Oral evidence: Marine Protected Areas, HC 914Wednesday 5 February 2014

Oral evidence, 5 February 2014.

Witnesses

Dr Russell Wynn, Head, Marine Geoscience, National Oceanography Centre, Dr Matt Frost, Deputy Director, Marine Biological Association, and Dr Steve Widdicombe, Head of Science, Marine Life Support System, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, gave evidence.

Chair

I would like to offer each of you a warm welcome this afternoon. We have just commenced our inquiry, and I think it might be helpful for you to know that we have just had a previous panel of witnesses. In welcoming each of you from the National Oceanography Centre, the Marine Biological Association and Plymouth Marine Laboratory, I think it might be helpful for you to know as well that the expertise of the universities, particularly of Plymouth, was flagged up heavily in our previous evidence session. On that note, given that we have quite a lot to get through and we are expecting a vote at 4 pm and we probably will need to tie up this session at about 3.55pm, I am going to turn directly to Caroline Spelman.

Mrs Spelman

First of all, welcome. What is your view of the quality of the scientific evidence that was used for designating the first tranche of MCZs? Do you think that we need that level of scientific evidence to support every future MCZ, or should we go on what is available now?

Chair

Your starter for five? Dr Frost.

Dr Frost

My view on the evidence that was used was that it was the best we could do with the process we were given. As you know, there was an issue that it was a stakeholder-led process, which never meant we were a science-led process like SACs. If it was a purely science-led process, we could have maybe had clearer evidence, high levels of evidence around the sites, but we were working with stakeholders to say, “What is the best evidence we have for a site?” even though another site might have been slightly better but we were working with what we had. In terms of moving forward, I do feel that we are creating quite an unwieldy process in going down this features-based way of doing things. What we are doing at the moment is having these sites where we have objectives for all the different features. We are requiring information on individual habitats and species. It is a very unwieldy process with quite a high bar in terms of the evidence requirements. I always feel it is a shame that, as Professor Dan Laffoley said in 2000, we probably have the best known marine environment in the world in terms of the data we have gathered, yet we seem to be always focusing on gaps. Just to finish off, I would say that we will never get to the stage where we will tick a box and say, “There you go. We have the evidence now. Let’s move forward”. It is not a linear process. We have to work with the evidence we have and, once we implement MCZs, that then becomes part of the evidence gathering as well, which I can elaborate on but I will hand over to my colleagues.

Dr Widdicombe

My involvement in a lot of the process has been primarily revolving around the SACs rather than the MCZs, and I have to say that the experience I have had in looking at the ecological and environmental evidence associated with the SACs has been very positive. The evidence for those is very strong and very robust. As you may be aware, I was involved in a review of the whole process that went on with regards to Natural England, or English Nature as it was when the process first started. Although the report was fairly critical about the process it went through because of issues associated with the longevity of the process, the actual scientific evidence associated with nominating the SACs was very strong.

Dr Offord

I asked DEFRA what plans they had to address gaps in scientific knowledge in the designation of Marine Conservation Zones. They said that they commissioned additional research and evidence-gathering to address these gaps, and they continued to work with the partners. They claimed to have spent £8 million over three years and another £2 million in the next year. That does not seem to reconcile with what you are saying.

Dr Frost

No. They are collecting more evidence. They are seeking to fill the gaps, and the rest of my colleagues might have something to say on this in a moment. The point I am making is that we do have enough evidence to be working with at the moment. If you look at the evidence they are collecting—what I am trying to say is that there is this feeling that we will get to a certain level of evidence, and we will then tick the box and say, “There you go. We have all the evidence now. We can now implement MCZs”. The point is that we will never get to that point. We will have enough evidence to implement MCZs, but things will always change. We will need to keep going back. One of the important things is implementing MCZs itself. As scientists, for us that is a major part of learning and gathering evidence. For instance, what is the impact of management measures? How do habitats recover if you remove certain pressures? Reference areas are very important in this. If you have a reference area, it enables us to then understand how certain species and habitats respond to having all the pressures removed. I just want to move us away from this idea that somehow there is a certain level of evidence, we will all reach that level, tick the box and move forward. I think we will always be collecting more evidence, so that was really the point.

Mrs Spelman

In a resource-constrained environment, what do you think should be the priorities for improving the evidence base?

