Speeches by Gardiner.

“What we have not signed up for is what protection means. We signed up to protecting 30%, but as we heard from the earlier panel, what that means in practice is not clear. It is not clear exactly what level of protection is being put in place. I want to talk to you about baselines. We have all heard the analogy about cl…”

“There is a lack of good quality data.”

“If we are thinking about our management of the seabed today, how likely is it, because of that lack of good quality data, that we could be facilitating damage to the ecosystem because we do not have the data to demonstrate it?”

“Why has the MMO not yet proceeded to stage 3 and 4?”

“If we turn to the Indian overseas territories and the Chagos biome—the marine biome—we know that there will be pressure on fisheries in that area, because the enforcement that we have already has shown that there is encroachment by fishing.”

“Let me ask this question to get us a bit more specific. It is my final question, I promise. With the Indian overseas territories marine biome, how confident or how concerned is the scientific community that the level of enforcement under Mauritian sovereignty will be able to combat the pressures of illegal fishing in t…”

“Absolutely right.”

“We are only talking about a maximum of 10% of the English waters, are we not? That is what the Benyon review recommended. If we are talking about establishing that, it leaves you 90% for our balanced approach, which I wholly support.”

“You are silver-tongued, you two. Just three weeks ago the Office for Environmental Protection announced that it was investigating DEFRA about its suspected failure to take the necessary measures to achieve or maintain good environmental status. That goes to the fact that of the 15 descriptors of good environmental stat…”

“That is very interesting. Is that something that you would like to see this Committee recommend—that when the JNCC gives advice, the Government, or the regulator in this case, should be obliged to respond to that advice and say how they have accounted for it and taken it on board? Would that be helpful?”

“Again, if this Committee were making comment in that area, we should emphasise that there must be net gain not only to offset the damage but to provide increased benefit and sustainability. Under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the habitats regulations there is the possibility for derogation on some of the m…”

“That is a really important point about cumulative impact. How would we take that on board in this Committee and make that a recommendation to Government?”

“That would be really helpful.”

“Thank you. That is really helpful. I do not want to pass over the equally important point that you made, where you talked about how at the moment we have designation of features, rather than adopting a whole site approach. It would be extremely helpful if you wanted to suggest to the Committee in writing afterwards rec…”

“The difficulty with that, though, Ms Godwin, is that in the meantime other potentially important sites for highly protected marine areas could be disintegrating while we wait and see how it is going with the highly protected ones. I would have thought the precautionary principle should cut in and we should say, “These …”

“We have heard that we have the best marine science in the world, so I am sure the evidence base is out there. Maybe we just need to gather it together a bit quicker. We have touched on regulation and enforcement, the implementation and the management regimes. I think you have said that currently they are perhaps less t…”

“One of my colleagues will be asking a question about that.”

“You are not talking about the dredging in the north-east that saw the die-off there—or that did not see the die-off there?”

“Thank you. I think the Dasgupta review sets out very clearly our dependence, and how we should be regarding natural capital as national infrastructure, in that sense. I want to press you on the fact that you seem to be saying that we have all the ingredients and we know what the recipe is, but somehow we are not gettin…”

“Who should be doing it, and what recommendation should this Committee make to Government?”