Lord Callanan (Con)

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, for leading this group, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for making me feel guilty for drinking from my plastic water bottle. I hope my cardboard cup is okay—but probably not, because it has plastic on its inside. I have a number of amendments in this group touching on the issues of marine biodiversity in the seas around the Chagos Archipelago, the impact of industrial fishing practices used by the Chinese fishing fleet and the sustainability of our own domestic fishing fleet. In the debates on the Chagos Bill, we debated at length the marine protected area that will, we hope, be established under the UK treaty with Mauritius. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lady Coffey for their support. That treaty will allow the UK to influence decisions about marine biodiversity beyond the extent of national jurisdiction, so can the Minister confirm whether the Government plan to propose an MPA for certain parts of the Indian Ocean? Have Ministers undertaken any assessment of the benefits that might be achieved for biodiversity around the Chagos Archipelago if an MPA were implemented on the deep ocean around the islands, to complement the existing one? This leads on well to the question of which areas are expected to be subject to an MPA first. Can the Minister confirm what conversations the Government have had with their counterparts representing other co-signatories to the treaty about establishing future MPAs? Where do we expect the first MPAs to be located?