Dr Frost

I will answer quickly and then I will pass it over to Russell. I would draw an analogy with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. We have gone down a risk-based approach, so the priorities for us need to be looking at what habitats and species are most vulnerable, where there are clear threats, where we know there are pressures that are an issue. That is the way we have gone down in terms of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, because you literally cannot collect evidence on everything. I will hand over to Russell.

Dr Wynn

There are a number of very positive things that have happened in the last three years in response to this challenge that you have mentioned. One of them is the UK’s Marine Environmental Mapping Programme, MAREMAP, which is an organisation that involves several public sector departments and agencies working together to meet the challenges of collecting good data, now and in the future, to meet some of these needs. It involves people like us at the National Oceanography Centre, British Geological Survey, partners such as CEFAS as part of DEFRA as well. To give an example of how that is working and supporting this process, several MAREMAP partners have been contributing to the MCZ reports for tranches 2 and 3 and providing our scientific input, both in terms of having workshops to share best practice, how to make sure that we are getting the best quality scientific techniques across all of the partners, but also making sure that we share data and we share resources for data collection going forward. That is very strongly supported at a high level both within DEFRA and the NERC. There are some positive things that are happening going forward now with that partnership working.

Mrs Spelman

One more question for Dr Wynn. Given that NERC are currently looking to establish their research entities independently, maybe even have them run privately, is that going to hold up this process in any way?

Dr Wynn

There is an ongoing consultation on ownership and governance. That is being led by NERC Corporate at Swindon, and the chief executive took questions on this in front of a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on 21 January. That consultation is ongoing. I am not directly involved as a scientist, so I cannot speculate on what the outcomes might be. What I can say is that there is a Whitehall reference panel that involves partners such as DEFRA, who can input in that forum to make sure that the evidence that we are providing in NERC—there are some safeguards about making sure we continue that role in the future. I think the chief executive has made clear that in any future arrangement, whatever it may be, NERC’s role in providing independent scientific advice to Government, business and the wider public sector will continue.

Dr Widdicombe

I wanted to make a comment on the subject of data gathering, and the fact that just seeing data as a mechanism of assessing monitoring or compliance with certain legislation is missing a trick, because the data that we gather for these things can be enormously valuable for the scientific community and also for industry. The more we can encourage initiatives that bring data together from multiple sources, encourage data sharing, data archiving, even things like data archaeology where we go back and obtain data that has been collected in the past and has been brought into more accessible forms, should be highly encouraged. In a resource-limited world, making the most of the data we already have should be our first priority.

Chair

Is the inference that it is not made best use of?

Dr Widdicombe

At the moment, I believe we can do much better with the data that we have.

Chair

Why do you think we do not?

Dr Widdicombe

There are certain difficulties in encouraging organisations to share data, be that through commercial in confidence, be that a perception—because data are valuable. They cost a lot of money to generate. Therefore, it is difficult sometimes to encourage efforts to bring those data together. Also, there might be separate policies in different organisations on how data are archived or treated, so some kind of harmonisation of these protocols would be a good way to move forward.

Peter Aldous

Were you happy with the stakeholder consultation process for the first tranche of MCZs? Was it effective?

Dr Widdicombe

From the personal opinion of someone who was not involved in that process, it appeared to me to be very stakeholder-heavy compared with the evidence support that has come through from science.

Peter Aldous

When you say “stakeholder-heavy”, just elaborate on that a little bit.

Dr Widdicombe

Stakeholders. I mean more to do with people who are using the environment as a resource of—

Chair

Did you mean business interests?

Dr Widdicombe

Primarily business interests, I think.

Dr Frost

We had a number of members of the Association and a number of our staff who sat on the regional committees, so I am just reporting back what we were told. The feeling was that they were very strongly dominated by industry and the commercial sector. For instance, if you take Finding Sanctuary, which is the south-west regional group, and look at who sat on that, there were very few independent scientists. What I mean are scientists who were not working with NGOs; it was mainly fishing and other commercial interests. The feeling was not just about numbers. It was about equivalency in terms of how the evidence was judged, and I think there was a feeling that, for the scientists, it has been very difficult. They have had a quite high bar set, and the scrutiny the science was put to was quite harsh and quite strict, whereas it was felt that the commercial sector merely had to point out a figure or some issue around some activity and that was taken as enough to say, “Put that particular MCZ to the side”.

