It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who, as usual, made many comments with which I should like to be associated. I join him in congratulating our hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on her Bill, which she presented with her customary charm. I think that that will stand her in good stead today, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, I hope that the Bill is passed without too much trouble.
Reading up on this subject has been a learning curve for me. I was not particularly well versed in it before, unlike the Minister, who, I know, is a long-standing expert in the field. My starting point was to establish what deep-sea mining actually was. I had not realised that it was such a controversial subject until, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, I read the report of the 1981 debate. Having assumed that the debate must have been fairly consensual and that the issue had not been particularly controversial, I was astounded to discover how heated the discussion had become on some occasions. If I detected accurately what was said earlier by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), the Labour party had changed its mind about the legislation, so I am delighted. However, I think that some of the reservations that have been expressed about this Bill are similar to those expressed
in 1981. It is strange that people who now say that they are in favour of the 1981 Act and who seem to be in favour of the Bill should express the same reservations that they expressed in 1981.
Deep-sea mining, I learn, is the process of retrieving minerals, raw materials and precious metal from the deep-sea bed. The United Kingdom has a great tradition of oceanography and similar activities. The modern age in that respect—certainly the modern age as far as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is concerned—began in 1872, when HMS Challenger set out on its four-year voyage to explore the oceans. The expedition was led by John Murray and Charles Thomson, who should be commended for the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North pointed out, much of our present exploration and exploitation activity is thanks to their discovery of what was out there. We should be incredibly grateful to them for that. Only yesterday, I believe, the Prime Minister said that pretty much everything that was worth inventing was invented by people in this country. Much of what was worth discovering was discovered by people in this country, too, and we should be immensely proud of that great tradition.
I had not previously been particularly well versed in polymetallic nodules and deep-sea hydrothermal vents—or, for that matter, manganese nodules—but they are actually more fascinating than people may think. They are very productive, and not only rich in minerals but home to unique organisms that have evolved to live in extreme conditions and are of interest to scientists for their genetic properties, which have many remedial, medical and other practical applications.
I may be doing him a disservice, but it is possible that the hon. Member for Brent North has read—as I have—the briefing on the Bill that was sent to us by Greenpeace, which I am sure was also read with great interest by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall. Greenpeace fears that if sea-bed mining is allowed to proceed in the absence of a comprehensive system of environmental protection, we may be destroying species for ever before we have fully explored what they are. That returns us to the precautionary principle mentioned by the hon. Member for Brent North.