nodules in the deep sea in the Pacific ocean, as my hon. Friend mentioned. The application was agreed and a contract was signed between the ISA and the UK company. In 2013, the UK sponsored another application from the same company. That still has to be considered by the ISA council, but the UK Government was able to sponsor and issue a licence to that company under the 1981Act.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a persuasive case for her Bill, but as she admits that an application has already been made under the existing Act and we have been able to proceed, why is it thought necessary to amend the Act?
Sheryll Murray
The 1981 Act predates our signing up to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, so it is vital that we make these amendments to it.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Just to clear my mind by using my mouth rather than just my ears, I think this is a very conservative approach. We maintain what we have and we improve it.
Sheryll Murray
My hon. Friend is correct.
The UK was able to sponsor and issue a licence to that company under the existing Act, which became valid only upon the issue of a contract by the ISA.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
This is complicated stuff, most of which is way over my head, but it seems rather bureaucratic. Why do people have to get a licence from the ISA and the UK Government? Why do people have to undergo that double whammy? Why is one not sufficient?
Sheryll Murray
Under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, any resources beyond the 200-mile limit median line were declared the common heritage of mankind. One must be a signatory to the UN convention to be able to apply to the ISA for a licence. We, as a signatory to UNCLOS, are in the best position to apply for the contract with the ISA on behalf of one of our companies because we can then apply the most stringent and best environmental conditions.
Philip Davies
Does that mean that a company cannot apply to the ISA for a licence without the sponsorship of a nation state, that it has to have the sponsorship of its home country to be granted a licence?
Sheryll Murray
That is correct. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to expand on that if he speaks.
Sir Peter Bottomley
In time, my hon. Friend will get to paragraph 9 of the schedule, which states:
“Omit section 9 (the deep sea mining levy) and section 10 (the Deep Sea Mining Fund).”
I think that answers the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). Instead of money being paid to us for us to pay to the authority, it will go straight to the authority. The licence has to be obtained from the national Government under legislation, but if payments become due, they will go straight to the authority, which cuts out some of the bureaucracy.
Sheryll Murray
That is right, and of course this Government want to minimise bureaucracy as much as possible.
Mr Nuttall
As my hon. Friend will be aware, the United States of America has not signed or ratified the agreement, so will she explain the position of a company incorporated in the USA? Would it not have to apply to the international body?
Sheryll Murray
I know that Secretary of State Clinton and the United States Administration were, as recently as 2012, very keen to sign up to UNCLOS. It is not for me to make a judgment on that—it is up to the USA—but perhaps the Minister will expand on it later.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Speaking as an historian, I point out that in 1994 the United States got a modification to the convention. Since 1997, even under George W. Bush, the recommendation has been that the United States should sign it. It has not got around to it yet, but I understand that that is its intention. My hon. Friend the Minister will probably cover the issue of whether a US company could apply to another Government for a licence and therefore get the authority indirectly.
Sheryll Murray
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his expertise and for updating us.
As I have said, the 1981 Act predates the signing of the 1972 UN convention on the law of the sea and, subsequently, the implementing agreement to part 11 of the convention, which relates to deep-sea mining. In some small, niche areas the Act is not entirely consistent with the convention, including with regard to providing for the enforcement of decisions of the sea bed disputes chamber of the international tribunal for the law of the sea. The tribunal was established under the convention, and I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will agree that it is totally necessary.
Putting our legislation in good order is important for the UK, not least because we are strong proponents of the convention, which defines the rights and obligations of coastal states, including the entitlement to various maritime zones over which different levels of sovereignty may be exercised.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again; she is being very generous in taking interventions. Will she explain exactly how deep-sea mining works? For example, what are polymetallic nodules?
Sheryll Murray
I hope my hon. Friend will be patient, because I will come on to that later.
UNCLOS defines the rights and obligations of users of the seas, such as flag states and fishing states. I think all hon. Members will understand how passionately I care about the fishing states. A few years ago Canada used UNCLOS to arrest the Spanish fishing vessel the Estai which was illegally fishing outside Canadian territorial waters. It brought her into Canada to measure her nets and confiscated them. Perhaps hon. and right hon. Members will remember that the Canadian flag was flown in many fishing ports at the time in support of their counterparts, the Canadian fishermen. UNCLOS also relates to states that want to lay submarine telecommunication cables across the ocean floor and those that want to undertake marine scientific research.
A convention that is accepted by most states, that addresses those issues and that provides various dispute resolution mechanisms helps maintain international peace and stability in the maritime space.
Charlie Elphicke
A mining process could lead to contamination of the sea, which might either contaminate the fish or, indeed, polish them off. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we ensure that any mining operations that are given licences do not cause environmental difficulties?
