Fisheries Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, we come now to one of the most important groups of amendments. I was interested in the reply given by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, to the fourth Oral Question earlier, which was about what the Government are doing to make this country an environmental leader. He went through a number of Bills which are going through at the moment, including the Agriculture Bill and the Environment Bill, before mentioning the Fisheries Bill. He is right on the first two. Under the Agriculture Bill, there is ELMS, a very radical policy to ensure that farmers who are paid a subsidy produce public goods. A lot of those are going to be focused on the environment. As the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, as part of the Environment Bill we have net gain and nature recovery networks, both of which I applaud. They will add greatly to the environmental growth of the United Kingdom.

What does the Fisheries Bill do to enhance the UK’s environment? The withdrawal Act gave us control over the EEZ, but all the Fisheries Bill does is change one set of administrators to another, replacing a lot of objectives in the common fisheries policy with similar ones. There is nothing in this Bill that enhances the marine environment. I cannot think of anything in it, as it stands, that does that.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

It is a rare event when I chide the noble Lord on his own Front Bench, but the fisheries management plans, if properly carried out, are quite a major step forward.

[Lord Teverson]

I think quite the contrary, because they do not co-ordinate with other adjacent EEZs. They account only for fisheries in our EEZs, not the rest of the circulation of those stocks. As they stand, they are substantially inferior—they are unable to carry out their mission. The one area where we can change this is remote electronic monitoring. That is one of the most important challenges. The Government believe in remote electronic monitoring in terms of making the discard ban effective and in terms of much better data, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, stresses far better in his amendment than I do in mine. I fully endorse what he is trying to do.

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[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who has expressed so eloquently many of the points I want to make. I shall try to avoid repeating them; nevertheless, I want to extend the argument. I agree with the noble Lord that if the Government are to make only one change to the Fisheries Bill, this should be it.

The purpose Amendment 124, in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Worthington and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, is to ensure that all boats fishing in UK waters are fitted with remote electronic monitoring. My amendment focuses on data collection as opposed to the discard ban, but the two are not incompatible and REM would support both. If we introduce it on a phased basis and with consultation, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, suggested, it could be achieved in a way that does not disrupt the industry. It will be accepted internationally as the way to collect accurate data on what is being taken from the sea, to inform the scientific analysis of sustainability.

As the Minister said last Wednesday,

“One of the things that we must all wrestle with is that currently, we do not have adequate scientific information on all stocks and we need a better assessment”.


This will help to achieve that. The Minister also said:

“Where we cannot make such an assessment, we will gather scientific data so that such an assessment is possible”.—[Official Report, 4/3/20; cols. 652-53.]


Well, here is a method of contributing to that. Without direct on-board monitoring of fish catch, there would be a crucial gap in the scientific data on which to assess sustainable harvests. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has already said, while we were in the CFP it was argued that compelling our boats to deploy REM would put them at a disadvantage compared with fishers from other countries. That in itself tells you something about fishers’ behaviour. But now we have taken back control, we can set our own rules to require all boats in UK waters, whether or not they are UK-registered boats, to operate on a level playing field with REM fitted to their boats.

It was also argued that it was unaffordable and not suitable for smaller boats—the under 10-metre fleet. However, a recent report on the San José gillnet fishery in Peru, concluded that

“small-scale fishing vessel remote electronic monitoring offers potential for affordable at sea monitoring costs in coastal fisheries.”

I am told that there are also new technologies—the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to this—such as Shellcatch, which is cheap and easy to use. Is the Minister aware of Shellcatch and similar technologies, the use of which would be a very appropriate step for the Government to take?

The proposed new Clause in Amendment 124 would also require all boats to have GPS, so that their location is known, and it would require the establishment of a framework for monitoring and enforcement to prevent illegal fishing. The accurate collection of data is always important in fisheries management, but even more so as the Government are intent on pursuing the mistaken notion that maximum sustainable yield is the right way to manage sustainable fisheries. At Second Reading, I pointed out the folly of this proposition, but my warning did not seem to elicit a warm response, so I am going to repeat it at greater length now, for the record.

I am delighted that the notion of experts seems to be coming back into fashion, because I will refer to a number of experts in fisheries science. I first quote from two of the leading fisheries scientists of the 20th century. Canada’s P.A. Larkin, one of the leading fisheries scientists of his generation, wrote in his 1977 paper An Epitaph for the Concept of Maximum Sustained Yield:

“In many ways, it is a pity that now, just as the concept of MSY has reached a world-wide distribution and is on the verge of world-wide application, it must be abandoned.”


J.A. Gulland, who wrote the world-standard FAO manual on fisheries science, said:

“It is very doubtful if the attainment of MSY from any one stock of fish should be the objective of management except in exceptional circumstances”.


I also consulted two colleagues who are fisheries experts: Professor Marc Mangel from the University of California, arguably the top fisheries scientist in the United States, and Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and adviser to the UK Government in international fisheries negotiations. Both confirmed that MSY is not a desirable tool for fisheries management. Professor Mangel said:

“MSY as a management tool simply won’t go away, regardless of evidence that ‘managing for MSY’ has not been effective”,


and

“MSY is a very dangerous fishery management target unless one knows lots about the stock, about fishing mortality, and has the ability to really control fishing effort (particularly shut it down if needed). MSY is generally not used as a target in North America.”

Sir John Beddington is even blunter in his assessment that there is complete consensus among fisheries scientists that to set harvest levels at MSY is not appropriate. I apologise for going on at some length about MSY, but also note that I could have gone on a lot longer. Instead, I commend to those who would like to follow up my points a book entitled Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment, by Hilborn and Walters.

