I do, convener. Thank you very much.
Good morning. As members will see, I have brought a number of colleagues with me to help with some of the order’s technical aspects and some unusual phrases that you might find.
The committee will know that we recently adopted Scotland’s first ever national marine plan. The next step, which is to take forward regional planning as part of that process, allows local ownership and decision making on specific issues out to 12 nautical miles.
The draft order designates 11 Scottish marine regions and identifies their boundaries. That needs to happen to ensure that regional marine planning can be delegated to the bodies that will form the marine planning partnerships. Finalising the draft order has taken some time, because we have had to carry out two rounds of consultation and because of the complexities of establishing marine boundaries, the yearly use of co-ordinates and how those things are joined up.
All Scottish marine regions must be part of the Scottish marine area, which is of course defined in the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. It is bounded by the mean high-water spring tides of Scotland, the boundaries provided by the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundary Order 1999 and the seaward limit of the territorial sea, which is commonly referred to as the 12-nautical-mile limit. Under the 1999 order, which is a United Kingdom order made under the Scotland Act 1998, boundaries have been drawn to determine which areas of the UK’s internal waters and territorial sea are, for the purposes of the 1998 act, defined as part of Scotland.
However, recent mapping shows that those boundaries do not actually extend to the mean high-water spring tides at the border between Scotland and England. On the east coast, the boundary extends to the mean low-water spring tides, while on the west coast, the first co-ordinate under the 1999 order is now some distance from the border between Scotland and England, where it runs through the middle of the River Esk and the mouth of the River Sark. The distance between those points is now about 200m, which was not the case when the 1999 order was made. In effect, there is a 200m gap in the Scotland-England border.
I have recently written to Elizabeth Truss, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, seeking a review of the 1999 order for two reasons. The first is to address the inconsistency of some 6,000 square miles between the North Sea boundary between Scotland and England on the east coast under the 1999 order and the previous boundary that had been established under the Civil Jurisdiction (Offshore Activities) Order 1987. The committee might remember that Parliament has debated the difference between these two boundaries on several occasions, including in its early days.
I have also written to the secretary of state to address a technical issue in relation to the boundary on the west coast that has arisen because of the change in the course of the River Esk that I have referred to, which is the result of natural processes since the 1999 order was made. The issue on the west coast was also recognised by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee in its recent consideration of the order that we are discussing today, but it is important to note that the committee did not raise any legal issues with the order itself.
The extent of the Solway and the Forth and Tay Scottish marine regions in those two areas is that of the Scottish marine area as provided for in the 2010 act. It is not the function of the order that we are discussing today to determine the boundaries in these areas, which can be achieved only by amending the 1999 order.
Article 1 of the draft order sets out the details of the co-ordinates system and lines used in determining those boundaries, and those co-ordinates are expressed in terms of latitude and longitude and use the same projection as in the 1999 order. In the draft order’s remaining articles, the regions themselves and their boundaries are described in a clockwise rotation, starting from the Solway, working around the coast of Scotland and ending with the Forth and Tay region.
The order is essential in establishing the 11 marine regions and thereby making possible the delegation of regional marine planning functions to marine planning partnerships and the preparation and adoption of statutory regional marine plans. It will take some time to set up the marine planning partnerships and develop marine plans for all 11 regions; indeed, it will be an evolving process that will be taken forward in phases. Clyde and Shetland will be the first marine planning partnerships, but they can be created only after the establishment of marine regions by this order.
I hope that that introduction gives some background—I have tried not to make it too technical—and I am happy to take the committee’s questions on the various issues that I have raised.