Sheryll Murray
Deep-sea mining takes place at great depth in specific areas of the ocean. I do not think that the warps, bridles and trawl doors on my late husband’s boat were long enough to trawl the sea bed. We should not excavate in a non-environmentally friendly way, and I will come on to discuss that. This is one of the reasons why the UK needs to amend the 1981 Act, so that we can impose stringent and clear environmental conditions. The UK takes part in the council meetings, which are considering—this was started at the last meeting in July—what conditions should be applied to the exploitation. These are very early days—we are talking about exploration at the moment and not exploitation, which is still some way off—but the UK should be a leader in that sphere.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I am most heartened by the hon. Lady’s response to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) that one of the reasons why it is important to legislate and ensure that licences come through the UK state system is that we would then be able to apply improved environmental measures. However, I do not see any mention in the Bill of a requirement on the Secretary of State to do that. I would be grateful if the hon. Lady could point out to me any such requirement.
Sheryll Murray
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I think the whole House will know how interested he is in the global maritime environment. However, he may be unaware—I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will expand on this—that a lot of the environmental requirements will be covered in the wording of the contract with the International Seabed Authority, so we do not to include that in legislation.
Mr Nuttall
If I may assist my hon. Friend, I think that section 5 of the 1981 Act is pertinent to the point the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) raised. It says:
“In determining whether to grant an exploration or exploitation licence the Secretary of State shall have regard to the need to protect…marine creatures, plants and other organisms…from any harmful effects which might result from any activities to be authorised by the licence”.
Sheryll Murray
That is very helpful. I am sure my hon. Friend can reassure the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) when he speaks.
Another important provision in the Bill widens the scope of minerals for which licences can be granted. The 1981 Act is limited to one type—polymetallic nodules—and the Bill widens the definition to all mineral resources. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich crusts. There are now agreed international regulations for the exploration of such minerals. In future, other mineral types could be discovered or become commercially viable for deep-sea mining. UK-registered firms should be able to take part in exploration and possible exploitation of such resources, as much as companies from any other state.
Sea-bed mining has enormous potential. Scientists know that lying on the surface of the sea bed at great depths are valuable new sources of nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who is not in his place, and rare earth elements in the form of polymetallic nodules. Such metals are vital to new materials technology. Nickel is used in superalloys; cobalt and manganese are used in energy storage technology; and rare earth elements, which are strategically important, are used in low-carbon technology, lasers, superconductors and many telecoms applications.
Philip Davies
I must confess that, not for the first time this morning, I am slightly confused by what my hon. Friend says; that has nothing to do with her delivery, but with my lack of understanding. She said that it is important for the Bill to include other minerals because we want British companies to be able to explore and exploit them in the same way that other countries can. Am I right in thinking that if such minerals are not covered by international agreement, British companies are already free to do so without a licence, and that including such minerals in legislation will add bureaucracy and cost to UK companies rather than assist them?
Sheryll Murray
No, it will not, because we already have the ISA granting contracts—I will come on to who holds contracts at the moment—and one must be a signatory of UNCLOS before one can apply to the ISA for a licence and contract.
Charlie Elphicke
Rare earth metals are used in mobile telephones. I believe that there may be some such metals in the granite rock under the mountains of Cornwall. The Chinese seem to have a lock on that market. Is it not important that rare earth metals are more widely available, particularly for use in our mobile telephones?
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Following up on the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), is a company in a country that is not a signatory, such as the United States, prohibited from undertaking any deep-sea mining, or is it able to go ahead without applying for a licence because it is allowed to do so under its own domestic law? Might we therefore be disadvantaging British companies against American companies?
Sheryll Murray
Companies in countries that are not signatories to UNCLOS would have to find a host that was a signatory to make an application for them.
There are large quantities of these metals. Whether it is because of increased demand, shrinking supply or both, metal prices have increased notably in recent years. As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), rare earth elements, which have a particularly limited number of land-based sources, are attracting great interest. Those factors led to the emergence of the first serious commercial interest in deep-sea mining only a couple of years ago. A UK-registered company is now following up that interest.
An event to celebrate the granting of an exploration contract by the ISA to the UK was held at the Excel centre on 11 March this year. I was very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was able to attend. At that event, he spoke of the potential benefits to the UK and of the supply chain jobs that would probably be created in areas such as Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, Aberdeen and—I hope this is the case—Cornwall. Jobs are likely to be created in areas such as engineering, high-tech remote underwater vehicles and ship stabilisation. He said that that activity was estimated to be worth up to £40 billion to our economy over the next 30 years.