Sadly, the Government are committed to a misguided fisheries policy. I am not an expert fisheries scientist, but I have looked carefully at the issue and consulted experts, and the consequences of this misguided policy will be felt by UK fishers in the years ahead. I urge the Minister to listen to world fisheries experts and consider whether the Bill needs to be changed accordingly. However, I am not optimistic that the Government are prepared to do that, so, at the very least, they should agree to record properly what is being caught and where, so that when things go wrong—as they certainly will—they can change the policy. This amendment would enable the Government to do just that.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked why the amendment refers to phasing in REM rather than introducing it straight away. I have talked to people involved in this in the Chilean fishery, where REM is required on boats over 15 metres long. I was told—as was the Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—that a culture change has to go with the introduction of REM. Consultation and phasing in would therefore enable the Government to achieve buy-in from the fishing industry, particularly the important, smaller boats under 10 metres long.

That does not undermine the fundamental objective: to gain accurate data to enable us to manage our fisheries, in spite of our aiming for the undesirable target of MSY. We can manage the fisheries with good data, and change the plan when the data demands it.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend for jumping in here, but I would like to go on for a bit to address exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said. I could not concur more strongly with the aspersion that he made against the mantra of fishing at the level described as the maximum sustainable yield. I reiterate that it is absolutely perilous to do so.

The MSY represents an unstable equilibrium. It is akin to the equilibrium of an egg balanced on one of its ends; it is almost impossible to achieve even for an instant. One small disturbance will topple the egg, which is liable to fall on the table and break itself on a hard surface. In the case of fish stocks, that hard surface is total species extinction.

It is by an unfortunate misuse of terminology that the maximum possible harvest has acquired the misleading description of “maximum sustainable yield”. The words “maximum” and “sustainable” have specious connotations, which are spurious in this case. For a start, as I have emphasised, this level of harvesting is not sustainable. Moreover, if it could be sustained, it would not correspond to an economic optimum. To achieve this level of harvest requires an uneconomic expenditure of effort.

A vision of fish-stock ecologists is that we could harvest an ample supply of fish from an abundant stock with the least expenditure of effort. This would require the fish stocks to have an opportunity to regenerate themselves by the suspension of excessive harvesting. Such circumstances prevailed in the years immediately following the two world wars, during which fishing in European waters had been largely suspended. This did not last for long. Soon, fishing fleets armed with technological innovations were chasing an ever-diminishing supply of fish through marine deserts of the fleets’ own making.

In the face of the depletion of fish stocks, British fishermen have adhered to the myth that they have been robbed of fish by the depredations of foreign fishing fleets. They now urge the Government to give them exclusive access to our supposed national waters and to allow them to substantially increase the size of their harvests. This is a recipe for disaster. I thank my noble friend for allowing me to jump in.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend and speak to Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to which I put my name—although I may now regret it, since he poked me in the eye. I will also speak to Amendment 124 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I will not repeat the arguments, which both noble Lords made so eloquently and passionately.

What is the Government’s stance on remote electronic monitoring with cameras being brought on to all vessels fishing in UK waters? Noble Lords have heard the reasons: we need to capture data on non-target and protected species and on the bycatch and discards regime, as well as better data on fish stocks to inform scientific assessments; there needs to be effective monitoring and enforcement of fisheries measures and legislative requirements; and it would provide very useful information on vessel location. The current fisheries management system is lacking in effective measures for accurately collecting data on what is caught, and lacks robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. That seems really strange in the context of the UK priding itself as a global leader in technological progress.

We can hardly stand as a world leader in the white heat of technology if we cannot see a better way of producing that data, that monitoring and that enforcement without the current stone-age solution of human observers going on to vessels and monitoring only 1% of what vessels catch—and of log books, and of surface and aerial patrols. It is really not a 21st-century solution. What improved system do the Government intend to introduce for all these purposes, which are absolutely vital in the context of our running an effective fisheries management policy, if not remote electronic monitoring with cameras on board all vessels fishing in our waters?

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Again, I will probably need to take some advice, possibly legal. The management of fisheries is devolved. The great thing about what has happened—I had no part in the discussions, so I can say this—is that the fisheries administrations of the four parts of the United Kingdom have come together with these objectives. I have the privilege of taking this Bill through the House, but it is at the request of, and the work of, all four Administrations.

We all know about international agreements. This is a domestic agreement between the four fisheries administrations, working collaboratively in the interests of fish stocks and of the communities, which are very important. If there is any flavour of ambiguity in what I have said regarding the legal position, I will put this information in the letter. This is absolutely the work of the four Administrations, seeking to do the right thing for fish stocks and for the communities that harvest the fish for us.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

There are still some things to answer in respect of the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. It seems to me that the ability to deliver on the objectives in this clause depends almost entirely on the joint fisheries statements and the fisheries plans. There are quite a few loopholes that enable the fisheries administrations to wriggle around the requirements in the joint fisheries statements and the fisheries plans—extenuating circumstances, as it were.

We are in a strange position. Although the objectives may well be shared by each of the four fisheries administrations, because of the way they are implemented —through the joint fisheries statements and the plans that have to adhere to the statements, except where there are extenuating circumstances—we might find that these are very delegated, very devolved decisions. We may be lost between the devil and the deep blue sea, if that is not the wrong thing to say about a Fisheries Bill.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

This piece of work is an honest endeavour. Yes, the issues are devolved unless they are internationally related. All objectives must be interpreted proportionately—that is a requirement of the Bill. Interestingly, I have come across a number of noble Lords who would have been wholly in favour of devolution but, now that this actually is devolved, think that there may be problems. We are working very collaboratively with the devolved Administrations. Of course, there are a lot of totemic issues for many of those communities—indeed, in England this is also a totemic matter.

I think the noble Baroness has one or two amendments on this matter in later groups. We have to be frank: these are devolved matters and that is why the coming together of the four fisheries administrations for this Bill is really important. We should see that achievement as a positive, rather than a negative.