Peter Aldous

I will declare a constituency interest in that CEFAS are based in my constituency. What role did they have in the process?

Dr Frost

CEFAS? I do not know because they were not involved in Finding Sanctuary, which is the south-west regional one. I imagine they would have had some input into one of the other regional groupings.

Peter Aldous

If CEFAS were not having groupings in those, wouldn’t you have expected someone the equivalent of CEFAS to have played a role?

Dr Frost

As I said, I do not know which ones they sat on and how they were involved, but CEFAS would be an example of the type of organisations. It is essentially having people there that did not have an agenda, that were purely there with science expertise to say, “If you choose this site, we know something about the science there and how that can affect the ecosystem health”. It was a feeling that that sort of view was quite minority and a lot of it just bore down to industry people and maybe NGOs and others just discussing generally.

Chair

Can I just come in on that point? Mr Aldous rightly makes a point about CEFAS and the role that you would have expected them to have in this. How much does the approach that was taken by this process going forward compare with the process, for example, in Ireland?

Dr Frost

I cannot comment on the process in Ireland, but I think we have to be careful, because the idea of the stakeholder groups was to open them up as wide as possible to lots of interest and it was useful to have the scientists in there, but there were other processes. CEFAS, JNCC and these sorts of groups would be involved in other processes in terms of analysing evidence, for instance where there were evidence gaps, putting maps together. I think CEFAS would have been more involved—

Peter Aldous

They would have had a more overseeing role?

Dr Frost

I think so, but I am not saying that is definitely the case because, as I said, I did not take a big view on how CEFAS were engaged.

Peter Aldous

Would it be fair to say that the fact that a relatively small number, 27, of MCZs were designated was down to the limited scientific input? Can you make a direct correlation on that?

Dr Frost

I could not say definitely that was why. Once again, the feeling from the people involved and members of our staff on that was that it was down to not the lack of scientific input but maybe the unequal weight given to scientific and economic criteria. For instance, I have previously given evidence where I pointed out the south of Falmouth site that was not put forward. That was based on an annual cost of £1,000 as the economic impact of siting an MCZ there. That seems crazy when you have scientists saying that 25 kilometres squared of seabed being protected could give you a lot more value in terms of ecosystem valuation, but there was no way of making that sort of comparison equal. I think it was not that the scientists were not saying anything or it was not the fact of just getting more science in there, it was that when you compare the scientific evidence and the points being made and then the economics, there was no way of balancing those two.

Dr Wynn

I can provide a comment that might help that as well. In some of the tranche 2 sites, CEFAS are leading and gathering additional evidence for those sites and we have been working with CEFAS. We have done some of the reports for sites of southern England and what we have found is that when we went back and looked at the interpretation of the data that had been collected as part of this money that you mentioned earlier to firm up the evidence base, some of the areas, the amount that was produced for a habitat map was significantly improved after that data collection exercise. It does not just help us firm up the evidence for whether or not these sites should be designated and the shape and so on but, in terms of how you manage those sites and the science behind going into how you manage those sites in the future, the better quality data that you have, the more confidence you can have that the management measures themselves are going to be appropriate for the sites. That is an important role that CEFAS have been playing currently.

Peter Aldous

Do you think the system has been improved in the second tranche with more emphasis on data collection and a greater weighting on the scientific input?

Dr Wynn

Again, as Matt says, best available evidence is almost an unobtainable thing in the marine environment, but I would say, based on personal experience, that on some of the sites we have worked on the evidence base has been significantly strengthened by the extra investment in data collection that has been co-ordinated by CEFAS.

Chair

Did you wish to add to that, Dr Widdicombe?

Dr Widdicombe

Only from what I have seen with the SAC designations and nominations, which was primarily a scientific-led activity. There was a drastic improvement in the data required to map features and designate areas where specific habitats were over the years as that process went along, and in fact now it seems to be very robust and quite a reliable process.

Dr Offord

By their very designation, Marine Conservation Zones have been ascribed a value that other parts of the sea do not have and, as such, they are likely to become contested areas through scientific, recreational and commercial interests. How would you see those interests being balanced in future tranches of the conservation zone designation?

Dr Widdicombe

In multiple-use areas?

Dr Offord

Yes.