Many people from my constituency work in Plymouth. I want to ensure that we have the necessary legislation in place to make the most of these new opportunities. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), who cannot be here today, for sponsoring the Bill.
Mr Nuttall
I am interested to hear that there have been developments in this field this year. Will my hon. Friend tell the House whether she has received any direct representations since the publication of the Bill?
Sheryll Murray
I have received one e-mail requesting a meeting from WWF, which is very friendly towards the Bill and is working to progress it. I have also written to my local press and contacted the local media explaining the Bill and its economic benefits, and they have all seen it as a move towards the future by the United Kingdom.
The Prime Minister has welcomed the fact that more than 80 UK companies have been identified as having the relative expertise for the UK contractor to work with them. He also welcomed the industry workshop event that was arranged to follow the ceremony celebrating the granting of the contract.
One immediate example of the benefits to the United Kingdom was the announcement at that event of environmental work planned by the UK contractor. It has assembled a team of six world-class scientists, including one from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, which I am sure will please the hon. Member for Brent North, and one from the Natural History museum. They will work alongside the company in an environmental survey expedition to study the taxonomy of deep-sea organisms, of which little is currently known. That is a good reflection of the expertise we have in this country, and it is important for UK scientists to work at the cutting edge of science.
The importance of the new industry is clear, but what exactly is deep-sea mining and what does it involve? By deep-sea mining we mean the deep sea, not anywhere near any coastal settlements. In fact, we mean at least 200 nautical miles out to sea. Of course, the UK does not have a complete 200-mile limit. I cannot really envisage any deep-sea mining taking place in the channel, but we have a median line there because the channel is fewer than 200 nautical miles wide.
The contract held by the UK company for the exploration of polymetallic nodules is for an area in the mid-Pacific, in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. It is important to emphasise that deep-sea mining is not fracking, nor does it involve many of the techniques associated with land-based mining. Specifically, deep-sea mining for polymetallic nodules does not involve the excavation of any rubble or the use of explosives.
Mr Nuttall
Although my hon. Friend says that it does not involve any excavation, as I read the Bill, it does not exclude that possibility. Will she confirm that it would be possible if a company wished to do it?
Sheryll Murray
I will come on to that, but I can inform my hon. Friend that I was referring specifically to polymetallic nodules, the harvesting of which does not involve the use of explosives. The nodules lie on the sea bed, or are partially embedded in sediment on the sea bed. Techniques to mine them are likely to involve scooping or vacuuming them up from the sea bed.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend drew a distinction between deep-sea mining and fracking. Will she confirm that fracking and other processes for winning fossil fuels such as oil and gas are not within the ambit of the Bill?
Sheryll Murray
We are talking about sourcing hydrocarbons, which I will move on to a little later in my speech. If I miss anything out, I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will pick up on it.
Mining for polymetallic nodules could be a lot less environmentally damaging than land-based mining for the same minerals. To assist my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), mining for polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich crusts is a different matter. It would involve the excavation of rock. Mining for those materials is even further off than mining for polymetallic nodules, and the principles that might apply to nodules would have to be reconsidered for sulphides and crusts. We are determined to ensure that the highest environmental standards are applied to any use of those minerals. The point is that international regulations have been agreed for the exploration of different types of minerals, and they were in place in advance of exploration contracts being issued. The various regulations have been continually reviewed and updated in the light of developments and new considerations.
There are no regulations yet on the exploration of any of the minerals in question—they are probably at least five years off. As I mentioned earlier, it was only this year at the ISA’s annual meeting that the council had a preliminary discussion on the process for the development of a regulatory framework for the exploitation of polymetallic nodules.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend suggests that the industry is still in its infancy, and I appreciate that, but the Act that the Bill would amend was passed in 1981. The matter was regarded then as so urgent that the Act had to be passed without even waiting for the international convention to come into force. Something must have led to that feeling of urgency back in 1981. Can my hon. Friend explain why nothing really happened after the Act was passed?
Sheryll Murray
I have to confess that I was—a long time before, in fact.
All I can say to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is that we are always unsure how quickly we will see technological advancement. I really hope that Members will support the Bill today, because the UK should be a world leader in the field.
The UK prides itself on taking a close interest in environmental matters and having a good reputation on them—that may have been why the 1981 Act was passed. It follows that, being one of the first states to sponsor a commercial company to undertake exploration—and, I trust, being able to demonstrate the highest regard for international law by passing the Bill—the UK is well placed to ensure that discussions leading towards a regulatory framework for exploitation reflect both the desire for the highest environmental standards and what is practically possible from an industry and technological perspective. I am assured that during the preliminary discussions on a regulatory framework at the ISA this year, the UK delegation emphasised just that.
