L

Lord Katz (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 19 June 2025

Debate

English Marine Protected Areas: Bottom Trawling and Dredging

Contribution

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness’s welcome of the announcement; it is an important step forward in a long-term plan properly to protect our marine ecosystems and environment while enabling fishing. We have had to very carefully considered the next steps to manage bottom trawling in MPAs, along with other fishing methods, in the context of our domestic and international nature conservation obligations. It is important that we get this right and the proposed by-laws are very substantial: they will close 13% of English waters to bottom trawling, which will be critical to protect our MPAs. We want to move at pace, but I will not set out a precise timeline because it is important that we see the consultation through first.

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