The purpose of new clause 9 is to increase the protection of the North sea—a most important issue. The purpose of new clause 17 is to establish marine conservation. New clause 55 is a linked clause, which would give the Secretary of State power to retrieve harmful substances from the marine environment. Marine conservation, the protection of the marine environment and, in particular, the protection of the North sea are rightly being given an important place in the debate. If we want evidence of how the Government are the environmental back sliders of Europe, we see that what they do does not live up to what they say. The way in which we, as a maritime country surrounded by the sea, protect our marine environment evidences the weakness of the Government's position.

New clause 9 contains a seven-part plan. If I were back in the law courts, as opposed to this court, I would frame an indictment in which there were seven counts. At the end of the evidence there is no doubt that on a charge of failing to protect the North sea, the Government would be found guilty on each of the seven counts, which are that they have not adequately agreed to prohibit the dumping of sewage sludge, that they are not committed in any way to achieving zero discharge of inputs harmful to the marine environment in any reasonable or immediate period, that they have not committed themselves to ban the dumping of fly ash as they should have done and as it is necessary to do, that they are not committed adequately and urgently to prohibit the dumping of industrial waste in the North sea, that they are not committed to limit discharges from shipping into the North sea, that they are not committed to proper measures to limit discharges from oil and gas platforms into the North sea, and that they are not committed sufficiently to regulate the transport of hazardous substances and to maintain a register of accidents at sea as a result of which harmful substances enter the marine environment.

One tragedy of Britain is that we regularly put at risk not just the land, which is our responsibility, but the large expanses of water around us over which we have significant influence. Over the years the North sea and the Irish sea—although the debate is not about the Irish sea—have become dumping grounds for much of the country's waste. The worst evidence against us as a nation is that on many of the seven charges in the indictment we are the only country which is committing the offences. Other countries have long since stopped doing so.

Taking the seven counts in turn, on sewage sludge the new clause has been tabled because we believe that until the Government stop embarrassing the country at international conferences and become committed to urgent deadlines that make it clear that the environment comes first and not second to other interests, it is necessary for us to establish the deadlines. The presumption is that that should be done sooner rather than later. The Government have never adequately rebutted that presumption.

We are the only country in the world to continue to dump sewage sludge in the North sea. The amount is not small; last year it was 3·5 million tonnes, much of it contaminated by heavy metals. That sewage sludge probably contains viruses because, unlike other countries, we do not pasteurise our sewage. I understand that there is one small pasteurisation plant in north Yorkshire, and only last month in an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce), the Minister said that this country has no plans to require more extensive use of such facilities.

There is some confusion about the urgency of the problem. On the one hand, Ministers from the Department of the Environment have said in answer to a letter from one of my colleagues: We do not permit the dumping of harmful industrial waste at sea". Yet in an answer to me the following month, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made the clear admission that shellfish were being examined for viruses, which have no doubt developed because of the dumping of sludge, not in a single isolated site, but in many sites off our coasts.

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This is a serious problem, of enormous scale. Perhaps the best people to judge its seriousness are the fishermen who fish in the North sea and who have to work in a foul environment. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food accepts that those fishermen have complained regularly that they become ill as a result of fishing near sludge disposal sites. Although the Ministry has taken those complaints seriously, it has not yet done anything about the problem. It is a tragedy that fishing is now dangerous in much of the North sea because of the amount of sludge that we have dumped there, which directly affects the people who use the sea.

It is no good saying that we are beginning to deal with the problem adequately by sifting out the plastic and sewage sludge because, although it is true that there is some screening, it is not comprehensive. Another recent written answer from MAFF made it clear that there is now screening at one of the treatment plants, but not at the other.

It is a sordid business and a sordid sea. Fishermen regularly discover that they are fishing through floating layers of unlimited faeces. On 24 February this year, an article described the sea off Tyneside, which is not far from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith): When fishermen's nets are hauled in off the Tyne, they are dense with treated faeces and thousands of condoms and sanitary towels. 'It can turn the stomach of the most experienced seaman', said Ray Morse, skipper of the Conduan, based in North Shields. Next comes the important evidence: Thirty years ago, fishermen had bumper catches—but these have all gone. Last week, one trawler netted two boxes in five hours.Trawlermen are now considering fishing up to 100 miles out at sea, compared with a few miles five years ago. That harms the fishing industry because many vessels are not equipped to travel as far as is now necessary to fish for the catches upon which the fishermen depend for their living.

The Government have said that it is all right to deal with the problem by 1998, but that is not sufficient. They should show greater seriousness and adopt a much earlier deadline. We have proposed a deadline of the beginning of 1993.

I hope that the Government realise that this matter is now of significant interest, not only to the fishing and farming industries, but to the whole community. Just before the North sea conference earlier this year, I received not only the clearly prompted, standard-form letters from people who are members of environmental organisations, but letters that had been personally written. I received one such letter from a constituent who I remember as a troublesome youth a few years ago. He is now in prison and wrote to me, having been persuaded of the importance of international environmental issues. This is the first letter that I have received from him since he has been in prison and it is worth noting that, although prisoners write to their Members of Parliament about many things, they do not normally write about international environmental issues. It is interesting that having had a chance to reflect on his life and condition, the way in which we treat our environment was the issue on which that prisoner chose to write to me.

We should attack the problem urgently. It is no good saying that we can put it off for nearly another decade.