Now that commercial companies have become involved, deep-sea mining looks inevitable. As much as for the benefits, the UK needs to be involved so that it can shape regulations and standards. I hope that hon. Members show support for the scientists, the commercial companies with the expertise and the people who work in the associated companies, and that we can achieve and secure protection for the marine environment as the technology progresses. By passing the Bill, we can also make a big contribution to the UK economy over the next 30 years. I hope the House supports it.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I am delighted to speak in this debate, which is important not simply because of the economic interests that the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) has outlined; she spoke of a potentially accessible resource that could be worth something to the tune of £40 billion. As she appreciates, it is also important because of the natural environmental resource that could be at risk from both the exploration, and ultimately the exploitation, of those resources.
I was grateful for the clarification made by the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) on clause 5 of the 1981 Act, which I have highlighted in my copy. When he quoted the clause, however, he left out one salient phrase:
“so far as reasonably practicable”.
Let me quote the clause in full:
“In determining whether to grant an exploration or exploitation licence the Secretary of State shall have regard to the need to protect (so far as reasonably practicable) marine creatures, plants and other organisms and their habitat from any harmful effects which might result from any activities to be authorised by the licence; and the Secretary of State shall consider any representations made to him concerning such effects.”
In its time, that was an eminently good and sensible environmental protection to introduce, but 32 years later, environmental law has superseded it. It is no longer the significant protection that it may have been regarded as when it was introduced in 1981.
In particular, we need to pay attention to principle 15 of the Rio declaration—the precautionary approach—in all such environmental matters. Principle 15 states simply that, if there are indications of likely but uncertain significant adverse environmental impacts, an activity should not be authorised to proceed. The principle switches the burden of proof. Of course, in overall terms, deep-sea ecosystem processes, connectivity and the importance of deep-sea ecosystem services are poorly understood by contemporary science.
The hon. Member for South East Cornwall described some processes, and mentioned scooping and vacuuming, but she will also know of the process of crushing when mining for these nodules. More than most hon. Members, she will be aware of the deep-sea ocean currents that can take sediment produced from such operations and disperse it over wide areas. As some of the minerals being explored are so toxic, it is difficult to understand with modern science just what the effect of their dispersal by those deep-sea ocean currents could be.
Sheryll Murray
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the polymetallic nodules are golf ball-size spheres that occur in ocean bed sediments? I bow to his expertise, but my knowledge of the sea bed suggests that trying to crush a polymetallic would simply bury it further into the sediment. We need the Bill so that the UK can ensure that the environment is cared for and so that the activities are undertaken in the most environmentally friendly way. If he is concerned about the hoovering and harvesting of the nodules, he should support my Bill.
Barry Gardiner
Let me give the hon. Lady the assurance that I am sure the Bill will pass on Second Reading. I have no desire to stuff it and am not foolish enough to attempt to do so. However, I would like to obtain from her and the Minister another assurance: that the environmental protection, which is currently only in the 1981 Act, will be strengthened when the Bill goes into Committee. The burden of proof in the precautionary principle is reversed in the Act, which states:
“In determining whether to grant an exploration or exploitation licence the Secretary of State shall have regard to the need to protect”.
I want to change the focus, so that instead of the Secretary of State having regard to the need to protect, no licence is granted unless full environmental impact assessments have been undertaken.
Mr Nuttall
I read those comments, although I am sure that with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)—a predecessor of mine in Bury North—at the Dispatch Box this morning we have no need to fear, as the Bill will be handled with the utmost care.
Some important economic issues are at stake. It would be easy for an individual or company wanting to exploit the resources of the seabed to relocate to the jurisdiction they thought most favourable to them. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, who so ably proposed the Bill this morning, I want our country to be the world leader in this industry. Despite the fact that it has been 32 years since the original Act was passed, we can still describe it as being in its infancy, and this nascent industry has great potential for the future.
Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend agree that this country has always been a world leader in oceanographic studies, and that we should support those institutions through this Bill?
Mr Nuttall
It is true that this nation has been a world leader in exploring the world. As an island nation we have an affinity with the sea and a natural interest in deep-sea matters, exploring the seas and fishing—as my hon. Friend knows only too well. It is important that we continue that tradition, and I see the Bill as an opportunity to do just that. But there are risks, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) suggests, in that it would be all too easy for us to try to cover every environmental risk and make the terms of the licences so onerous that we would not only fail to attract companies from overseas to our jurisdiction, and thereby benefit economically from their success, but drive away British companies from our jurisdiction. They would look at our legislation and think, “We might as well relocate our company to some other jurisdiction.”
