The Marine and Coastal Access Bill has completed its Committee Stage in the House of Commons. The Report Stage and Third Reading will be in October.  It will then become law.

In our view, Government has frustrated the very reasonable and responsible ambitions of those moving the amendments

Government has refused including ‘on the face of the Bill’

• highly protected marine reserves
• scientific criteria as the primary means for identifying and designating marine conservation zones (MCZs)
• establishing conservation zones covering a sufficiently extensive area of the sea to enable economic and social uses of the seas to be environmentally sustainable

However, we can offer two cheers as they have accepted that the network of MCZs should

• be set up in an initial form by 2012, and
• be ecologically coherent

We are looking for support for an amendment at the Report stage.  This is intended to remedy some of the problems caused by the omissions.

Marine Reserves campaigner Haris Livas-Dawes calls for marine reserves in the Hull Daily Mail of 21st July:

A recent correspondent complained about the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, and I certainly agree it is a disaster. Like the Common Agricultural Policy, also a disaster, it is devised by politicians who ignore science. What that correspondent failed to mention is that a bill to improve the character of British seas, including our North Sea, is making its way though parliament, just having exited the House of Lords and moved to the Commons.
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Today is World Oceans Day and Malcolm Hunter of the Marine Reserves campaign team writes:

A study published last year, in the journal Science, identified the marine environment around the UK as among the most degraded in the world, as a result of human activities. Many fish stocks are close to commercial, or even actually extinction and much of the sea bed has been turned into a lifeless desert, as a result of the damage done by activities such as bottom trawling and aggregate dredging.

Read the full article in the Leicester Mercury.

Despite detailed and extensive debate during April and May of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill in the House of Lords, both during its Committee and Report Stage, the Government has resisted all arguments and attempts to have highly protected marine reserves (HPMRs) incorporated into the text of the legislation.
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