I am terribly sorry. South East Cornwall is written in my notes, so I do not know why I said North East Cornwall—territorial ambitions do not stop at the deep seas.
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The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) has said that the UK needs to amend the 1981 Act to impose stringent and clear environmental conditions, but the Bill will not actually strengthen, or indeed make
any changes to, the environmental provisions set out in section 5. That is the nub of our concern. In fact, section 5, which states that the Secretary of State
“shall have regard to the need to protect (so far as reasonably practicable) marine creatures… and other organisms and their habitat”,
is even weaker than the ISA’s current environmental thresholds, which set a threshold of “serious harm” to the marine environment to disapprove a licence.
Section 5 is very outdated, with its use of words such as “regard”, “reasonably practical” and “creatures”. It allows for subjective interpretation and is not specific enough. I am surprised that the Government have not sought to update it. To quote the Minister who spoke on Second Reading, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt),
“environmental protection is at the heart of the application that is made by the United Kingdom when sponsorship applications are made.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 633.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) put forward the need for the section to be improved. The right hon. Gentleman made a commitment that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would take a “hard look” at whether section 5 needed to be strengthened. The Minister did not elaborate further in Committee. I am not sure whether the Minister present today can respond to my amendment by giving further evidence of the findings of any investigation that the FCO carried out after Second Reading. I got the impression in that debate, as did others, that the Government might be open to improvements along those lines.