--- Later in debate ---

Secondly, my Amendment 49A provides that, rather than concentrate as it does at the moment on sustainability objectives—to which we are all signed up, as we have said on both days in Committee—the plan should refer to consideration of the precautionary objective as set out in Clause 1(3). By excluding that, I am not sure that we can achieve maximum sustainable yield. In my humble submission, if you look only at maximum sustainable yield, you actually reduce the potential to achieve that maximum sustainable yield. I would like a phrase about the precautionary requirement to be inserted here in the clause related to fisheries management plans, because that should help the Government to achieve what it would be. That is the purpose of Amendment 49A: just to introduce a precautionary approach there.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I speak to my Amendments 45, 49, 50, 53, 54 and 55, all of which are aimed at making a good thing better. We agree that fisheries management plans are a good thing, but they are a bit of a moveable feast as currently structured in this Bill. They are optional; there are a range of circumstances in which authorities can simply opt out of plans and out of the joint statements placed around the plans. These amendments focus on the need for plans to be obligatory—to have timescales associated with them and to have more teeth if they are to deliver in practice the Government’s manifesto commitment to introduce a legal commitment to fish sustainably.

These amendments are aimed at plugging a number of gaps that could mean that the authorities could opt out of preparing fisheries plans at all for some stocks. These amendments taken together introduce provisions to ensure that fisheries management plans must be introduced for all commercially exploited stocks and any other stocks that fall below sustainable levels. They also introduce timeframes for preparing and publishing fisheries management plans. The Bill says that authorities are to prepare a statement explaining the use that

“the authorities … propose to make of fisheries management plans”

and what fisheries management plans they

“propose to prepare and publish”,

together with their reasons for deciding not to introduce a fisheries management plan for a particular stock. There is a rather perverse phraseology in the Bill, which seems to imply that finding an excuse for not having a fisheries management plan is pretty legit. We need to turn it around and set out a very clear requirement for a fisheries management plan to be prepared in the circumstances that I just described. Indeed, with the way the Bill is drafted, we could have a situation where a stock in a depleted state would not be subject to a fisheries management plan. That seems perverse.

I go back to a point that has been made several times—that what we are trying to achieve with the Bill is effectiveness, because ineffective fisheries management plans, for example, would be bad for fish stocks, and that would be bad for the fishing industry as well as bad for the fish.

To take my amendments in turn, Amendment 45 would remove the discretion over whether authorities have to produce a plan. Instead, it states that

“authorities must prepare and publish fisheries management plans for all commercially exploited stocks … and … other stocks … that fall below”

sustainable levels. It is absolutely vital to introduce this accountability into the Bill. Far too many of our stocks are still overfished through setting fishing limits above sustainable levels year on year. It is vital that the Bill reverse that through the introduction of effective fishery plans for all stocks currently below sustainable levels. It is also important that we have plans for all commercially exploited stocks, even if they are currently fished at sustainable levels. Those plans need to be in place to ensure stock levels remain at or above sustainable levels.

Amendment 49 would ensure that fisheries management plans actually maintain stocks at or restore them to the sustainable level, rather than merely “contributing” to the stocks’ restoration. Amendment 50 would ensure that authorities are required to establish policies that will return data-deficient stocks to an equivalent proxy of maximum sustainable yield, rather than just having a vague commitment to increase stock levels without specifying any limit.

Amendment 53 would introduce additional requirements for fisheries management plans introduced for stocks that fall below sustainable levels, defined as BLIM. In particular, it would introduce timelines for restoring stocks that have not been fished sustainably. It would introduce catch limits and conservation measures to increase or return the biomass of each stock to sustainable levels within 10 years. It would also require authorities to prepare and publish a fisheries management plan within 12 months of a stock falling below sustainable levels.

If we do not introduce timelines for recovering stocks we could see many more stocks depleted, possibly beyond levels from which they can recover. The Minister talked about 59% of our stocks being fished at sustainable levels, but that figure is actually going down rather than up: in 2018, 69% of our stocks were being fished at or below sustainable levels. We still have a long way to go, so it is important that these timelines are included so that authorities can be held to account if they do not achieve them. It would be bizarre to abandon the common fisheries policy’s target, which requires all stocks to be fished at or below MSY by 2020. I know that it is unfashionable to hark back to the common fisheries policy, but it was right to have that clear target. In a wider ecosystem context, the marine strategy review found that we were failing 11 out of 15 marine indicators, one of which was fishing.

Amendment 54 would ensure that where stocks are shared with another coastal state, the Secretary of State must engage with that state to try to put in place a joint fisheries management plan for shared stocks. This is pretty key, given that the UK shares more than 100 stocks with the European Union alone.

Amendment 55 would simply define BLIM as the reference point at which additional measures need to be introduced to fisheries management plans to ensure stocks are returned to sustainable levels. If fish stocks fall below this level, their ability to reproduce might be reduced and stocks might be in serious danger of collapse. This is the measure used by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which provides annual scientific advice on and assessment of the state of fish stocks used by authorities when making decisions about catch limits.

I know the Minister will tell me that there will be guidance on fisheries management plans, but many of these issues are so important that they should be in the Bill rather than simply in guidance. Although the flexibility that the Bill currently allows on fisheries management plans might be admirable in some respects, it raises another question about the whole issue of consistency. If our fisheries and access to them becomes a material matter in negotiations with the European Union and other states on a variety of trade and international relations issues, the fact that we could be widely—perhaps even wildly—divergent across the four nations must raise interesting questions for the Secretary of State.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 34 and other amendments in this group that relate to sustainable fish levels being included in the fisheries management plans. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said, we are going around in circles—perhaps like some fish.

Fisheries management plans are key to the Bill’s implementation and success, but they will be ineffective if fish stocks are not maintained at or above sustainable levels. The Bill’s thrust is to promote sustainable fisheries management—that is how I have interpreted it, anyway. This aim in endorsed and welcomed by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. The UK is already well ahead in sustainable fisheries management and has much to build on to become a world leader. For the fishing industry to maintain its current position and go from strength to strength, it is vital that fish stocks are preserved, enhanced and sustainable. It would be unacceptable to promote short-term gain at the expense of fish stocks for future generations.

Decisions on fisheries management must be informed by science, data and information gathering. We welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring this happens and to an “ecosystem-based approach” to fisheries. This should minimise any harmful effects on fishing activities within the broader environmental, social and economic context. It is therefore essential to manage fish stocks, not only to maintain them at a sustainable level, but to go beyond that. As is clear, climate change can have a dramatic effect on water levels and temperatures. It is paramount that fish stocks are truly sustainable and can adapt to changes over time. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that this happens.