Dr Widdicombe

The key is going to be monitoring activity use and also in assessing impact, understanding impact as well. At the moment there is still a lot of work to be done to understand specific effects of particular activities in the marine environment, associated to something we touched on previously about the impact that those activities will have on the value of the marine environment. I think the socio-economics of sustainable use in the marine environment is still a growing area of research that needs to be encouraged but is starting to show very useful and interesting techniques in understanding how things like non-use values can be affected by different activities. I think by bringing forward this kind of understanding in a multiple-use, multiple-stress environment will give us more of an insight into how these multiple-use areas might be affected.

Dr Frost

Just to reiterate what I said before, the issue of how we use socio-economic and ecosystem health evidence is really important. For instance, there was a report recently that said if all 27 MCZs were designated, the value just to recreational diving and angling was between £730 million to £1,310 million. That is their value estimated in that report.

Chair

What was that?

Dr Frost

It is a United Nations environment programme report. I can send in the full reference. That is just one example of one activity that benefits from MCZs. The way I see it as a scientist, as I said, is those sorts of figures need to be put in there and at the moment they are not being captured well enough. It is too easy just to say the cost to a fisherman or the cost of laying a pipeline or whatever is X. We do not have an answer for that on the scientific side, so I think developing this sort of area is very important. Also the issue of scale needs to be taken into account, because often ecosystem services and goods are valued over very long time scales.

Dr Widdicombe

Those particular numbers that Matt referred to are very much towards the easier ends of valuations to come by. If we start to talk about other services such as the cleaning of water, the carbon sequestration, air and sea gas fluxes and exchanges, these kind of things are much more difficult to get a handle on when it comes to associating value to them. There is a spectrum of things that become slightly more easy to value and those where we are still struggling to find appropriate metrics in order to attach a value.

Chair

Why is carbon sequestration more difficult to include in this?

Dr Widdicombe

It is understanding the process of how much carbon is captured by marine processes and marine organisms. In essence, sequestration is about the capture of carbon by biological organisms and the burial within the seabed. There is a large programme starting this year that will be looking at the coastal shelf seas around the UK and how they are contributing to the quantity of carbon that is going in. The link from grams of carbon to a value is now another area of work that needs to be put forward.

Dr Offord

At the weekend, I attended the International Shipwreck Conference at Plymouth and what came out very strongly from people there was that economic issues will always take precedence in MCZs. How would you like to see the Government get across the social and economic benefits of the Marine Conservation Zones, particularly to those people who are engaged in activities, be it archaeology or scuba diving?

Dr Widdicombe

Carrying on from my last point, I think again it is about firming up the kind of techniques and processes by which we can determine value, and value might not necessarily be pounds. You need to work out what are non-use or perception values or bequest values, so how people think about, “What value is it to me to be aware that the marine environment will be safe and will be in good hands for my children and my grandchildren?” People never use polar bears, but there is a certain value associated to them because people value the fact that they are still there. These kind of non-monetary values I think need to be far better explained, far better explored and embedded far more in public conscience so that when we talk about value of systems, it is not just how many pounds we can get out but what they are providing to us.

Dr Offord

Are your individual organisations trying to define those values through the work that you do?

Dr Widdicombe

A number of institutes around the UK are looking to explore those. It has been a fairly difficult process to start with, because that kind of science sits between traditional disciplines. It is a bridge between natural science and ecological science and economics. Sometimes the ecology is seen to be somewhat simple and the economics are seen to be simple but the value is combining them, and getting funding or getting interest to do that has been a slowly growing process.

Dr Wynn

I would add, just broadly, that the more opportunities there are for partnership working between the relevant Government agencies and the scientific community in the future, that is going to help the process, jointly-funded programmes, for example, both in terms of collecting some of the scientific evidence but also, as we have mentioned, looking at some of the socio-economic aspects that can be provided by the research sector. I think opportunities to facilitate that would be helpful going forwards.

Chair

Given that applications for funding from different organisations are very much done on a kind of silo basis, and given the need that you have described to have some kind of overall framework in which you could get this assessment, who should be making sure and overseeing that that should happen? There is no equivalence of a matron to oversee all of this, is there? Who should be doing that and where should it be done?

Dr Wynn

The Marine Science Co-ordination Committee obviously has an overseeing role in the process, but I think it is fair to say that if you spoke to the NERC chief executive, Duncan Wingham, or the chief scientific adviser at Defra, Ian Boyd, they are very much saying the same thing about the benefits of partnership working going forward. There are good examples of that: NERC and Defra are co-funding a shelf sea biochemistry programme, for instance, to try to get a better scientific understanding of some of the processes that Steve mentioned and trying to bring the scientific and the Defra community together to firm up that evidence and look at the processes. There are already initiatives where there are joint-funded programmes, but certainly more opportunities to do that would be good in the future.

