I dived in to save oceans

I’m looking forward to watching David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II, about our oceans, tonight.

Shows by Hans and Lotte Hass and Jacques Cousteau in the 1950s and 60s first alerted me to the importance of our seas.

As an MP in the Seventies, I introduced new safety rules for commercial divers in the North Sea. Many were made to put their lives at risk when they were building and maintaining oil rigs.

To understand their pressures, I learned to become a deep-sea diver myself in the River Hull.

I was no Cousteau but I swam down the Thames to No 10 to protest at Thatcher’s failure to sign a convention to stop tipping nuclear waste into our seas.

When I came out of the dirty water, Pauline was asked to give

Lord Digby

Jones wants to cut the number of peers by 300 by axing those who don’t attend and stopping political appointments to the Lords. This is a man who was politically appointed by

Gordon Brown and has never asked a question, made a speech or sat on a committee. The hypocrite could start by

axing himself!