In response to the announcement today by Gordon Brown that the "Marine Bill" is included in the Government’s Draft Legislative Programme (DLP), and therefore has been allocated a slot in Parliament for the next session (autumn 2008 – summer 2009), Melissa Moore, Senior Policy Officer at the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) says:

"The Marine Conservation Society welcomes the announcement that a Marine Bill is included in the forthcoming legislative programme.

The Government is close to producing a ground breaking bill, but in its present draft it has too many flaws and loopholes to deliver on its promises.

We have serious concerns that the measures proposed are not strong enough to actually deliver a network of Marine Conservation Zones. These need to toughened up. We want to see a 'duty' to designate such a network and timescales on when it will be delivered.

We are concerned by proposals that socio-economic considerations rather than science should be key criteria in identifying where sites should be located; and also by the get out clause in the draft bill that says it is acceptable for industry and government to damage a Marine Conservation Zone if it is "impossible or impracticable" not to.

To effectively manage all UK waters, we urge all the devolved administrations to sign up to the UK Marine Policy Statement".