Marine Environment

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the UK’s role in the degradation of the marine environment.

It is a pleasure to be given the opportunity to lead a debate on this issue. I do not think that I have secured a Westminster Hall debate for two or three months. It is a great pleasure to secure one on this particular subject. I do not know whether anyone in Westminster Hall today thinks I am a latecomer to the subject, but when I was a very young lecturer at Swansea University I had the privilege of listening to a distinguished professor, Ernst Schumacher, just after he published a book called “Small is Beautiful”, and being introduced—as a traditionally trained LSE economist—to the notion of sustainable development and sustainable economies rooted in small, local communities. That started me on a lifetime of social enterprise and a lot of enterprises that were about the environment and sustainability.

Therefore, I am not a latecomer. I have not just read The Times 2 section, which, rather serendipitously, today is all about the plastic found in our marine environment, or just been influenced by that wonderful—what do we call him?—“saint of the environment”, David Attenborough; I saw “Blue Planet II” last night. He has become very much associated not only with such wonderful research but with wise advice, based on the research and good evidence about the dangers to the planet in general and to the marine environment in particular.

So I am not a Johnny-come-lately. Indeed, I was a founding member of Friends of the Earth in the United Kingdom. Many years ago, I started a group called the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, or SERA, a left-wing environmental organisation. On environmental urban mines, we believed that, instead of digging holes in the Earth’s crust and taking out virgin material, we should recycle and reuse material, including the waste that flows from towns and cities. I say that just to prove that I have some interest in and a record over the years of involvement in these subjects, and the desire, as a social entrepreneur, to do something about those issues in communities, both national and local.

The fact is that our marine environment is at risk, in a way that we have not previously thought it was at risk. I woke up to the issue a couple of years ago. I suppose I always knew how bad the marine environment was becoming. We had all heard of these vast islands of floating, semi-submerged plastic, which nobody knew how to deal with or tackle and which were getting bigger. The Environmental Audit Committee has done excellent work recently on microbeads. So I was conscious of the impact of that. I was also interested in recycling, what we did with waste and where waste ended up, as well as sustainability. All that came together, I suppose, when I reread an old favourite of mine by the man who created the term “the dismal science” for economics. Thomas Malthus predicted that, eventually, the population would outgrow the food supply and that we would all perish, unless two wonderful things happened—war or pestilence. That was Malthus’s way of suggesting that there would be a natural ability of the economy and society to renew themselves as we ran out of food.

The old counter-argument to Malthus was that human beings were clever, innovative and creative. They would discover new forms of science, applied science and engineering. Agriculture would become highly sophisticated in how it treated the land and grew crops, and we would become so much more productive.

The critics of Malthus were absolutely right, but the fact is that, although humans are creative, clever and innovative, they are also greedy, careless and exploitative. That is the truth. I said to one of my staff yesterday, “It’s not the sort of thing you run round your constituency saying to your constituents”. I do not pick on the British people particularly, but humans are clever, careless and exploitative, and they are in danger—one species—of destroying this planet through climate change and global warming and what we are doing to the oceans of the world, let alone what we have done to the poor species that we have shot, eaten, killed and driven into extinction.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; I had asked him before the debate if he would take an intervention. Does he agree that it is not only essential that we preserve and protect our marine environment but that fishermen are not prevented from sustainable fishing in areas that they know? Does he agree that science has proven to be fully capable of handling sensible fishing, as was done through the common fisheries policy? Does he realise that there are many who can sustain a business and that fishing is one of them, and that the environment will not be harmed by it?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to bring up the issue of fishing. With your permission, Mr Owen, I will come back to fishing a little later, including that specific point. Of course there are better ways and worse ways of fishing. When we have Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions, if anyone mentions bottom-scraping, everyone giggles, but the fact is that there are ships that do scrape the bottom of the ocean, taking everything. That is a savage and unacceptable form of fishing.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I am really enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s brilliant speech so far. One of the problems is that it is very hard for consumers to know whether or not the fish they buy is sustainable or not. The one thing that we can rely on, or think we can rely on, is the label provided by the Marine Stewardship Council. However, new research by the On the Hook campaign shows that the MSC has been awarding certification to fleets that on one day use sustainable tackle but the next day use completely rapacious and unsustainable tackle; it is certifying some of the worst operators in the world. Given the MSC’s near-monopoly status in the world, in terms of providing that certification or assurance, does he agree that the Government should be encouraged to work closely with the MSC to ensure that it raises rather than continues to weaken the science, at the cost of our world’s oceans?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I agree with every word he says. I will also put that issue on the backburner for a moment, because I want to talk about how we move forward. Anyone who saw the last David Attenborough film knows that it offered one little chink of light. Viewers get to the stage where they are feeling quite suicidal about the future of the marine environment, and then suddenly David Attenborough mentions that, actually, there is some possibility of the oceans renewing themselves in some areas, although not as well as we might hope.