--- Later in debate ---

This is not the beginning of a promise of something further but if the mood in the Committee is that it would be helpful to talk through the fisheries management plans around a table—perhaps, after checking our diaries, once we have finished the Committee stage—so that everyone can see the bona fides of what we are seeking to do, I shall of course be prepared to do that. We will come on to this but this is not about us finding loopholes; it is about having a statement and management plans which will go out for consultation and receive parliamentary scrutiny. Wherever we all are, these are areas that we will return to constantly. However, for the moment, I very much hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

I thank the Minister for his offer to meet to talk about management plans, and I would very much like to take that up. Perhaps before that meeting he might ponder on whether something can be inserted into the Bill. I am trying to be kind here and am choosing my words very carefully. I absolutely do not doubt his commitment, at a UK level, to the intent of the Bill and to the sustainability issue being entirely at the forefront. However, devolution is quite a long arm and I suspect that there will be occasions when one or more of the devolved fishing authorities have other priorities in mind. I would be searching for something much more specific about what fisheries management plans there need to be. The provisions of Clause 7 allow a little bit of coming and going at a devolved level and could mean that very significant stocks do not have plans applied to them. I would very much like to explore the ability to plug that hole.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

We might perhaps incorporate that if there is a more general desire to talk through fisheries plans. The truth is that the four fisheries administrations have worked very constructively and positively, with sustainability at the heart of that work. We have all been saying that there is no point in overextracting or overexploiting fish stocks anywhere in UK waters. We need to work on restoring all our stocks, and that is absolutely what these plans are designed to do. I shall of course be very happy to have further discussions on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lord, perhaps it is as well that I should speak to my amendments, in view of the fact that my noble friend has done it already. These amendments are an attempt to deal with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, referred to earlier.

Amendments 57 and 58 which I have put forward—my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering has also signed up to the first one—would require the fisheries management plans to explain how they are implementing, or taking account of, the objectives in a way that we can understand. I think that that is a reasonable obligation. It is not a legal obligation in quite the sense that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was talking of in the earlier amendment, but I think that these objectives are intended to form part of the structure of the management plans. Therefore, the test is whether, on a proper examination of the management plans, we can see how these objectives have been implemented.

Amendment 58 would require the Secretary of State to set out procedures for arriving at these management plans, including consultation on how this should happen. He would then be able to go forward with a procedure which will implement the objectives within the management plan.

My other amendment in this group, Amendment 125A, would require the Secretary of State to make a statement about the economic benefits of this system to the United Kingdom in pursuance of the national benefits objective. Management under that objective requires social and economic benefits. I venture to think that it would be right for the Secretary of State to apply his mind in time, just at the end of the first year, to explain how he hopes to achieve economic benefits as a result of the arrangements made under this Bill for fishing in United Kingdom waters.

I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about the need for co-operation with other authorities that have responsibility for stocks which we share with them, for the obvious reason that, unless there is such co-operation, there is no real management of the whole stock. As the noble Lord said, it is absolute common sense to do that. It is not quite a matter for the negotiations over Brexit; it is about practical arrangements for ascertaining what is required in respect of these stocks.

Coming back to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made earlier about equal access arrangements, as I understand the Bill, the equal access arrangements are about the actual movement of fishing boats. The quota system controls the catch. If one looks at what the Bill says about equal access, it is pretty plain that, for example, you are not tied to your home port; you can go somewhere else. If you think that there is a better bargain in Peterhead than in Grimsby, you can go there. Conversely, of course, if you fish in Scotland and think there is a better bargain in the south, you can go there, but you cannot drop your line to bring fish out of the water as you go through English waters if you do not have a quota for that. If you are licensed for Scotland, you have to exercise your quota rights there. That is the way that I have understood it. I may be completely wrong, but it looks to me as though that is the way the Bill is framed. That goes back to a previous discussion.

So far as my amendments are concerned, they are intended to incorporate the objectives into the plan in a way that anybody can reasonably understand. That obligation would be a practical obligation in respect of these objectives. We cannot expect any authority to implement all of them; it will depend a bit on the nature of the arrangements. Incorporating them in a way that is explicable and explained in the management plans is the way forward. I would like to know in due course what the Government think about these amendments.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 51 and 52, which are about data-deficient stocks. I was very pleased to hear the Minister say earlier that there is a real commitment to know more about stocks in order to improve them. Amendment 51 strengthens the drafting of the Bill to ensure that authorities “will” take steps to obtain the scientific advice and data necessary to enable an assessment of a stock’s maximum sustainable yield. This would replace the rather loose drafting in the Bill at the moment, which says that authorities will specify the steps, “if any”, that they propose to take. That seems to imply that they may choose to remain deficient in data. It would be an improvement to lay that stronger requirement.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a really historic Bill. For the first time in 50 years, we can design our own fisheries policy; it will be one of the few silver linings of Brexit, if we get it right. It will be a real test of the Government’s approach to the UK-EU negotiation. There will be lots of pushing and shoving between now and December, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, rightly pointed out that there are big shares of quota at stake for other EU states and a big share of markets for us. We need to watch that the needs of sustainable fisheries do not get traded away for other trade-deal requirements

The Bill is an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate that, in totally rethinking how we manage our fisheries, we can ensure a sustainable future for the marine environment, the fishing industry and coastal communities, as the Minister said. Current fisheries policy, of course, is in no way sustainable. Government assessments have shown that we are not on track to meet the commitment to reach good environmental status and healthy seas by 2020. That is particularly so for fish stocks, shellfish, birds and benthic habitats. Last year, only 59% of UK fish stocks were fished at or below sustainable levels, down a whole 10% on the previous year. North Sea cod stocks have declined to critical levels, due to lax setting of quotas and failure to manage effectively. North Sea cod has lost its Marine Stewardship Council certification, with an impact on valuable market share. This is bad not only for the fish and the environment but for fishers and fishing communities.