More than 160 other countries have signed up to the UN convention, so companies would have plenty of choice. It would be easy to shop around the world for a legislative environment that was more economically advantageous than ours. We must therefore exercise great care when examining this legislation.
On the face of it, this Bill is rather dull, and to a casual observer it could appear uninteresting. However, it is one that could open up the high seas—or, more accurately, our deepest oceans—to what could turn out to be the 21st century equivalent of the 19th-century gold rush. It is like the Klondike. The ocean depths contain some of the last unexplored areas on our planet. The Bill seeks to update the existing statute, which, as we have heard, dates back to 1981. It perhaps needs to be explained why an Act passed 32 years ago as a temporary measure is now not only being amended, but turned into a permanent fixture. Indeed, the original Act was so clearly intended to be a temporary measure that its official title included the words “Temporary Provisions”, while section 18(3) made provision for the Secretary of State to repeal it.
Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend agree that that could have been because discussions were taking place about the UNCLOS agreement? It was always the intention of the House to introduce further legislation in line with UNCLOS, but that has never happened.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I was coming on to say that my understanding was precisely the same. The 1981 Act set out to regulate mining on the sea bed in the farthest and deepest oceans of the world. The reason it was required was that it had been discovered that valuable hard mineral resources, known as manganese or polymetallic nodules, existed on the seabed, as we have heard, and United Kingdom companies, among others, were interested in mining them.
Mr Nuttall
I cannot give any assurances about that; it is not for me to do that. I know that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about environmental protection, and quite rightly too, but I venture to submit that if the Bill is not made friendly towards companies, there is a danger that they will go and seek some other jurisdiction with a lot fewer environmental protections than in this country. There is a danger in going too far the other way. We have to strike the right balance on these matters, and I believe the Bill attempts to do that.
United Kingdom companies at that time were among those interested in mining polymetallic nodules. The idea behind the 1981 Act was to provide a statutory framework for the development of a nascent industry. As my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall said, it was passed in the full knowledge that negotiations were taking place at the United Nations. As we have heard, unfortunately, things did not proceed quite as fast as parliamentarians at the time thought they might. That might be due to a difficulty with the technology. Indeed, it is interesting to consider that man was able to send rockets and put men on the moon, the satellite of our planet, back in the 1960s, yet it has proved to be technologically much more difficult to travel to the depths of our planet.
A United Nations conference on the law of the sea had for several years been working towards an agreement on establishing an international system for regulating the exploitation of the mineral resources of our oceans. It was hoped that when a satisfactory agreement had been reached and had entered into force, the international arrangements would supersede the national provisions contained in the 1981 Act. It was for that reason that the legislation was sold to the House as a temporary measure. The Government of the day anticipated that there would be no need for any national legislation once the United Nations convention came into force.
The Government of the day were understandably keen to improve the security and availability of future supplies of vital raw materials for our UK industries. The UK was, and still is, heavily dependent on a small number of countries for supplies of minerals that are critical raw materials for our manufacturing industries. The possibility of securing our own supplies of minerals such as nickel, cobalt, copper or manganese from the sea bed was understandably regarded as a very welcome prospect indeed. Furthermore, the prospect of UK companies participating in the new industrial activity of sea-bed mining promised an economic opportunity for the benefit of the companies involved and the wider British economy.
The nodules that gave rise to that flurry of interest and activity were described at the time not as being like golf balls, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall described them, but as like charred potatoes that varied in size and, where they occurred, were like a carpet on the sea bed in a single layer. We do not yet fully understand how and why the nodules form, but it is clear that they apparently require the undisturbed conditions that are found only in the deepest areas of the ocean. Although the nodules were found in various parts of the ocean, only very few areas contained sufficiently rich deposits to justify the enormous costs of establishing commercial mining operations. The deposits of nodules are beyond the limits of national jurisdictions and were consequently treated as resources of the high seas, which any nation could attempt to recover.
It is perhaps worth considering what exactly it is envisaged will be mined as a result of the Bill. There are essentially three types of minerals involved. First are the polymetallic nodules, which contain manganese, copper, cobalt and nickel. As my hon. Friend mentioned, they either occur on the surface or are partially buried, and are discovered at depths of 3,000 to 6,000 metres—in other words, some 4 miles deep, so we are not talking about something that one can undertake lightly. It is estimated that the global reserves of deep-sea manganese nodules are in the order of 10 billion tonnes. Those of greatest economic interest are made up, on average, of about 30% manganese, 1.5% nickel, 1.5% copper and 0.3% cobalt. However, I understand that the presence of traces of other, rare earth elements might also attract interest in these resources, particularly as the supply of such metals from land-based resources is reducing.
