Clause 4 - Management schemes
Marine Wildlife Conservation Bill
11:30 am
Mr John Randall (Uxbridge, Conservative)
These amendments propose to widen consultation to ensure that the views of those with functions, property rights and other rights, including fishing rights, are sought by the relevant marine authority when establishing the management scheme. Relevant marine authorities may establish a management scheme for a marine site of special interest. Where the relevant marine authority is a body other than English Nature or the Countryside Council for Wales, those authorities must be consulted. Consultation with interested bodies after Second Reading revealed that users of the marine environment were concerned that as the Bill stood there was no way for them to be consulted. Furthermore, competent marine authorities consenting to or permitting activities within marine sites of special interest are not consulted. That is an oversight, as it is through the management schemes and the exercise of relevant marine authorities' existing powers that such users' interests might be affected. Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 will ensure that all those with property and other rights in relation to the MSSIs are consulted, so far as is reasonably practicable, on the development of a management scheme for a marine site of special interest.
Amendment No. 7 would ensure that under a marine site of special interest management scheme, relevant marine authorities exercised their functions as far as reasonably practical to further conservation. The Bill allows them to establish a management scheme and its function should be exercised to secure the consultation objectives of the site. In consultation after Second Reading, various interests pointed out that this gave primacy to nature conservation over all other interests. There is no scope in the Bill to balance conservation with other interests. Even the most strictly protected European marine sites do not have that level of protection.
Furthermore, as the Bill is drafted, relevant marine authorities have to achieve site conservation objectives no matter what. I hope that the amendment addresses this concern. Instead of relevant marine authorities having to achieve the objectives of the site, it requires them to take reasonable steps which are consistent with their other functions and duties. Therefore, they are required to do everything that they reasonably can to conserve the site, but that requirement is not at the expense of all other interests or without regard to cost. The fishing interests, among others, placed particular emphasis on that.