Royal News Blog

Note: This article is from the Guardian.

This article titled “Prince Charles’s secret veto documents to be released” was written by Robert Booth, for The Guardian on Friday 17th February 2012 18.08 UTC

Secret documents detailing the use by Prince Charles of his little-known power of veto over government bills must be released, the information commissioner has ruled.

A limited number of papers that show how the prince was consulted, in his capacity as the Duke of Cornwall, over the marine and coastal access bill, should be released within a month. Many others will remain confidential under the ruling, which was described by freedom of information campaigners as only a partial victory.

The case centres on the Whitehall convention that means the Prince of Wales must be consulted on any government bill that might affect his own interests, in particular, the Duchy of Cornwall, a private £700m property empire that last year provided him with an £18m income.

The arrangement has been described as akin to a royal “nuclear deterrent” over government legislation. There is no evidence that the prince has ever exercised the veto. Mystery around its application, however, has fuelled concern that it may underpin his lobbying of ministers directly and through his charities on pet concerns such as traditional architecture and the environment.

In October, the Guardian revealed that since 2005 the government has sought Charles’ consent on at least a dozen government bills, ranging from road safety to gambling and the Olympic games.

The government had argued that disclosure of the documents on the marine and coastal access bill to an academic who requested them under environmental information regulations, “would adversely affect the Prince of Wales by invading his privacy”. It could also “undermine the way in which he and his representatives correspond with ministers by impinging on the constitutional convention that the Prince of Wales is able to correspond with government ministers in confidence”, the information commissioner’s ruling states.

However, the commissioner ruled that correspondence from Defra to the prince was not covered by the convention of secrecy around communication between the Prince and government ministers and should be published.

The commissioner also made a strong case for greater transparency on other communications about the prince’s consent. Considering the arguments in favour of disclosure, he said: “The public interest lies in knowing more about how The Prince of Wales in his capacity as Duke of Cornwall may influence government policy and the process by which his consent is obtained when parliamentary bills may affect the interests of the Duchy of Cornwall.”

He continued: “The monarchy has a central role in the British constitution and in the commissioner’s view the public is entitled to know how the various mechanisms of the constitution operate in practice.”

But he ruled that this argument was outweighed by the “general public interest in upholding confidences and in protecting the process by which prince’s consent is obtained” and so ordered that those documents could remain confidential.

Defra had argued that the information was covered by the principle regarding the heir to the throne and government ministers being able to correspond in confidence in order to prepare him for when he becomes king.

“The information here is different from other royal communications because it concerns the Prince of Wales being consulted because legislation may affect his interests as Duke of Cornwall,” the commissioner said. “Essentially, he is being consulted in his role as a landowner rather than as the heir to the throne.”

However, he ordered that the information could be kept secret saying that as it was a constitutional process it warranted protection.

The appeal was made by John Kirkhope, a public notary and graduate law student at the University of Plymouth.

“The making of law by parliament is, arguably, one of the most fundamental aspects of our constitution,” he said. “We expect that process to be open to public scrutiny.

“It simply cannot be right that an organisation which insists it is a ‘private estate’ has privileged access to government such that it can influence the process of creating an act of parliament. When that system of consultation is opaque then it bound to raise suspicion in the minds of the public.

“The decision of the ICO goes at least some way to making the process more transparent.”

The Duchy of Cornwall has the right to appeal against the judgment.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Note: This article is from the Guardian.

This article titled “Prince Charles presents proof of profit in sustainable fisheries” was written by Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 3rd February 2012 13.39 UTC

Proof that sustainably managed fisheries can deliver higher profits as well as environmental benefits was presented on Friday by the Prince of Wales. The report by one of his charities was hailed as a rare piece of good news amid what is usually an unremittingly gloomy outlook for the world’s dwindling fish stocks.

Prince Charles told an audience at Fishmongers’ Hall in London: “The story today need no longer be one of doom and gloom and inevitable decline, but one that harbours the possibility of generating more value from a strongly performing natural asset. This potential can only be tapped if we manage it well.”

He said the evidence gathered by his International Sustainability Unit (ISU), which examined 50 sustainably managed fisheries around the world, showed that improved fisheries management was “actually be more profitable than perennially succumbing to the temptation of maximising short term income while deferring the costs until later”.

He quoted an estimate from the World Bank that if all fisheries around the world were better managed, they would be worth bn a year more than their current total contribution of 4bn to global GDP. But the number of fisheries that are subject to a sustainable management programme are still a minority, and global fish stocks are falling fast. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, at least a third are now overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion, and this figure is rising.

The study found many examples of responsibly managed stocks bringing benefits to local people. For instance, in the Pacific halibut fishery, the introduction of a catch-sharing system lengthened the fishing season and consequently increased the value of fish sold from to per pound. The Ben Tre clam fishery in Vietnam, after improving its governance, now supports 13,000 households, compared to 9,000 in 2007. The report also found that the hilsa shad fishery in Bangladesh could be worth nearly US0m more annually if improved, and that recovering the bluefin tuna fishery in the north-east Atlantic could produce gains of US0m per year.

The ISU found that in sustainably managed fisheries, declining stocks were revived by putting in place controls to regulate fishermen, including restrictions on when and where they could fish and what kind of nets and boats to use. The authors said that some of the key ways to improve the management of fish stocks were to change the economics of fishing through rewarding positive behaviour by the fleets, and to look at the health of the species being netted in the context of the whole marine ecosystem, which would include the health of other species in the food chain, and pollution from chemicals, agriculture or other human causes.

They made several recommendations for improving fisheries management, including: collecting better scientific data on fish stocks and the impact of fishing on the whole marine ecosystem; identifying more examples of good management; developing mechanisms to finance the wider adoption of good management techniques; involving the private sector with more fisheries improvement projects.

But the prince warned that action must be taken urgently to ensure that more of the world’s key fisheries are subject to good management – otherwise, he said, the current rapid decline of fish stocks would become irreversible.

“Despite the current vulnerable state of global fisheries, if managed properly with a focus on the resilience of the marine ecosystem as a whole, our seas could still provide us with the opportunity to continue harvesting seafood long into the future at similar, or perhaps even higher, volumes than at present,” he said.

His call was echoed by David Nussbaum, chief executive of the conservation group WWF-UK, who said: “We share the view of the problem and the collaborative, science-based approach to finding solutions that will protect the marine environment and ensure long-term sustainability for those whose livelihoods are dependent on it. To minimise the danger of catastrophic collapse of fisheries, we must look beyond short-term gains for some to the long-term interests of all. We should ask ourselves, ‘if fisheries and marine ecosystems face collapse in the same way as the banking system did, who will bail out the oceans?’ “

The ISU report, entitled Towards Global Sustainable Fisheries: The Opportunity for Transition, was the result of two years of consultation with the public, private, scientific and NGO sectors.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.