Secondly, there are polymetallic sulphides, which are sulphide deposits found at water depths of up to 3,700 metres in mid-ocean ridges, back-arc rifts and sea-mounts. They often carry high concentrations of copper, zinc and lead, in addition to gold and silver. That is what gave me the idea that there could be a 21st century Klondike in the deep sea. Thirdly, there are ferromanganese crusts, in which cobalt-rich iron-manganese forms on the sea floor. These, too, could lead to mining activity.
Before I began to research the Bill, the letters “ISA” had always stood for “individual savings account”. Now, when I see them, I think of the International Seabed Authority. That new body was established under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, and it plays a pivotal role in deep-sea mining. The authority has stated that the areas of exploration have not advanced much since 1981. They still mainly comprise the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone in the equatorial north Pacific ocean, south and south-east of Hawaii, and the central Indian basin in the Indian ocean. Exploration for polymetallic sulphides is also taking place in the south-west Indian ridge and in the mid-Atlantic ridge.
Unsurprisingly, in view of the potential economic importance of those resources, there has been considerable international interest in, and concern about, the nature of their exploitation. In 1967 and 1970, that concern was formalised in two resolutions of the United Nations. The first sought to impose a complete moratorium on deep-sea mining until international arrangements had come into force. The second was a declaration of principle stating that the sea bed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, and its resources, were the common heritage of mankind.
A United Nations conference on the law of the sea was convened in 1973 to negotiate an international system of regulation for sea-bed mining. No agreement was reached by the time of the passage of the 1981 Act, even though the conference had met regularly since 1973 and made some progress on developing an international regime. The negotiations were sufficiently advanced, however, for it to be fairly clear that any convention emanating from the talks would contain complex provisions for operations by private companies and by an international sea-bed authority. Incidentally, the negotiations apparently stalled because the United States decided to carry out a full review of its policy on the law of the sea, and therefore decided not to play an active role in those negotiations.
Those uncertainties demonstrated the problems that would face Governments and mining companies until an international convention could be agreed and ratified. Because of those uncertainties, the United Kingdom Government of the day considered it necessary to pass the 1981 Act as an interim measure to give the UK mining industry a firm basis for proceeding, pending an international agreement being reached.
Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend agree that we had to pass an Act of Parliament even though we were a member of the European economic area because the competency lay with the member state? Because the European Economic Community was not a nation, it could not have that same recognition.
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing up the matter of the European Union. I was wondering whether we might be able to touch on that. She is absolutely right to suggest that the EU plays an important role in this matter. I understand that it has taken it upon itself to become a signatory to the convention, which demonstrates just how it can behave as though it were a single European state. It is clearly positioning itself so that, one day, it will be able to take over the organisation of and responsibility for passing legislation such as this. She might think that that is of little consequence, but she has highlighted a real fear. There is a danger that, if the European Union continues on the path that it appears to be taking, this will be yet another area over which this House will have no competence whatever.
As I was saying, the Government of the day considered the 1981 Bill necessary, because of all the uncertainty, in order to allow British companies to proceed with some certainty, notwithstanding the involvement of the European Community at that time.
I should point out that the 1981 Bill was by no means uncontroversial. Indeed, it divided the House on Second Reading and Third Reading. One concern that was raised at the time was that people wondered why it was necessary to introduce legislation at all, given the progress that was being made on securing an international agreement. Concern was expressed that, if the United Kingdom passed unilateral legislation, it could jeopardise the wider international treaty negotiations.
The answer was that that Government were keen to pass an interim measure because the text of the draft convention available at the time contained a provision for the convention not to become effective until 60 states had ratified it. That was the threshold set in the draft agreement. It was therefore clear that, even if agreement were reached fairly soon after the Bill had reached the statute book, it was likely that several years would pass before 60 states had ratified the treaty.
The Government of the day were absolutely right to predict that it would take several years to bring together that number of signatories. Indeed, although international agreement was reached the year after the Bill became law and the convention was signed on 10 December 1982 at Montego Bay in Jamaica, it was not until some 12 years later on 16 November 1994—one year after Guyana had become the 60th nation to ratify the convention—that it actually came into force. Members might wonder why it was signed at Montego Bay. The answer is that that is where the headquarters of what is now the International Seabed Authority are situated.
Another concern expressed at the time was that the delays and uncertainties in the international arrangements left the developing deep-sea mining industry in a difficult and uncertain position. The industry was in its infancy and had to carry out costly development work before being ready to embark on commercial operations. Understandably, mining companies were not prepared to invest the huge sums required to undertake this development work without a reasonably stable legal framework in which to operate. If the 1981 Act had never been passed, the Government feared that mining companies would allow their development programmes to run down, and if they did run down, there was no guarantee that they would ever be built up again.
