3. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide further detail on how stakeholders beyond management authorities can contribute to the development of the marine protected area management priority action plan? (OAQ51185)

The Wales marine advisory and action group has been engaged in the development of a national marine plan for Wales. There is a statutory function that we must perform, and we will engage stakeholders taking this forward. We will seek the views of this group regarding the MPA management plan.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that response. Back in August, as she will know, the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee published its catchily entitled report ‘Turning the tide?’, which stressed the pride we should have in our Welsh marine and coastal environment, and the potential for marine protected areas to help support healthy seas, sustainable fisheries and much more.

Recommendation 1 spoke of the urgency of developing that MPA strategy. Recommendation 3 spoke of the need for Welsh Government to operate in a transparent and efficient way, ensuring that stakeholders are fully engaged in the development of that MPA strategy. The Cabinet Secretary responded positively to the recommendations, though, rather than committing to the development of an MPA strategy, as recommended by the committee, she committed instead to finalising the MPA management priority action plan and thereby agreeing a strategic direction by working with the marine protected area management steering group. But unfortunately, marine stakeholders working in the private sector and also non-governmental organisations are not part of the MPA steering group, which is limited to MPA management authorities such as Natural Resources Wales and local authorities. So, could I, in a very constructive way, ask the Cabinet Secretary to look at this again—I know she’ll want to draw on the fullest expertise of the marine sector in the development of that action plan and marine strategy—and, with the help of her officials, examine ways to have a platform of full engagement with all stakeholders before April next year?

Yes, I’m very happy to do that. My department is working with NRW and the MPA management steering group to finalise the marine protected area management priority action plan. Once that’s established, we will, of course, engage with a diverse range of marine stakeholders through the marine advisory action group.

Cabinet Secretary, shouldn’t that engagement, though, come before the plan is finalised? You have limited resources in your department; you face having to make more savings. There are extraordinary challenges about these marine protected areas; we know very little about what goes on at the bottom of the sea, and it’s very expensive to find information. Why do you not bring the stakeholders in at an earlier stage so that you can use both their resources and their expertise to help develop this plan?

When we began marine planning, we did publish a statement of public participation and that set out how stakeholders could input into the plan right from the beginning, and then as it developed. So, there is that consultation and that agreement with stakeholders; it’s not a matter that they were excluded—we did have that. We’ve also got the marine planning stakeholder reference group. That has a huge range of NGOs, industry and coastal fora on it. The Crown Estate is on it, NRW is obviously on it, and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. They’ve been inputting throughout the whole process. So, I think it’s wrong to say they were excluded; they were there from the beginning.