Let me talk about the purpose of this debate. There has been a slow awakening to the peril the marine environment is in, but now is the time that we must act. David Attenborough says that we have 50 years to save ourselves, but I think that he is being generous. I think that we have to act much more quickly and decisively, and have the right kind of organisations. I am afraid that the only political things that I will be saying today are about what I believe to be the real strengths of the European Union over a number of years in helping us to co-operate across nations to tackle some of the great problems of the environment.

I remember meeting Surfers Against Sewage in my early days in the House. Mr Owen, you will remember what the seas around Swansea were like a few years ago. They were full of sewage—dreadful conditions. So many of our coastal towns used to pump sewage, in a pipe, out into the sea and, of course, back it would come. There has been a remarkable change because of European regulation on discharge to the sea. We rapidly cleaned up our seas and beaches, and also those right across Europe, so that when holidaying there we would know how clean the environment was; there is a standard and a system of flags.

I also remember the tiny amount of recycling that was done in our country in my early days in the House. Local authorities were at 14% recycling. The rates across the country have since zoomed up. Why? Because we took on board European regulations that meant the payment of a levy on any waste that was put in a hole in the ground. What a society we used to be, not long ago, putting all our waste product in holes in the ground. It is still there—a great treachery, a misspent youth. For 150 years, going back to the Victorians, we threw everything we had finished with into holes in the ground. That was a disgrace, and it was only European regulation and landfill tax that turned it around. We now have a much better—but not perfect—situation. Funnily enough, only recently I asked how much each local authority in Britain pays in landfill tax. I have not yet had a reply; the Government are very reluctant to give me the information, saying, “It is so difficult to collect. Inland Revenue cannot provide it”. It is, however, a very good indicator of how effective the authorities are in their recycling.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is very gracious in giving way a second time. It is the new generation of young people who are very much into recycling; the older generation must learn to get into it. Does he agree that, when it comes to educating and thinking ahead, it needs to be at primary and secondary school levels, so that the next generation coming through can continue what has been and even do it better?

[Mr Sheerman]

I hope we are not going to agree on everything here, but again, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He will know that I was the Chairman of what is now the Education Committee for years and I am chairman of the John Clare Trust, which, in the name of our great English poet, who lived between 1793 and 1864—probably our greatest poet of the environment, in my opinion—has a centre where we specialise in getting young people to come to the countryside to learn about the rural environment, and so to love it. If young people in our towns and cities do not visit the countryside, we will not get them to love it at all.

We have expanded that work into my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) will know that we have a charity called Greenstreams, through which we try to clean up the rivers and streams in our part of Yorkshire. In the industrial revolution, the rivers were terribly polluted and the fish were killed; the colours of the dyestuffs would flow into the rivers and make them red, blue, whatever—very patriotic—killing everything. Now the water is clean again and we take children down there to show them that if they lift a stone they will see wiggly things that the trout eat, which are then eaten by the kingfishers—the cycle of life. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is very much on the ball. We must start in schools, and the earlier the better.

I want to cover four things: plastics, overfishing, oil and petrol, and then come back to the big picture of climate change. We are sometimes too polite, aren’t we? If we look back over 400 years, we in Britain, as the earliest industrialised nation, with the greatest sea power, have not been good at keeping the global environment clean. I think we chopped down most of our trees to build warships. The biggest problem today is that as China is the most polluted country, followed by India, and then the United States, if we do not work with those large countries, everything we do in the United Kingdom will be of much less value. We need international co-operation, but not in a colonial way, pitching up in any country—even in Russia, which is a great polluter—and saying, “You should do what we do”. They would point to us and say, “Well you don’t have a very good record. You’re a late convert”. We are late converts, but we know a great deal now about how to change the environment in which we live and make it more sustainable.

Let us quickly look at one of the inspirations of recent years: the United Nations sustainable development goals. Goal 14 is about conserving oceans and protecting them from the adverse impacts of climate change, overfishing, acidification, pollution and eutrophication. At United Nations level, it is very important that every country sign up to the goals and make them happen.

My other interest as a Back Bencher is transport safety. Many years ago I introduced seatbelt legislation and my first private Member’s Bill was on children in cars. I have just recently been elected chairman of the Global Network for Road Safety Legislators. That relates to a different United Nations sustainable development goal, but that package of measures, globally driven by the United Nations, is, at the end of the day, what we must look to—international co-operation.