A further reason why legislation was required was that the companies that had pioneered the development of sea-bed mining had already expended considerable efforts on prospecting large areas of the ocean floor. They wanted to secure their claims to potential areas of exploration and exploitation—the areas that they had identified as worthy of further investigation, particularly when other countries were already pressing ahead with their own national legislation.
The key concern was, of course, ensuring that the exploitation of the valuable mineral resources did not result in damage being caused to the marine environment. As already mentioned this morning, section 5 of the 1981 Act provided for protection of the marine environment, which was a central part of the legislation at that time, and it is the one section, incidentally, of the Act that is hardly altered at all by my hon. Friend’s Bill.
Of course, the whole purpose of the present Bill is to amend the 1981 Act. Although on the face of it, this Bill is very short, I venture to suggest that it is deceptively short. There are only two clauses, but the real meat lies in the schedule, which extends to no fewer than 12 paragraphs containing 11 separate sets of amendments over six pages.
The first of the amendments to the 1981 Act is designed to substitute proposed new subsections (1) and (2) in section 1 of the 1981 Act. That Act presently prohibits anyone covered by the section from undertaking mining activities in the deep sea without a licence. There are essentially two types of licence: exploration licences and exploitation licences. The provisions apply to UK nationals, Scottish firms or anybody incorporated under UK law and resident in any part of the UK. That is the 1981 definition, and I shall deal later with how the Bill proposes to extend it.
The crucial change is made to the description of what might be mined. The 1981 Act referred to “hard mineral resources”, but it is now proposed to change that to “mineral resource”, which is defined in amended subsection (6) as
“a solid, liquid or gaseous…resource”.
That definition is obviously much wider than the previous one, which was very specifically defined as meaning
“deposits of nodules containing…quantities”
of
“at least one of the following elements…manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper, phosphorous and molybdenum”
in “quantities greater than trace”. The new definition will allow several different explorers to start prospecting for different minerals at the same time in the same area.
In view of the much wider definition, I wonder what will be the likely increase in the number of explorers who will now need to seek a licence. I am sure that, when we hear from him, the Minister will want to reassure us that the Government have in place sufficient resources to enable them to deal with what I hope will be sudden rush of applicants wanting to take advantage of the opportunities provided once the Bill has passed through here and the other place.
The crucial definitions in amended section 2 introduce references to the International Seabed Authority and to what the provisions refer to as a “corresponding contract”, defined as
“a contract…granted by the Authority to the licensee”
either to explore or exploit mineral resources in a given licensed area. As has been said, this is very much a twin-track approach. It is no good a company only obtaining a licence from the UK, as it must at the same time ensure that it has a contract from the International Seabed Authority.
There is also a requirement to pay a fee to the Government, so we need not think that there will necessarily be a cost to the UK Government, although I express the hope that any fee does not put off potential applicants. As I said earlier, there is a real danger that if we do not establish a friendly regime for exploration companies, they will simply go elsewhere. Nevertheless, the requirement to pay a fee is retained. Proposed new subsection (3) of section 2 makes it clear to applicants that double authorisation is required by specifying that a licence granted by the Secretary of State under the UK legislation shall
“not come into force before the date on which a corresponding contract comes into force.”
It will thus not be sufficient for any individual or company to obtain just a licence.
Proposed new subsection (3A) sets out a minimum list of terms and conditions that a licence may include. I add, although the hon. Member for Brent North is no longer in his place, that this subsection could provide the means and the mechanism by which any further environmental protection that the Government felt necessary in any particular case could be dealt with—without any necessity to amend the Bill in Committee or on Report.
Proposed new subsection (5) provides that where a person has been
“granted an exploration licence, the Secretary of State may not grant an exploitation licence which relates to any part of the licensed area”
or to
“any of the mineral resources to which that licence relates”
to anyone other than
“the holder of the exploration licence”
without their “written consent”.
Of course, that immediately poses the question why, when an exploitation licence can be granted only to someone who has an exploration licence, anyone would want to go prospecting on the patch of someone else. I thought that that could happen only if they had in mind a joint venture agreement with the holder of the exploration licence and cut a deal with them.
The amended section 8 adds two new subsections to reflect the fact that under the terms of the 1994 agreement, there is a requirement for judicial and arbitration decisions to be recognised. This area was not covered at all in the 1981 Act. Sections 9 and 10 of the 1981 Act are then removed. Perhaps worthy of note is just how much debate and discussion took place around the two clauses when the Bill was debated back in 1981. Hours and hours were spent considering them, and we now discover, 32 years later, that neither the deep-sea mining levy nor the deep-sea mining fund have, in fact, ever operated at all.
