Speeches by Hardy.

“Overseas territories that we are responsible for—Jenny?”

“If I may come back, we should be incredibly proud as a country that we are highly regarded when it comes to work that we do on oceans, and we have a genuinely huge global influence right across that. I give a bit of a shout-out to the DEFRA team and what it does when it goes abroad, because it does these negotiations a…”

“Oceana is a fantastic organisation and one of the many ENGOs that I meet and talk to. There are lots of hugely committed ENGOs in this area. This goes back to the point I made before that we need to think about marine spatial prioritisation. We need to think about marine planning. Lots of things have not been updated f…”

“I hate to repeat myself as well. However, if it is related to energy policy, it would not be appropriate for me to speak about somebody else’s brief.”

“Overseas territories that we are responsible for—Jenny?”

“If I may come back, we should be incredibly proud as a country that we are highly regarded when it comes to work that we do on oceans, and we have a genuinely huge global influence right across that. I give a bit of a shout-out to the DEFRA team and what it does when it goes abroad, because it does these negotiations a…”

“Oceana is a fantastic organisation and one of the many ENGOs that I meet and talk to. There are lots of hugely committed ENGOs in this area. This goes back to the point I made before that we need to think about marine spatial prioritisation. We need to think about marine planning. Lots of things have not been updated f…”

“Part of the statement refers to energy policy, so I am conscious as the DEFRA Minister that I am not speaking about DESNZ policy because that would be inappropriate. I hope I have explained what we are trying to do as a new Government, which is looking at prioritisation and making sure we have things in the right place…”

“I hate to repeat myself as well. However, if it is related to energy policy, it would not be appropriate for me to speak about somebody else’s brief.”

“We have some brilliant people working on science and innovation, and looking at our marine environment. In fact, lots of that evidence is partly what will guide the work we do on marine spatial prioritisation. They have also been looking at our MPA review. We need that level of scientific evidence to make sure that we …”

“This is an important point because, where there is a lack of transparency, people may misinterpret how decisions are made. My general rule of thumb is that I will try to be as transparent as possible unless there is a particular reason I am not able to share the data. Quite obviously, we might not share data and inform…”

“The fact that it has come out in the Dan Corry review means that this is an area that needs improvement, so we need to have a look at it. It is highlighted as a potential problem, so we need to look at ways to address it and resolve that. We are working on that now.”

“On the changes that we are looking to prescribe, that goes back to the question on marine spatial prioritisation. I am pleased you have mentioned that because it highlights even within the Committee the different tensions when it comes to managing the oceans. In the marine spatial prioritisation, we have the fishing co…”

“At this moment, no, because we do not know where we will put MPAs in the future and where we have got to at this stage of marine spatial prioritisation. That would be impossible to quantify at this moment. However, even though I sit here as the marine conservationist, if you like, I still talk to—”

“Of course. I still talk to the fishing community as well. We still have those conversations to see how we can best manage it. There is a spatial squeeze. There is no getting around it. That is a challenge and that is why we need to think about it strategically. [Interruption.]”

“In terms of new proposals for HPMAs? So that I have understood, is that about designating new HPMAs?”

“Designating new ones, okay. Under the MPA review, we are looking at all of them and HPMAs are included in that, but at the moment, in that review, we are not considering designating new HPMAs. It is looking at whether the things we have are in the right place. Also, importantly, some of the HPMAs have not had all of th…”

“To be clear, going back to spatial squeeze and all the concerns around that, the fishing community is fully represented in all of those conversations around spatial squeeze by the Minister for fisheries, Minister Zeichner, but part of the—”

“He is a wonderful Minister. We also talk directly to the fishing community as well. Part of the difficulty at the moment is that because we are doing the marine spatial prioritisation, of course we do not know at the moment where the offshore wind will be because that is part of having the strategic plan. However, to o…”

“To mention one success story with the marine spatial prioritisation —because who does not like to share success—in the past I was informed that there was regular conflict with the fishing community about the telecommunications cables that go along the bottom of the ground and the types of fishing and how that disrupted…”