The UK Government are currently challenging the global community to increase protection of the world’s oceans to 30% by 2030. If we are to do that without being laughed at, we need to demonstrate world-leading fisheries management and to measure this by recovery of nature and recovery of stocks. The Bill is a welcome improvement on the Bill in the previous 2017-19 Session, but it is very much a framework Bill, whose implementation raises many questions. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, called it a picture frame without a picture and I very much appreciate that analogy. I hope the Minister can give us some assurances about painting in the picture frame at the end of this debate, and I shall raise some of the issues on which I think further answers are needed.

I welcome the new climate-change objective in the Bill. We must ensure that it is about not just low-carbon fishing technology but the importance of recovering fish populations and restoring marine habitats, such as kelp forests, deep sediments and coastal seagrass meadows, as effective natural solutions to tackling the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity together.

My second anxiety concerns future trade deals with the EU and other states, where the Government are saying that fisheries negotiation will be a separate annual bilateral agreement. I thoroughly endorse that approach: we must avoid the overall UK-EU negotiation sliding into a link between access to UK waters for the EU states and other states and access to EU markets for us.

The Bill is very much a framework Bill, leaving a lot to the devolved Administrations and secondary legislation. I urge the Minister to let us see the secondary legislation in draft before it is laid or, even better, produce co-management arrangements involving all key stakeholders to ensure that the painting in of the picture that secondary legislation will represent suits all stakeholders.

Many of the objectives listed at the beginning of the Bill are to be applauded: the sustainability objective, the precautionary principle, an approach that involves ecosystems, the climate change objective and the importance of science and evidence-based decisions. However, somewhere in the mix we need a legal duty on relevant public authorities to achieve these objectives and be accountable by publishing specific regular reports on their achievement of the objectives, not just on their activities.

The Conservative manifesto promised

“a legal commitment to fish sustainably”,

but in the Bill there are no legally binding targets or timeframes for bringing unsustainable fisheries stocks to sustainable levels. I am sure the Minister will say that there will be fisheries management plans, but there is nothing in the Bill to say when these plans will be made, what they will cover and when the actions outlined in them will be achieved. I will talk about that in a moment.

There needs to be a legal commitment in the Bill not to fish above independent, scientifically recommended, sustainable levels. Even the rotten old common fisheries policy set catch limits in article 2 to be within maximum sustainable yield by 2020. In the Bill we simply have an aspirational objective to achieve a healthy biomass of stocks, a rather woolly objective that is neither legally enforceable nor subject to any deadline, to be taken forward by way of a policy statement that the Bill says can be disregarded in a wide variety of circumstances. All that represents a potential regression in environmental standards.

There is also no firm commitment to ensure that the stocks we share with other countries are managed sustainably. The Bill needs to set an objective for the Secretary of State in his or her negotiations with the EU and other countries to be directed by clear sustainability criteria, including a commitment to agree catch limits in line with scientific advice. We need to learn from past situations such as the interminable disputes over mackerel between the European Union, Norway, Iceland and the Faroes, which resulted in 35% overfishing and loss of MSC status for that catch. We share over 100 stocks with the European Union, so an effective, evidence-based process is important.

We used to call those the mackerel wars. I turn now to other potential wars. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, is not in his place—I am sure he would have relished this. We need to think about monitoring and enforcement of our new approach, which the Minister touched on in his introduction. I hope the cod wars will not return; the circumstances are different now that territorial waters have been delineated, but can the Minister say exactly what resources—by way of ships, technological kit and monitoring offices—the Government envisage either to have been recently provided or to be provided in future?

In his response to the committee report of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the landing obligation six months on, the Minister of State cited some interesting figures on Marine Management Organisation inspections annually since 2016. Inspections of onshore vessels and premises have greatly increased, but the number of inspections at sea, which are vital, has stayed completely flat. Can the Minister tell us the exact scale of additional resources for monitoring and enforcing under the new arrangements, at least in England, if he cannot speak for the devolved Administrations?

The major feature of the Bill is that it is a high-level framework—the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about it being a picture frame with no picture is rather good. There are lots of stages that will follow the Bill and many a slip between cup and lip. The devolved Administrations will be in the driving seat in many cases and we need to see what proposals they will bring forward to paint this picture. The negotiation of a joint fisheries statement will, I suspect, be fraught and there is no guarantee that the joint fisheries policy statement will achieve the objectives outlined in the Bill or by when.

The national authorities have a “get out of jail free” card. The Bill specifies that they can disregard the policy statement where evidence changes. That might be regarded as admirable flexibility but it risks meaning that the fisheries objective will take priority, especially where the interests of the UK fishing industry are at stake. It can shout at the expense of fish stocks and biodiversity, which of course cannot shout.

Fisheries management plans will be important and much will hang on them, but they are optional. The only requirement on authorities in the legislation is to issue a statement explaining how they intend to use fisheries management plans. I suspect they will not come out with a statement saying that they do not think they will use fisheries management plans much. However, they could, given the way the Bill is framed. There must be a legal requirement for authorities to introduce fisheries management plans where stocks are currently fished above sustainable levels or for data-deficient stocks. There are no timescales for laying out or achieving the plans. We need statutory timescales. National authorities have a similar “get out of jail free” card on fisheries management plans, which could mean caving into socioeconomic pressures at the expense of environmental protection.

I started off thinking that this was rather a good Bill but, having thought about it for some time, the fact that it leaves so much unanswered is worrying. It needs to be a tougher framework and I hope the Minister can assure us that the Government’s manifesto commitment to sustainable fishing can truly be guaranteed through the mechanisms outlined in the Bill, especially where the devolved Administrations are concerned. We need that to work for the benefit of fish ecosystems, the fishing industry and coastal and fishing communities.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard)
Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my multiple environmental, food and farming interests as listed in the register. I do not know whether noble Lords have noticed, but agriculture Bills are a bit like buses, or indeed men—there is not one around for ages and then two or three come along all at once. We have had approximately one Bill a decade since the 1940s but we have had three in the past two years.