The schedule then makes provision for the list of definitions to be extended to take into account the new structures and terms introduced by the 1994 agreement. Finally, it removes the reference to the 1981 Act as a temporary measure and it removes the provisions that allowed the Secretary of State to repeal it. I assume that it is the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall for this legislation to become permanent.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who, as usual, made many comments with which I should like to be associated. I join him in congratulating our hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on her Bill, which she presented with her customary charm. I think that that will stand her in good stead today, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, I hope that the Bill is passed without too much trouble.
Reading up on this subject has been a learning curve for me. I was not particularly well versed in it before, unlike the Minister, who, I know, is a long-standing expert in the field. My starting point was to establish what deep-sea mining actually was. I had not realised that it was such a controversial subject until, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, I read the report of the 1981 debate. Having assumed that the debate must have been fairly consensual and that the issue had not been particularly controversial, I was astounded to discover how heated the discussion had become on some occasions. If I detected accurately what was said earlier by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), the Labour party had changed its mind about the legislation, so I am delighted. However, I think that some of the reservations that have been expressed about this Bill are similar to those expressed in 1981. It is strange that people who now say that they are in favour of the 1981 Act and who seem to be in favour of the Bill should express the same reservations that they expressed in 1981.
Deep-sea mining, I learn, is the process of retrieving minerals, raw materials and precious metal from the deep-sea bed. The United Kingdom has a great tradition of oceanography and similar activities. The modern age in that respect—certainly the modern age as far as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is concerned—began in 1872, when HMS Challenger set out on its four-year voyage to explore the oceans. The expedition was led by John Murray and Charles Thomson, who should be commended for the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North pointed out, much of our present exploration and exploitation activity is thanks to their discovery of what was out there. We should be incredibly grateful to them for that. Only yesterday, I believe, the Prime Minister said that pretty much everything that was worth inventing was invented by people in this country. Much of what was worth discovering was discovered by people in this country, too, and we should be immensely proud of that great tradition.
I had not previously been particularly well versed in polymetallic nodules and deep-sea hydrothermal vents—or, for that matter, manganese nodules—but they are actually more fascinating than people may think. They are very productive, and not only rich in minerals but home to unique organisms that have evolved to live in extreme conditions and are of interest to scientists for their genetic properties, which have many remedial, medical and other practical applications.
I may be doing him a disservice, but it is possible that the hon. Member for Brent North has read—as I have—the briefing on the Bill that was sent to us by Greenpeace, which I am sure was also read with great interest by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall. Greenpeace fears that if sea-bed mining is allowed to proceed in the absence of a comprehensive system of environmental protection, we may be destroying species for ever before we have fully explored what they are. That returns us to the precautionary principle mentioned by the hon. Member for Brent North.
Sheryll Murray
Some of the cone-shaped polymetallic nodules are alive and smoking, and certain marine creatures live in their environment. I understand that the harvesting will be restricted to the dead ones. I think the Greenpeace paper refers to the living ones, which we see in films with smoke coming out of them, but I understand it is the dead ones that are going to be mined.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend has far more expertise in this field than me, and I am grateful to her for that clarification. I do not necessarily agree with the Greenpeace stance, but I think there are certain points that are worth putting on the record. The concern is that problems we are not yet aware of may arise from deep-sea mining. It is always difficult to counter such arguments: if we are not aware of the problems, how can we give reassurance on them? I suspect we cannot. Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith, however; otherwise, we would never do anything. We would never do anything in this country if we were constantly concerned about things we are not yet aware of. Such an approach would not take us very far forward.
Sheryll Murray
The explanatory notes that accompany my Bill state that a copy of the impact assessment will be available in the Vote Office. I understand that it is not, but I will ask that it be made available to interested Members before the Committee.
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for their support for the Bill today. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) brings a lot of experience, because he sat in the House during the passage of the 1981 Act. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), for Shipley (Philip Davies), for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who all made valuable contributions. I also welcome the contributions from the hon. Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown). In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for all the support he has given in ensuring that the Bill reached this stage. I hope the House will support the Bill, so that it can move to Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
James Wharton
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
This is a debate about the Bill that I am bringing forward and which I am proud to bring forward. The Community that we joined all those years ago was primarily one of free trade, though aspects of it even then—
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The first time I voted was in 1974. My son and daughter have never had the opportunity to make that democratic decision. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is what we should be doing today? That is why I sponsored my hon. Friend’s Bill.
James Wharton
Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. She was lucky if she had the opportunity to vote. I was, as one hon. Member whispered in my ear as she made her contribution, but a twinkle in an eye at that time. I did not have the opportunity to vote.