Member

The point that has been made about bottom-trawling and overfishing of the oceans is absolutely true. That is why I asked about the resources that this Government and other Governments will have to enforce this piece of legislation. There are massive commercial interests involved in overfishing, in pollution, in dropping plastic in the ocean and so much more. There is an inequality of resources, and the powerful commercial interests that have done so much damage to our oceans and to fish stocks are not met by the equivalent resources of the public for either monitoring what is going on or cleaning up after them. I hope that the Minister will understand that this is not a criticism of the Bill—it is very much in support of the Bill—but if the resources are not there to monitor and correct what is going on in our oceans, we will not have achieved what we should have.