WEDNESDAY 4 JULY 2007

DR SHARON THOMPSON, DR MALCOLM VINCENT, PROFESSOR IAN BOYD AND DR TOM TEW

  Q400  Dr Turner: So, you would argue that we cannot wait.

  Dr Tew: Yes.

  Q401  Dr Turner: Finally for me, the Marine Management Organisation is going to have a multiplicity of rules. Do you see it as primarily a regulator or provider of science and data? How do you see it? Do you see it as a determinant of marine spatial planning and use?

  Dr Tew: The devil is going to be in the detail but, broadly speaking, we are happy that the MMO should deal with all of those functions. We in Natural England see there being a clear difference between what we do and what the MMO might do and we think that there is a need for an independent nature conservational adviser to sit outside the MMO and we think that we should be monitoring the protected areas. However, given that the key is for integration, I think that the MMO should have as many integrative powers as possible.

  Q402  Chairman: Is there general agreement with that?

  Dr Vincent: I think I would see the foremost value of the MMO being as a planning authority. I think everything falls out from that.

  Q403  Chairman: Dr Thompson, you gave an indication that you wanted to see Parliament set down the rules by which marine protection areas would be decided.

  Dr Thompson: The legal powers to create and manage marine protection areas, yes.

  Q404  Chairman: You expect Parliament to do that and to do that very clearly, and then the sciences applied to that framework in order to decide the actual areas themselves?

  Dr Thompson: Yes. There is probably a two-stage approach on the science. One is determining the criteria for the species and habitats and then picking the sites and then developing the management plans.

  Q405  Chairman: But you are clear that it should be on the basis of the science that the sites are applied and that Parliament should be the framework within which to work?

  Dr Thompson: Science as in the knowledge we have as the starting process, yes.

  Dr Tew: This should not be a political decision, this should be a decision based on science which is why we think that Natural England should be the confirming authority as well as the proposing authority.

  Chairman: There are no political decisions made in Parliament!

  Q406  Dr Iddon: I want to look at this question of coordination of policy and research which we have referred to throughout this discussion so far. I would like to ask all of you, are we clear about our national priorities in this area of marine policy and research and who establishes those national priorities?

  Dr Tew: I think that the answer is generally, "No, we are not clear" and a national marine policy statement should indeed set out those priorities for the nation.

  Q407  Dr Iddon: Who should make it?

  Dr Tew: The Government.

  Q408  Dr Iddon: Which part of the Government?

  Dr Tew: Defra.

  Professor Boyd: I think that there are differences between Scotland and England in this area and certainly, in my experience, I interact very differently as an advisor with the Scottish and English process and policy is being made differently in the two sectors.

  Dr Thompson: I think there are also objectives and priorities that we sign up to through Europe and other international conventions and it is making sure that we marry up our research to achieve those objectives at the end stage, but I think we are probably moving more towards that process than we have historically.

  Q409  Dr Iddon: We do share our seas of course with the continent and with Ireland and to a degree across the North Sea. Let us look at the European dimension and the European Marine Strategy Directive for example. How do current research programmes support emerging policy in that direction? Do you think we are having our fair share of input into that directive or not?

  Dr Thompson: I could not really answer from a research point of view. From the point of view of how we go about achieving those objectives in the end, hopefully if our aspirations for the Marine Bill are realised, the legislation that we are putting in place should deliver the Marine Strategy Directive's aspirations. As an NGO and having the luxury of this, we would like to see more cross-border working and delivery of marine strategies on what we call a biogeographical regional seas approach, so ignoring our political boundaries and working at the scale of, say, the Irish Sea or the North Sea which are coherent management units on an ecological scale. How far down that route we get in political terms we have yet to see.

  Q410  Dr Iddon: Does anybody have any comments on the EU directive?

  Dr Tew: No, I just note the report that came out of the Commission last week which was that 90 per cent of EU fish stocks are over fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield. CFP is not even delivering sustainable fishing, never mind sustainable use of the environment.

  Q411  Dr Iddon: Do any of you think that there is a need for the proposed European Marine Observation and Data Network, the other aspect of the European directive? It has not registered yet.

  Professor Boyd: I think that it depends what it looks like.

  Dr Thompson: I think it is, do you want to go down the route of everybody putting their data into one place and having to collect it in the one way versus sharing data and making sure that it is available to all users and I think that, as far as we are concerned, as an end user, as long as the data is collected, processed and made available so that we, as end users, can use it, that is probably the most valuable thing that we want from data.

  Q412  Dr Iddon: Wherever we have been, we have picked up criticism on the way that research grants are allocated in this area. For example, we launched this inquiry in Plymouth and the scientists who were present in that room at that time said that it was difficult to understand to which research council one should apply for a grant. How do you think we should organise research in this area? Do you think that it is organised well at the moment or do your scientists have trouble knowing to whom to go for the grants?

  Professor Boyd: Maybe I should respond to that question. There is confusion on occasions but I cannot offer a hard and fast solution to it. I think that whatever system you put in place, however we divide the cake, there are going to be things that fall between the cracks and there are a number of issues that do fall between the cracks but I think that is inevitable with what system you have in place.