Dr Frost

Could I add that I think there is also something that is often missed here, which is the value of communication. If you talk to scientists and those involved in the process, we all know that there is value to the ecosystem. Your question is interesting; usually it is phrased as socio-economics or conservation or, “Do we have MCZs or do we have industry?” Most of us in the process know that a healthy ecosystem will produce the goods in the long run. It is good for industry, it is good for the fishing community, it is good for everybody to have a healthy ecosystem, but I do not think we are all very good at selling that message. I agree totally that we need more research in this area, but I also think there needs to be a lot better communication on the research that has been done because, along with the National Ecosystem Assessment, phase 1 and phase 2, and along with some other major global assessments, going back to the Costanza paper in 1997, people have been giving this message that a healthy ecosystem benefits the economy. I think it is important to communicate what we already know. That is an issue as well.

Dr Whitehead

In terms of management measures planned or put in place for the MCZs we have designated, how effective and proportionate do you think they are going to be?

Dr Frost

I cannot answer that because I am not sure what the management measures are that are being proposed. This seems to be a fundamental problem. We all know that there are a range of management measures that are put forward as options, but to say how effective they are is impossible because we have not been given—unless I have missed something—a breakdown of what management measures will be applied against what features, what MCZs. It is absolutely a crucial question because, of course, we are all talking about MCZs, but without any information on the management measures we do not know what that means. Is an MCZ, as some of the NGOs perhaps would claim, a paper park—it does not mean anything, we are not managing anything—or is the industry are able to say, “It is going to be over-managed and we are not going to be able to do anything”? We do not know because we do not have the full information yet, so I am not sure I can answer your question. I do not know if the other two have any more information that I do not have.

Dr Wynn

It is certainly true that in our resource-limited environment, it is going to be a very big change. One of the things that we are doing within the National Oceanography Centre, and broadly within NERC, is working again with Defra to look at how we can use new technology for future management of monitoring of sites, looking at marine autonomous systems to try to do the work effectively but at reduced cost. For some of the offshore sites, which tend to be where there is the greatest expense because you need big infrastructure to go out and look at the quality of those sites over future periods, we should look at how we can work together between the science sector, where we have mutual scientific interests, with maybe some of the long-term observational needs that a body like Defra and its agencies would have around specific offshore Marine Conservation Zones. I think there is a big challenge there, but by working in partnership there are opportunities to do the work at reduced cost by sharing resources and expertise and bringing in new technology.

Dr Whitehead

Putting those two points together, we do not know what sort of management is going to be applied and to what extent. We have a number of options. Some may be those new technologies, you might say putting forward sort of virtual management, oversight management and so on at perhaps lower cost than might otherwise be anticipated. How would you put those together in terms of what you might think would be a reasonable management arrangement, all those options considered?

Dr Wynn

I think as Matt has said, until we get the information about specific measures at specific sites, it is very hard either for the stakeholders or for us as scientists to forward look as to how we might contribute. I think everyone in the community, from whatever sector you are coming from, are waiting for that information to come forward. That is a very consistent message, so I think as soon as we get that—the industry stakeholders obviously have an interest in that, but also the science side might be able to benefit and contribute to that process—we can then start moving on a specific basis. At this point, it is very hard to comment further.

Dr Widdicombe

I would like to add that I think the very first step is to define what the purpose of the management is because the intention and the purpose will often define the way in which the management is rolled out. As long as we start with a clear vision of what the purpose of the management activities is, then it becomes more straightforward to define appropriate management strategies and monitoring programmes as well.

Dr Whitehead

In terms of defining what the purpose is, it may be a range of potential purposes from, “Here they are. Let’s try to keep them more or less as they are”—which presumably is a process of making sure that no one ploughs the bottom of the zone up or otherwise does not pollute or infract on the zone—to hopefully we might have a reasonably accurate picture to say exactly how degraded the zone is at the moment and therefore perhaps have target measures, management measures for improving that zone and that environment and developing it positively as a zone that will have active management applied to it. Where might you stand on that spectrum, do you think?

