Marine Environment

Steve Double Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this debate on an important issue.

As an island nation, the UK has always had a strong connection to the seas. Although it is probably no longer true to claim that Britannia rules the waves, that connection with our maritime environment is still strong. I speak as an MP representing a part of the world renowned for its coastline and one of only three constituencies that boasts two coastlines. I understand just how important it is that we preserve the wellbeing of our marine environment not only for our fishing fleet, as we have heard—we are hoping to see a revival in it once we leave the European Union—but for our tourism, which is so connected to our coastline. It is also important that we preserve it for future generations. We want to leave the planet in a better state than we found it.

In recent years we have seen growing awareness of the damage we are doing to our seas through the way we live and how we dispose of our waste. We have seen a change from the attitude that existed before, whereby we could just throw rubbish and anything we did not want any longer into the sea and forget about it. There is increasing awareness of the damage that that has caused over many decades and probably centuries. I am proud to say that the Government in recent years have started to take some positive action to address some of the issues, and we have seen good progress.

The current Secretary of State and the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), have taken the issue seriously. Along with the Minister who is here to respond to the debate, we have a team of Ministers who have started to take some decisive action to address this important matter after years of talking about these things. The 5p charge on plastic bags has reduced the number of plastic bags thrown away by billions. Many of those plastic bags would have ended up in our seas and on our coasts. We have seen that dramatic change in public behaviour as a result of something as a simple as a 5p charge.

The Government have introduced a ban on microbeads in cosmetics, which will stop hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces of plastic ending up in our waterways. The Government are now taking action to introduce a deposit return scheme on single-use plastic bottles, which will dramatically reduce the number of plastic bottles that end up being thrown away. All too often, they end up in our seas and on our beaches. We are making good progress, but we are all aware that huge challenges remain that we have to address.

I will give some of the statistics that the hon. Member for Huddersfield highlighted. Globally, 8 million pieces of plastic enter the oceans every day. I am sure we have all seen the videos online of islands of plastic bottles floating in some parts of the world. The visual impact of that brings home just what we are doing. The statistic that hit me—I always go back to it—is that if we do not take decisive action, there will be more plastic than fish in our seas by 2050. We have to carry on addressing the issues and taking decisive action.

As the chairman of the Protect Our Waves all-party parliamentary group, I am honoured to work closely with the Cornish-based charity Surfers Against Sewage. For many years it has addressed the pollution of our seas. I have been working closely with the charity since I have been here in Parliament. Other members of the APPG are here, and I invite Members who are not part of the APPG to join us and work with us to ensure that we continue to address these issues in Parliament.

Surfers Against Sewage is a formidable organisation that has worked tirelessly on sea pollution. It has lobbied Government to bring about change. I joined it just a few weeks ago to present a petition signed by 270,000 people to the Prime Minister at No. 10. The petition called for the introduction of a deposit return scheme as part of the charity’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign. Throughout the year, it mobilises tens of thousands of volunteers in beach cleans to remove the rubbish and waste that ends up on our beaches. It is not just about collecting the rubbish; it is a huge awareness campaign to make people more aware of the damage we are doing. We are making good progress, but there is much more to do and by working together we can do it.

I will make one final point, to which I hope the Minister will respond. We need some further action on combined sewer outflows, which continue to discharge untreated sewage into our seas too often when we have heavy rainfall. We are all aware that we are getting heavy rainfall more often. We particularly suffer from that in Cornwall because of our geography, our ageing sewer system, and being at the brunt of storms that come across the Atlantic. We need to start taking more action to put pressure on water companies to get rid of combined sewer outflows, so that we can stop untreated sewage from being discharged.

We are moving in the right direction on those issues, but there is much more to do. The UK must continue to take a global lead in preventing pollution of our oceans, and cleaning them up wherever we can.