I was on a ship recently, and its environmental officer explained to me just how tight the fleet’s regulations were, and how stringent its rules were, on recycling, including dropping off metal at one port and plastic at another. Her fiancé, however, worked for a commercial firm in Alaska, where they basically threw everything overboard—no rules, no regulation and, it seems, no conscience.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He talks about the need for international co-operation. Does he agree that, if recent reports are to be believed and we unfortunately have up to 8 million tonnes of plastic pollutants in our seas and oceans across the globe, there needs to be an awful lot more international co-operation if we are to minimise that?

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for—

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman goes on, I want to say that he is making detailed opening remarks and taking a number of interventions but we are taking the Front-Bench spokespersons from 15.30. So that everyone can get in, I ask Members to make short interventions. I also ask the sponsor of the debate to be a little quicker.

[Mr Sheerman]

I was coming to the conclusion of my remarks, but I want briefly to skate through some points. There is a danger that we get obsessed only with the plastics. The broader pollution is much greater. We know, as does anyone who has been following the science, that it is the acidification of the marine environment and the warming of the temperature of the seas and oceans that is taking its toll. That is what we must tackle, and on a global level. It is all right blaming the Chinese, the Russians or the Indians, but we must start at home, spreading good practice and sharing innovation and good science, in the most co-operative spirit possible.

Members probably know—they certainly will if they follow me on Twitter—that I am a passionate anti-Brexiteer. I know that might upset one or two people in the Chamber, but I very much value the way in which we have done some amazing things across Europe in improving the environment. However, we must go much further. According to Sky Ocean Rescue, a rubbish truck’s worth of plastic is dumped in the ocean every minute. Some 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced in the past 60 years, and 91% of all plastic made since the 1950s has not been recycled, according to Greenpeace. That is the truth of the matter.

In a study last August by Plymouth University, plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish. Cod, haddock and mackerel were all affected. Only one third of plastic packaging used in consumer products is recycled each year. Two thirds is sent to landfill or incinerated. In terms of tap water—the water we drink in this place and in our constituencies—72% of water samples were contaminated with microplastics. Sixteen million plastic bottles are thrown away every day in the UK. Yes, that means we need regulation and international co-operation, but we also need individuals to change how they live their lives.

I have no commercial interest in Unilever, but anyone who has seen Paul Polman talk about the company’s vision to reduce its environmental impact and improve sustainability must have woken up to the fact that all companies need to look at their own products and supply chains and insist that everything going through their system of commerce should be of the highest standard. If everyone is at that standard, we will get there.

Before I finish, I want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax, who is leading a very successful campaign, the “Final Straw for Waste Plastic”, which aims to end the daft use of plastic straws in every café and pub. That is a sign we are moving in the right direction. We also have a campaign for a deposit return scheme for bottles and the microbead ban could go further, but they are not enough.

I want to give some balance, because marine conservation is not all about plastic. It is also about fishing; the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned that. More fish are caught than can be replaced through natural reproduction. Some 90% of the world’s fish stocks are fully or over-exploited by fishing. Several important commercial fish populations, such as the Atlantic bluefin tuna, have declined to the point where the survival of the species is threatened. That is the truth. Recommendations are coming through. We need marine conservation zones. We need an environmental audit body to create more need to stop trawling. That method scoops up all the fish and simply returns the ones not wanted to the sea, dead. The European Parliament has been working positively in this area. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) said, the Marine Stewardship Council is not perfect, but it is moving in the right direction.

I will end my remarks by saying this. I have been involved in this area of activity all my adult life, from that early inspiration, “Small is Beautiful”, right through to the present day, when some lone voices can say, clearly and distinctly, with all the research at their fingertips, that if we do not act now as individuals, communities and countries working together, we will not survive on this planet.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will now call Steve Double, followed by Kerry McCarthy. If Members can stick to five minutes, we should get all the speakers in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

This has been a cross-party debate; it has not been too political. It has certainly been stimulating. I just want to remind colleagues that this is about what we do as Members of Parliament. We often think about the next election, whether we are going to hold our seats, whether we are going to form a Government and all that. We are discussing in the main Chamber today the future of our country in Europe and the Brexit question. Even in this debate, we have to think about that sacred trust we have for our constituents—the sacred trust to keep this planet in a decent condition for the sake of our constituents and the ensuing generations.

This debate is not just about the Minister, who made a good speech. It is also about this House and Members of Parliament taking their responsibilities seriously. I would like to see a cross-party commission on the future of the marine environment in the House so that we can take evidence and do some work cross-party on this issue.

I am very worried about the fact that, at this very moment, many nations are looking inward, being nationalistic and do not want to collaborate with other countries. That is very damaging, given the environmental challenges and the issues relating to the maritime environment.

I believe that we must take this message to our constituents—the citizens of this country. They are consumers. They have children and they want to preserve this planet for future generations. We must energise those people. It is our sacred duty as Members of Parliament to do that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the UK’s role in the degradation of the marine environment.