What price a world heritage coastline?
Some years ago, we all celebrated the news that the magnificent coastline of Lyme Bay was to be a World Heritage Site. We expected that great benefits would follow.
In some respects, these early hopes and aspirations have been fulfilled. The worldwide publicity given to world heritage sites is very probably one of the things that has helped our West Dorset tourism keep up so well during the global recession (matched, of course, by the increased inclination of UK residents to holiday nearer to home when budgets became stretched).
I am sure that, as time goes on, the benefits of this high status will be felt in many other ways. Certainly, the careful management of the coastline by the various bodies that are responsible and the co-ordinated way in which they have gone about managing it, augurs well for the future.
But I am afraid that news of the world heritage status doesn’t seem to have penetrated some of the Whitehall bureaucracy. Or if it has, the conclusions reached in Whitehall do not seem to match our local expectations.
If you had to list something you wouldn’t want afflicting a World Heritage coast, what would it be?
Obviously, such a question leaves one spoilt for choice. Skyscrapers built along the shoreline is clearly a strong candidate for the worst horror. The construction of a large power station at Abbotsbury would clearly be a contestant. Inviting factory ships to destroy the livelihoods of all the local fishermen and to mash up the seabed would be a third entrant for the race.
But none of these things, mercifully, is at all likely to happen. In fact, there are laws against them happening.
So can we breathe a sigh of relief that this wonderful coastline is protected from despoliation? Alas, the answer is no.
Some way back, the Dorset Wildlife Trust discovered that huge oil tankers were parked off Lyme Bay.
I was sure this must be a purely temporary phenomenon. How, I reasoned, could the Department for Transport possibly be allowing an environmental risk of this magnitude off a World Heritage coastline?
So I took it up with the Department in the expectation of receiving a rapid response reassuring me that these tankers would not be around for long.
Unfortunately, these happy expectations haven’t been fulfilled. After rather a long delay, I received a letter confirming that these large and environmentally risky objects were indeed parked off Lyme Bay. The letter also explained to me that the Department proposed to do absolutely nothing other than to monitor the situation.
Of course, I recognise that these things never look quite the same when you are looking at them top down from Whitehall – and I accept that, while we remain heavily dependant on imported oil, tankers have to be stationed somewhere from time to time.
But, even by the standards of the Department for Transport, the tone of their response revealed a somewhat breathtaking ecological insouciance.
Why do we go to all this trouble to ensure that skyscrapers, large power stations and factory ships do not situate themselves along or near to the world heritage coastline, if we are then going to allow ruddy great oil tankers to park themselves for long period right in the place where any large-scale spillage would do maximum ecological damage?
I am now seeking to have a debate in Parliament about this, so that the Minister is forced to ask the Department exactly what is going on here.