My point was not specifically about the Scottish amendment. I was just using that as one example to make my point. The discussions with Scotland took place, or were finalised, after the Bill had been introduced. My understanding was that the Government had conceded that, and, because the ISA regulations are being debated next year and because of other developments, the Bill might be slightly premature and a little bit rushed. It might have been given more consideration. We are where we are now, however, in terms of the parliamentary process. I hope the other place has the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill in detail and perhaps make further amendments that would improve it.
I want to make one further point, which arose from the Committee discussions. It remained unclear how the finances of this will work and whether the UK would in fact get a share of the profits. We have been told that this is very much about wanting the UK to benefit from being in the vanguard of the exploration. As has been mentioned, the Prime Minister has claimed that sea bed mining could be worth a staggering £40 billion to the UK economy over the next 30 years, although I have not seen any detailed analysis to support that estimate.
I appreciate that it is slightly jumping ahead of even where the ISA is currently at, because it has not drafted its regulations yet, but the issue of operator profits is critical to this debate. I understand that the UK would benefit from corporation tax from those UK companies
or foreign companies, such as Lockheed Martin, with UK subsidiaries which get sponsored by the UK, although once their profits have been understandably offset by their exploratory costs and the costs of environmental assessments, this amount could be quite limited. Certainly in the case of UK subsidiaries, profits may go to the parent company, but unlike the tax regime on North sea oil revenues, the British Exchequer will not be plugged into the profits, as the riches of the sea bed do not belong to the UK; they belong to what is described as the “common heritage of mankind” and those resources do not belong to any one state, and no one state would have the right to claim ownership.
Returning to my point about this Bill being slightly premature, I understand that there are discussions about a possible sovereign wealth fund, created from a fee that could be charged on output. That could be used for the benefit of developing countries, but again discussions on this are at an early stage and we do not yet know much about it. Again, I would have liked to have had more clarity on this. More than 30 years have passed since we last considered legislation on this topic with the 1981 Act. Given that it has taken us so long to get to the point where we are revisiting the matter, I would have liked to have had more clarity on that issue and on the environmental issues. We are where we are, however, and I hope when the Bill gets to the Lords there can be more clarity. We will support the Bill at this stage, however, because we think that if deep sea mining is to go ahead, there ought to be some sort of licensing system in place.
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