As the Minister said so eloquently, this Bill is about continuing the current system of support for farmers for one more year, and, as it says on the tin, it is simply about legislative continuity. It will continue the current system where direct payments, which make up around 80% of all payments made under the common agricultural policy in the UK, are based on the amount of land that is owned or managed by a farmer and not by any other criterion such as the food they produce, the environmental benefits they manage or any other public benefits they provide.

This of course presents a real opportunity arising from Brexit. I confess that I never thought I would see the day when the words would cross my lips—but it is an opportunity, one of the few coming out of Brexit, because the current support system is not a good way to support farmers, to deliver public benefits or to protect the environment, so we all look forward to the future changes that will not arrive with this Bill but will arrive with the next one. It will deliver on the Government’s commitment to paying public money for public goods; making payments based on environmental and other benefits that we need farmers to provide but which will not readily be delivered by the market.

The Bill before us is very routine, but we did have another agriculture Bill—one of the other three—that was introduced in 2018. That has now been withdrawn and a new version came out on 16 January. It will eventually come to your Lordships’ House and we will then have an opportunity to talk in more detail about how we can reshape support for farmers to ensure that the system is effective in fighting the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity decline. As I say, that is one of the few silver linings offered by Brexit.

When it comes, that Bill will need to deliver five things. I should like to take the opportunity of this Bill to remind the Minister about those five things. Just in case he has so far not slid those requirements into the legislation, perhaps he could do so between its Commons stages and it coming to us.

The first thing is the core principle of public money for public goods. How are we going to use the support system to help farmers deliver the things that the market would not necessarily deliver? Land management plays a key role in environmental benefits and animal welfare. The Government have shown a consistent commitment to these, but it would be good to get the Minister’s assurance yet again that public money for public goods will be a core principle of the Bill.

The second issue is that we should not widen the definition of public goods too far because that would dilute it. We will have other opportunities to tackle other issues delivered by agriculture. Work is well under way on the food strategy, and I think that food production should be dealt with in that strategy rather than being part of the public goods debate so that we do not see the public paying twice for a benefit: that is, at the supermarket checkout or at the farm shop for the produce they are buying, as well as paying through their taxes.

The Government have said that they are committed to delivering payments that will enhance agricultural and land management productivity. I will sound a note of caution on that. They should not be in opposition to or separate from measures that deliver environmental benefits or public goods. It would be a real shame if one part of the subsidy system was at odds with another, which was so often the case under the common agricultural policy.

Another issue that we need the future agriculture Bill to deliver is some security in the face of future trade deals. We must not see future trade deals undermine the ability of UK farmers to deliver not only thriving businesses but public goods if the Government cut trade deals that allow access to the UK market for imported food that is produced to lower environmental, welfare and safety standards.

The third thing we need the Bill to do is maintain the level of funding. It is good to get from the Minister a recommitment of the £3 billion or so figure. This is not because a farmer of my acquaintance recently muttered to me that farmers need every penny, but because, if you look at the calculations done by some of the member organisations of Greener UK, it estimated that £2.9 billion was required to deliver the environmental benefits alone, without any of the other public goods. We must not see an erosion of that £3 billion; in fact, it may need to grow. I hope we can get some assurance from the Minister that, once the public benefits have been established in what will become the Agriculture Act, the requisite funding will be there to support whatever is established by that Act.

My fourth requirement of the future agriculture Bill is that we introduce powers for better legislation to regulate for a basic minimum of environmental and other standards that must be adhered to by all farmers and land managers. That is not currently in the Government’s plans, and I would like the Minister to comment on how we can be reassured that there will be a baseline of good performance for all land managers.

The fifth point I will raise is the provision of an independent voice for farmers. We are likely to see a massive change in the way land is managed by farmers in this country. They will need all the help they can get if they are to deliver effectively and use public money effectively in the delivery of these public goods. It is not likely to be delivered entirely by their response to the marketplace or subsidy. There will have to be an upskilling and a degree of help with management of change.

That is really important, because 70% of our land surface is managed by farmers, so I also ask that the Government—independently of these pieces of legislation—think of starting work on a land-use framework. We are not making any more land. The pressures on it are increasing. We need regenerative and agroecological farming methods of the sort outlined in the recent report by the Royal Society of Arts’ Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which I declare that I sat on. We need land to help us combat climate change; we need more trees—I declare my interest as chair of the Woodland Trust; we need to protect our water resources; we need land to help with natural flood-risk management; and we need heat reduction. We need our countryside to help with health and mental health. We need to stabilise our soils. But we also need land for development, housing and infrastructure—even the dreaded HS2. We need food security; do we want to produce more food in future than the amount we currently produce domestically? Do we want to continue to be a massive net importer of timber, or do we want to become more self-sufficient in our timber production?

All these things need land. They cannot all happen to the maximum without some thought being given, on a strategic basis, to what we want our land to be for and the appropriate balances. So I simply put the Minister and the Government on notice that, for however long it takes, I will bang on about the need for a land-use framework for England. We have them for Scotland, for Northern Ireland and for Wales; we need one for England.

My last request is my only request about the current Bill; I have really been a bit of a cheat in the way I have structured this, but never mind. The Minister quite rightly referred to the provision about statutory instruments and secondary legislation flowing from Bills such as this. There will be quite a raft of secondary legislation coming from consequent legislation following Brexit. The environment Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the fisheries Bill—a huge number of Bills—will have a raft of secondary legislation. It would be greatly welcomed if two things could happen. First, the Government could commit to consulting as widely as possible, providing it did not take an age, on secondary legislation before it is laid, so that there is still an opportunity to make it better before it is set in concrete and can only be prayed against. Secondly, could draft statutory instruments be readily accessible, not only to Members of our House but to the public at large and civil society, so that people know that they are being worked on and can head for the bloke holding the pen? Oh dear; I apologise for that sexist remark. It would help the SI process dramatically.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to all my questions, which he would be entitled to ignore since they are absolutely nothing to do with this Bill. I also very much look forward to the proper Agriculture Bill reaching this House in due course.

Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to his new role, and very much look forward to working with him. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the committee on two thorough reports.

I find myself terribly torn by the most recent government response, which, to summarise, said, “We’re making piecemeal progress, but it’s all rather difficult because of Europe.” The result was a bit of gloom, but of course, in these troubled times of leaving the EU, one must constantly search for rays of hope and small signs of some benefit from Brexit, and fisheries by-catch must be an area where we can now do something ourselves to revolutionise our poor performance on the landing obligations. Time is pressing for a radical improvement in performance. We can do something once we are out of Europe, and we must, because UK waters are among the most heavily exploited in the world, and shortly we will have full accountability for managing our fisheries sustainably. If we continue to overfish our waters, it is bad not only for the marine environment but for the future of the fishing industry and for coastal communities.

I will give two examples. In the UK, 59% of stocks were fished at or below sustainable levels in 2019, down from 69% in 2018. We are heading in the wrong direction. Secondly, and worryingly, UK cod stocks have declined to critical levels due to overfishing. Cod has lost its MSC certification and with that potentially valuable market access. This is not good.

As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, outlined, the landing obligation was agreed in 2013 and implemented in stages from 2015, but the committee’s report demonstrates that despite that long lead-in time we have not made much progress. It is estimated that less than 1% of what fishermen catch is currently monitored or verified, and it is likely that there is a widespread lack of compliance for the landing obligation. The UK Government and the devolved Administrations still do not have mechanisms in place to monitor compliance, and the lack of historic data on catches means that there is no real way of knowing the extent of illegal discarding. The result of oversetting quotas and failing to monitor discard is simple: overfishing.

The pressures both from our own fishing industry and from others in the future from the new fisheries management arrangements post Brexit could make this very much worse. The fisheries Bill has an opportunity to define our post-common fisheries policy approach to fisheries management. Will the Minister now indicate how our approach to the landing obligation, or at least a UK equivalent, will meet the Government’s promise of a gold standard for sustainable fisheries in the future? In its previous form, the fisheries Bill fell far short of that gold standard. Will the Government include in the Bill binding legal commitments not to fish above scientifically recommended sustainable levels, as is currently the case with the common fisheries policy? Will the Bill require CCTV cameras on all vessels fishing in UK waters to record what is being caught in our waters, improve data and ensure full and verifiable documentation of catches, as well as robust monitoring and enforcement?

Effective monitoring of discards is essential for a number of reasons to determine whether discards are still occurring and ensure that future catch limits are effective. Catch limits may assume negligible discards and by-catch, but that that cannot in reality be guaranteed because discards are not adequately monitored or enforced, so those catch limits could be wildly adrift.

It is widely acknowledged that remote electronic monitoring—REM—with cameras is the only effective tool to ensure control and enforcement of the landing obligations at sea and to deter illegal discarding. I support the Select Committee’s view that the Government should commit to introducing REM. No doubt the Minister will say that they are considering it or that it will be expensive. The Government’s response listed lots of things that they are doing, including a doubling of some inspections—although not inspections at sea, only on land. Will the Minister tell the House the additional costs of these piecemeal measures that are not working and how they could compare with the costs of implementing effective REM that would work? If the analysis of the costs and benefits of the REM system is still under way, as the most recent government response implied, will the Minister tell the House the timetable for this analysis coming to fruition?

There is no time for delay. We are on the brink of having sole responsibility—if that is not a pun in a fisheries debate—for our own sustainable fisheries management. That cannot be achieved without effective monitoring and management of discards, and REM is the answer.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I am honoured to have this opportunity to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on her spirited maiden speech and on the issues that she rightly highlights. We on these Benches are delighted to welcome another committed environmentalist to the House and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who has been the doughty sole representative of the Green Party, will be pleased to have the company of her party’s former leader, who did indeed keep up with the Joneses. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is known for her spirit and plain speaking, which I suspect were fostered in her early years in Australia and then in her career in international journalism, so I advise the Government to brace themselves. I am sure that the House wishes the noble Baroness, with her skills in journalism, local government, agriculture and the environment, a vigorous and impactful career in our House.

Turning to the gracious Speech, I declare an interest as chair of the Woodland Trust. The Prime Minister, very poetically, said this morning that the UK will have the best environmental performance in the world. If he is going to deliver that, he needs to do a bit better than this Queen’s Speech. The climate change and biodiversity emergency is real, so the Environment Bill needs to introduce legally binding targets for biodiversity as well as for air, water and waste, with real mechanisms for delivering and reporting on delivery.

The climate and biodiversity emergency means that the Environment Bill must also introduce legally binding targets for tree planting in this country. I commend every word of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stone. Trees are the environmental version of the Swiss army penknife—other brands of multitool are of course available. Trees eat CO₂ for breakfast and foster biodiversity, as well as their many other environmental and health benefits, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Stone. The Committee on Climate Change says that we will have to plant 50 million-plus trees a year in the UK for the next 12 years to suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere and enable trees to play their full role in maintaining temperature rise below the globally dangerous 1.5 degrees.

However, the Government’s non-binding target for tree planting over the five years of the previous Parliament—do your Lordships remember when we used to have Parliaments that lasted five years? I do not think that we will have many of those in the near future—was for 11 million trees over five years. I am afraid that the Government failed to hit even that very low target. We all marvel at Ethiopia—we marvel at its veracity, if the truth were known—when it claims to have planted 350 million trees in a day. Now that is what I call ambition. Let us have an ambitious but realistic legally binding target for tree planting, for climate change and for biodiversity as part of a national tree strategy enshrined in law. This is an important issue as part of this crisis. I also commend to your Lordships the fact that on 30 November the Woodland Trust is holding a mass planting day as one step in the big climate change fightback. Thousands of people across the UK will plant millions of trees and I invite all your Lordships to join us, either online or in the mud, in this glorious joint endeavour.

