Shark Fins Bill

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Neath on bringing forward this long-overdue piece of legislation. It fills in part of a broader plethora of animal-welfare issues, following, for instance, the Ivory Act 2018, which has started to roll back some of the ivory trade. We have lots of those practices globally, and it is important that both individual Members—such as the hon. Member for Neath—and the Government bring forward legislation to resolve them. The Labour Front-Bench team fully support this Bill.

One of the best tools we have in preserving animal welfare is the red list used by CITES—the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora—to identify animal species most at risk. The last three sharks and rays added to that list were all added due to the removal of fins. The silky shark, the thresher shark and the devil ray are all at complete risk of extinction due to the practice.

Hopefully, the UK passing this Bill will start to roll back some of that and can protect those three—and many other—shark and ray species. Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Neath and I commend the Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mrs Cummins, and it is a pleasure to be back. What a wonderful first Bill to be back for; it is always great to be part of a Bill Committee where there is a general consensus—even with our Scottish friends—because we all agree that it is a good thing to do. It is exactly the sort of thing that we should be leading the way on.

I must thank the hon. Member for Neath for bringing forward the Bill and for all her work on this. Indeed, I thank the whole Committee, because I believe that its members all have some reason for being on it. Possibly they have had their arms twisted, but, individually, each of us has some feeling, experience or knowledge on the issue, and I genuinely think that that is very helpful. It just goes to show that we mean business.

Nobody disagrees that shark finning is a gross practice. It is cruel and unsustainable. In fact, listening to some of the comments this morning makes my stomach turn; it is pretty grim. In the UK, shark finning has been banned for nearly 20 years, but this Bill goes an extra step to ban the import and export of the detached shark fins and shark-fin products. It is the only way that we can be sure that we are not inadvertently fuelling unsustainable practices abroad. The Bill is fully supported by Government, and we will do all we can to support its swift passage.

I am proud of our strong marine track record internationally. I went to the UN ocean conference in Portugal just a few months ago, and it was clear that the UK is considered a world leader on a lot of this conservation action. I do not think that we talk about that enough at home—how we are really seen as leaders. I think that this Bill will be another example; people will be watching us and what we have done.

We have committed to the protection and management of shark species, and the Bill is another step towards that. To reiterate, when we say sharks, that also includes rays and skates. I went to the Birmingham National Sea Life Centre not long ago; I do not know if anybody here has been there but it is a wonderful place to see those creatures. The skates and rays were enormous creatures; they were sort of like underwater flying machines, really. To think that we cause them such damage really brings home why we need this Bill to protect them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay so ably described to us, pulling off a creature’s fins inflicts a gross, cruel, painful and slow death. Sharks produce very few young compared with other fish, making them even more vulnerable if people carry out such practices on the scale mentioned by the hon. Member for Bootle. It affects their whole life cycle.

As we heard on Second Reading, the International Union for Conservation of Nature states that over 25% of sharks, rays and skates are threatened with extinction. Removing these top predators would have a catastrophic impact right the way down the food chain. This what my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford was really referring to. She has a great deal of knowledge in this area, particularly on dolphins. This is impacting the whole food chain.

We have heard some statistics. Something like 73 million sharks are caught I think annually—the exact sum is up for debate. A huge proportion of those—not all of them—would be affected by this, but a great proportion of them would have had their fins ripped off, so this is a really important step on our global journey on shark conservation. It will help us to consolidate our position as world leaders.

I want to touch on the point that was raised ably by the hon. Member for Leeds North West. CITES is holding its 19th meeting of the conference of the parties right now. I spoke to our team out there—it is in South America—and we are co-proponents of a proposal to list a further 54 shark species in the requiem shark family. The hon. Member named some previous species to be listed, and that group of sharks accounts for 85% of the global shark fin trade. I will name a few of them—I do not want to keep us here for hours—because includes sharks most of us never even think about, such as the tiger shark, the bull shark, the lemon shark, the spinner shark, the blacknose shark, the blacktip shark, the grey reef shark, the silky shark, the dusky shark, the blue shark, the copper shark. There are loads of them, and 54 species will now be on the list. That means they have to be controlled much more closely, and people will be given a permit to catch them only if that would not be detrimental to the survival of the species, so that is a really good move that our own Government are involved in right now.

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and, through her, also thank the hon. Member for Neath for introducing this Bill.

That is indeed very good news. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will keep the level of the fines in this Bill under review because enforcement of this Bill will be important to deter the practice from happening altogether? Will the Minister assure me that enforcement against the import and export of shark fins will be important in the Government’s application of this Bill?

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course, and I thank my hon. Friend for that good point. We have a paragraph in the schedule about the way the penalties work and the appropriate authority can revoke the exemption certificate if the right information is not supplied. The penalties are up to £3,000—actually, that is for providing inaccurate information about what they are doing. Of course, the whole system will be enforced by ensuring that Border Force and others know what to look for.

I want to highlight that it is leaving the EU that has enabled us to have this opportunity, and we have probably moved much more quickly than we might have done because, had we been in the EU, we would have had to get the agreement of all member states. That would potentially have been slow, so at least we have been able to get this matter taken forward in an individual Bill.

We have had widespread support for the Bill from non-governmental organisations. Organisations such as the Shark Trust, Shark Guardian, the Blue Marine Foundation and the Wildlife Conservation Society have done a great deal of work, for which I thank them. They have spoken to many of our MPs.

To wind up, I am so grateful to the hon. Lady for her work on this important Bill and, of course, to the Committee. The Government will do all that we can to support the Bill’s passage through both Houses and get it on to the statute books so that we can protect this iconic and critical species for generations to come.

[Christina Rees]

I am blown away, as they say. Committee members cannot know how much their support means to me—I am getting quite emotional.

I will go through the greatest hits of thanks. I want to thank everyone present for their contributions and interventions. I also want to thank the Members who are not present but who spoke on Second Reading and enabled us to get to Committee. I thank all the organisations the Minister mentioned—welcome back, Minister; it is great to see her in her place again—which, I am sure, will continue to support this Bill as it goes through, because it is so important to them. I also thank you, Mrs Cummins, for chairing superbly today.

We could not have done it without the Clerks, who work tirelessly and have managed to get me on some sort of straight line, and the officials, who never get thanked and are absolutely brilliant. I thank the Minister and the Government for their support. I look forward to getting the Bill on the statute book—I will probably be even more emotional then. Thank you again.