Speeches by Hardy.

“It is devolved, so I was completely respectful of—”

“I am aware of how it went, but I want to say for the record that I respect that it is a devolved decision, and it is a devolved Government. Of course, you are looking at where you are putting things. From my understanding of that situation—and I respect you are closer to it than I am—one important thing is talking to t…”

“One hundred per cent.”

“Thank you.”

“On the back of that, to show our commitment to it even though it has not been ratified by Parliament yet, we know that DEFRA has already commissioned research to have a look at potential area-based management tools for the future, including marine protected areas. We are already looking at getting ahead so that, when i…”

“Yes. I should mention for the record that of course this is near my constituency as well, so there is also a constituency issue here. I have to say the MCA did a great job. It immediately began retrieval, which is happening at beaches, and encouraged the public not to go and retrieve some of it themselves because we ar…”

“I am happy to.”

“So that I have not conflated the two things, on BBNJ, of course, we have the research going, so—”

“You are doing me a linking—”

“I totally understand. To give the overarching response, I want to get this right. I want to make sure that we have this right. Stage 3 byelaws cover 43 MPAs. That is 13% of English waters—almost three times the size of the previous stage when we were looking at the byelaws. Almost half of the UK fishing fleet catches t…”

“Absolutely. As you know, clean energy power is a huge mission of the Government and an important priority. I have been talking to some of the offshore wind industry about what is holding up consent, what is holding up planning and why they have not been able to go on with projects as quickly as they could under the pre…”

“This is the marine spatial prioritisation. We meet The Crown Estate. The Crown Estate of course is responsible for leasing the seabed and determining what goes where. We are having those conversations with different Ministers from different Departments along with The Crown Estate to look at what we are putting where. W…”

“As I say, our priority is to go through, looking at MSP, marine spatial prioritisation, and then, as I announced in my written statement around the Marine Recovery Fund, we want to help unlock growth. It is a priority for the Government. It is one of the five priorities for the Government so, clearly, it is a priority …”

“They were right to make those criticisms in the past—absolutely. I hope they would say that they can see we are trying to take a different approach. It has been the case—and it has been the case for a long time—that there has not been a strategic plan. I hope they would recognise we have come in as a new Government and…”

“I love this—this is really exciting. We are as the UK part of the high ambition coalition. We were not internationally able to negotiate the final treaty, so negotiations will be happening again this year, but that was not for the lack of UK passion, involvement and commitment. The DEFRA team—to use a non-ministerial w…”

“I have to apologise if I am slightly mindful about how I talk about negotiations that are going on in the background, so apologies for that. Conversations are happening with other countries where we have allegiances and alliances, and those conversations are going on at the moment. I suppose, as you would ahead of any …”

“If I had not got rid of my Twitter account, I would have retweeted it myself, too. It goes back to the conversation we were having about when we can get the stage 3 byelaws passed. We are committed to not having bottom trawling in areas that damage the MPAs, especially when they are attached to features that we are try…”

“No. The policy has not changed. The delay is on making sure that I am making the right decision and that I have all the evidence required to make the best decision. I would rather spend a bit longer—a few more months—doing that than make a decision that I regret later on.”

“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…”