Dr Widdicombe

Again, I do not feel it is my place to define the purpose of what these various different zones are, because it might be that you end up with a range of different purposes for different specific areas that you want to conserve. As you say, in some you might want to be restoring biodiversity to a particular level or restoring habitat health and function. In others you might have an area where you are looking to maximise production or fisheries potential. That is a decision that has to be made over certain sea areas and what the purpose specifically is there. One thing I would like to make a point about on this concept of keeping things as they are is that I do not think it is going to be possible in the long term to keep things the same. What we know about the marine environment is that change is happening and change will continue to happen. The fact is that we are managing a moving baseline and it is about what we want our environment to look like rather than just trying to keep things still. It comes back to a point that Matt made earlier with regards to the use of reference sites as well, to give ourselves something to judge against, because there may be situations where you have an area where you are putting in effective management yet you are not achieving the management outcomes that you thought you were going to achieve. That might not be because your management has failed, but it might be because of processes that are over and above your control. If we have changing temperatures, changing seawater chemistry that can impact upon the effectiveness of your MPA or MCZ that you are not being able to account for, that could put a doubt in your mind that your management processes are effective.

Dr Whitehead

But is there a bottom line in all this? Dr Frost, you have mentioned in your written evidence about the difficulties of what you describe as gentlemen’s agreements, and presumably that then implies the extent to which you would need byelaws, statutory arrangements, constant information. Is that an overall bottom line or are there circumstances in which, because of the different arrangements and moving baseline, a variety of voluntary and professional statutory management arrangements might come into play?

Dr Frost

I think you are going to need some statutory legislation. I am speaking here slightly outside the realms of a scientist, because these are policy decisions but, yes, I think you are going to need some statutory regulation to control certain activities that we know will damage and compromise an MCZ or the species within them. I think what Steve is talking about in terms of these baselines is, as far as I understand, that it has always been accepted that if it is outside of your control, you cannot infract or prosecute somebody, but what it does mean of course is that we have to be very careful about managing things purely at the local level. I think that goes for our monitoring as well. There is no point in managing a small site and monitoring the site at a very local level if you are getting these large-scale changes just offshore that are going to then compromise that site. That is an important point to make. Within the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, for instance, the wording is that biodiversity is maintained according to prevailing environmental conditions. We are doing a lot of work to look at what those prevailing conditions are and how that might affect us reaching good environmental status. I think that is quite a nice analogy. Under the MSFD it also worth mentioning that in 2016 we are going to have to have a programme of measures; essentially how we manage the ocean holistically to meet good environmental status. Clearly that has to be thought of alongside local management measures for MCZs. It is going to be a big mistake if we have a very siloed mentality of, “We will manage and monitor this MCZ at this point”. There has to be a broader and more holistic approach, and I think that makes sense in terms of limited resources as well.

Dr Wynn

I think the other thing is that in terms of resources, unless there is significant long-term sustained funding to do the monitoring properly, the quality of the data that are produced may not be good enough to test the efficacy of any management measures for specific sites. The role of the IFCAs, the Marine Management Organisation, the statutory nature conservation bodies in this process is being defined at the moment, but without the long-term sustained funding to collect data to have the evidence base to test whether the management measures are effective and whether or not other types of changes to the marine environment are more or as important as those management measures, it is going to be very hard to disentangle that. I think there is a strong case to make sure that there is sustained funding to not just designate the sites, which we are doing at the moment, but to make sure that we collect data from them to prove whether or not the management measures are effective or not.

Dr Whitehead

In terms of what you know is around as resource and resource for the future, does that constitute anything like long-term sustained funding?

Dr Wynn

I think it is a significant risk, and at the moment within the public sector we are doing what we can with co-ordinated programmes like MAREMAP and the Integrated Marine Observing Network to bring our resources together to get best value of things like ships and autonomous technologies and suchlike. Nevertheless, the people that are going to be implementing the management measures, such as IFCA and MMO, are going to be the ones in the front line and unless they have sustained resource, it is going to be very difficult for them to do that job effectively.

Chair

On that note, I would like to thank each of you. You all three have a wealth of knowledge that you have been prepared to share with us this afternoon and I am sure that the evidence that you have given will shape our inquiry. Thank you very much indeed, particularly on a day of a Tube strike, for actually getting here. Oral evidence: Marine Protected Areas, HC 914 2