Stephen Pound
Main Page: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Philip Davies
To be perfectly honest, my hon. Friend has got to the heart of my amendment. That is not particularly clear. The Bill might go further or the provisions might already be covered—I am not entirely clear. That is the purpose of my amendment: I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify what is covered by existing legislation and what, if anything, is new and necessary. It might be the case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North suggested, that what we are putting into legislation today is needed to encourage all the other signatories to catch up with the UK Government. I genuinely do not know, which is why I think that amendment 2 is a useful probing amendment to allow the Minister to make it abundantly clear why we need this clause.
Annex V to the protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty, which is already in place, is about area protection and management. That seems to me to be covered by clause 5. Annex V contains several definitions, including (a), which is of an appropriate authority, (b), which is of a permit, and (c), which refers to a management plan. That seems to me to encroach totally on the territory of clause 5. Annex V states:
“‘Management Plan’ means a plan to manage the activities and protect the special value or values in an Antarctic Specially Protected Area or an Antarctic Specially Managed Area.”
It seems to me, particularly from what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North was saying, that that is exactly what clause 5 seeks to do, yet the provision is already part of the 1994 Act.
The objectives in annex V—I reassure you, Mr Speaker, that I am only picking out highlighted parts of this, and I do not mean to go through the whole thing, but it is relevant to the point I am trying to make about why we need this clause—
Philip Davies
Absolutely, and Mr Speaker is very capable of making those decisions without the hon. Gentleman’s help.
Article 2 is about the objectives of annex V and states:
“For the purposes set out in this Annex, any area, including any marine area, may be designated as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area or an Antarctic Specially Managed Area.”
It goes on to state:
“Activities in those Areas shall be prohibited, restricted or managed in accordance with Management Plans adopted under the provisions of this Annex.”
Article 3 goes on to discuss Antarctic specially protected areas and article 4 is about Antarctic specially managed areas.