  Dr Vincent: I would like to say a word on the knowledge transfer aspect which we touched on earlier, which is that we are finding this a major problem issue in that we believe that there is a great deal of data out there in academic institutions which we cannot use and the reason why we cannot use it is because it is not in the public domain and the reason why it is not in the public domain is because the scientists wish to retain possession of it in order to generate peer review papers from it. We have two major problems: one is that we cannot get hold of the data because they will not release it; the other is that, for many of us on the operation and policy formulation side, even peer reviewed papers are a difficult way of obtaining knowledge transfer in the sense that we do not have the time in order to do the literature searches and in order to get the answers which are already out there. So, there are two major problems. Approaches which make research undertaken with public funds conditional on the environmental data obtained using those funds to be put in the public domain within, say, two years at a completion of a project or something, some reasonable period, would be a huge benefit to us because on many occasions we have approached universities and academic institutions and have simply not been able to obtain the data which they have. In relation to the other aspect of knowledge transfer which is about what you do when you know that the information is out there in papers, I think that there needs to be some better infrastructure in order to be able to collate information, particularly on key policy issues, and make it more available to the wider user.

  Q413  Chairman: Who should do it?

  Dr Vincent: I think that probably it could well be within academia but I think that it would need to be publicly funded. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Some kind of centre for the provision of the collation of reviews on key policy questions could be funded by the Government. The Government could determine the key policy questions which they wanted addressed—these are in the short term; we are dealing with existing knowledge here—and then the centres for collating information could then undertake those reviews and place them in the public domain. I think that that kind of structure would be perfectly satisfactory.

  Dr Tew: We are end users rather than parts of the research community so, in terms of the grant processes, it is not appropriate for us to comment. We would like to see a thematic approach to how research is organised, so that there is actually some coordinated discipline in terms of the distribution of the resource or the value of the resource or the human impact. That is number one. Number two is, frankly, we would like to see more funding going into marine research. At the moment, I think there is a concern that the Blue Sky, deep ocean climate change acidification agenda which is very big and topical at the moment perhaps threatens the near shore applied research and that is what we are most concerned about. Both are extremely valuable; there should be more money going into both. Spending £40 million a year on marine monitoring compared to £500 million in the terrestrial environment is not appropriate.

  Professor Boyd: I would like to come back on data because I am a data supplier rather than a user. I think that there is a very fundamental problem here because it often is not just a matter of, say, putting data up on a website to allow people to come in, download it and use it. Data needs to be interpreted and, however that data is used, there will almost certainly be an interactive process between the producers and suppliers of the data and the users of the data and we need to find a mechanism that allows that to happen much more smoothly than it does at the moment. We have a mechanism in the marine mammal sector to allow that to happen in the UK which comes out of a rather quirky piece of legislation that came up in 1970, the Conservation of Seals Act, and I personally think that that is a model by which could work in the future in a much wider scale. Nevertheless, there is this fundamental problem that just making data available does not mean that it is useable.

  Q414  Dr Iddon: My final question is again concerning coordination. I think we are getting the feeling from our four witnesses this morning that coordination is not good in this area either in policy information or for the research that is necessary. If you had a clean sheet of paper, would you reorganise coordination of policy and research or would you make the existing mechanisms work? The Chairman has mentioned IACMST which is a fairly recent organisation. Can we make those organisations work or do we have it all wrong?

  Dr Vincent: It may well be that that committee needs a much greater policy steer or support from ministerial level.

  Q415  Dr Iddon: From Defra or NERC?

  Dr Vincent: As I said earlier, I think that the relevant marine science minister portfolio needs to be clearly established. I would be quite happy for it to be in Defra but that is not for me to say. That ministerial policy steer could then direct the committee, under its terms of reference, to carry out functions and charge it to do so. At the moment, the committee does a lot of useful work; it has an excellent chair and excellent secretariat, but it behaves a little like a committee.

  Q416  Chairman: Steady!

  Dr Vincent: What it needs to do is behave a little more like an implementing organisation that is going to carry out a particular remit.

  Q417  Dr Iddon: You are asking for clear lines of responsibility.

  Dr Vincent: Yes.

  Dr Thompson: I think the point to add is that policy often changes a lot faster than the period of time that grant research is given out for. So, there can sometimes be a mismatch of what the grant money is being given out for and what maybe a new policy might be. I think that a greater policy steer would be useful.

  Dr Tew: I think that that is exactly the question that Parliament should be debating as the Marine Bill goes through and I think the MMO, properly set up, is the place to do that, the integration and coordination.

  Q418  Chris Mole: We have touched across commercial exploitation in some of the questions already and Dr Tew, I think you said that you were looking for a win-win situation wherever possible. Is that a view that everyone shares? It is difficult not to, really!

  Dr Thompson: We all want as many win-wins as possible but, as we have also said, there is virtually no protection at all in the marine environment. So, to manage expectations, I think it is probably fair if I said as well that there, at least, have to be a few situations where somebody might have to be negatively impacted. It would be unfair of me to say: "Oh, it will all be fantastic and everybody will win-win"; it will not. However, I think there is also misapprehension that every marine protected area, particularly in the case of renewables, stops wind farms. That is not the case.

  Dr Vincent: Can I just add to that to say that what we badly need are really usable sustainable development tools which enable us to evaluate the economic side, the wellbeing side and the environmental side in order to make sensible decisions in relation to the environment. At the moment I do not believe we have those tools; we have a system whereby an initiative comes up, via the marketplace very often, and then it is assessed against an environmental appraisal of some kind. I would rather see the development of a series of tools which would actually foster initiatives which would support sustainable development—in other words, those things which deliver to the economy, deliver to the wellbeing and do not damage the environment. I do not think we have that yet.

  Q419  Chris Mole: You want to see these tools in the Marine Bill?

  Dr Vincent: No, I think cross-cutting science should help deliver those tools, because I think we are five years away from having them, and I think we are going to struggle until we do have them.