The Environment Bill will also set up the office for environmental protection, to fill the yawning gap that would have been left in departing from the EU’s environmental compliance mechanisms. Zac Goldsmith, the Minister, said yesterday that the environment movement had asked for the new green watchdog to have teeth. Lo and behold, the Government have given us a great white shark. While I welcome the fact that the OEP will now cover climate change, if it is to be a genuine great white shark it needs to have the teeth of genuine independence and adequate resources. The Government’s track record in funding such bodies is not good. Over the last few years Natural England, as the current biodiversity regulator, has had successive cuts to the point where it risks being toothless.

There are other issues on which the Environment Bill fails to give statutory reassurance. Non-regression from EU environmental standards is incredibly important and I share the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, that the hurly-burly of the trade negotiations will mean that the Government’s protestations on non-regression from those standards will simply disappear. That assurance should be on the face of the Environment Bill. If the Government are as genuine as they say they are about not lowering standards, what is the problem in putting that assurance into the Bill? Of course, in the background lurk the shadowy members of the ERG—the correlation between ERG membership and climate change-denying, free-trade prosecuting, deregulating and generally flat-earth beliefs is pretty positive. Indeed, if we look at the Americans’ first offer on a trade deal with us last December, the US was explicit that environmental standards would have to change. The trade Bill must keep faith with the Environment Bill, as those Bills go through, to make sure that the commitments in the Environment Bill do not disappear in the trade Bill negotiations.

The Ministers—the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Vere—will no doubt say that I am an ungrateful doom-monger about the Environment Bill, so I must welcome one point. That is the commitment to legislate to require local authorities to consult their local communities before commencing street tree-felling programmes. I am sure that our maiden speaker will reflect glory on that at some stage.

I turn to the agriculture Bill, if we ever get one. This is our opportunity, as the only thing that gives a silver lining to Brexit is that, with wisdom, we could shape agriculture policy in a better way than has been possible for the last 45 years. However, we must not lose the valuable improvements that were made to the previous agriculture Bill in the other place; indeed, we must not lose the £3 billion of investment in agricultural support, for whatever purpose, that has been the case to date.

It is time now for something much more fundamental. We need a new land use strategy for this country—for England, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have theirs. Those strategies are perfectly good; we could just score out the heading and write “England” on the top. There are so many competing pressures now on our land—for food, for trees, for climate change needs, for peatlands, for biodiversity, for housing and development and for infrastructure—that we need a national debate on what land is for and what uses should be directed where to make the most effective use of this precious natural resource, one that we are not making any more of. The foresight report that the Government sponsored 10 years ago took no account of the current biodiversity and climate change emergencies, so we need new strategic thinking. I put the Minister on notice that I will table amendments on the creation of a land use strategy when either the Environment Bill or the agriculture Bill proceed. He may decide which Bill he would prefer.

I could say more but I will not, because I have run out of time. However, I must confess that I got quite excited when I saw the number of Bills with environmental opportunities in the gracious Speech. They give the chance to tackle climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Then I remembered Boris, Brexit and an election and I realised that none of these Bills might get very far, so I got very gloomy again.

Environment (Legislative Functions from Directives) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Grand Committee

The provisions in this instrument ensure that UK law can keep pace with developments after exit. They make no changes to substantive policy content or in regulatory impact. To the extent that they affect devolved matters, the devolved Administrations have, where appropriate, given their consent to both the policy and the wording of the regulations. With that introduction, which was rather lengthy but, I hope, helpful as to the range of the SI, I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a very old interest as a former chief executive of the Environment Agency and as former chairman of English Nature.

I am very concerned about this set of regulations. The Minister described them as limited but I do not think that they are. The Secretary of State is being given rather broad powers to make amendments by regulation to a wide range of significant legislation, which has really important impacts for the environment. That is made worse by the fact that these regulations have the appearance of having been prepared by different civil servants and glued together at the last minute, because they are rather a mess of inconsistency.

For example, some powers are limited to the extent that the competent authority can make changes only,

“if appropriate to do so as a result of scientific and technical progress”.

However, that requirement does not apply to all the powers—for example, it does not apply to the air-quality regulation or the regulation applying to medium combustion plants. It would be interesting to know why the Minister is happy—if indeed he is—with this range of inconsistency. I will come on to talk more about inconsistencies in other areas. With regard to making changes only as a result of the advance of scientific and technical knowledge, does that mean that the Minister can simply change the regulations that do not have that provision on a whim rather than according to science? I am sure that is not what is intended but one might read that into the regulations.

Of course, the regulations do not define appropriate change as a result of scientific and technical knowledge. If the environment is to be safeguarded, I believe that that has to be not just clarified but interpreted as requiring that powers can be exercised only where the new provisions ensure an equivalent or higher level of environmental protection. That needs to be reflected in the wording of the statutory instrument. There is another flourish of inconsistency that is useful: Regulation 45(2) on the sewage sludge regulation—we get all the good jobs in this House—has a useful additional level of protection, which might be made to refer to all the regulations in this statutory instrument.

Perhaps I may also ask the Minister about the relationship between this set of regulations, with its scientific and technical knowledge requirement, and some of the requirements about advances in scientific and technical knowledge that are already included in the directives. For example, under the industrial emissions directive there is BAT, which means best available technique; and under the urban wastewater treatment directive, there is BATNEEC, which means best available technique not entailing excessive costs. Those are useful ratchet mechanisms, because they go in only one direction—the direction of improvement. However, the regulations do not mention how BAT and BATNEEC will be dealt with under those two directives.

Of course, all the forthcoming changes will be subject to negative scrutiny. It is not a question of more scrutiny taking disproportionate time, but it is inadequate to say that they will go through on the negative procedure because that does not give adequate credence to their importance. There is always a risk of weakening existing environmental protection by cock-up rather than conspiracy, if the Committee will pardon that technical term. I vividly remember the day when the Government announced that there were one-third fewer breaches of the air quality directive in London, before we quietly pointed out to them behind the scenes that that was because the budget had been cut and there were one-third fewer monitoring stations, especially in areas of high pollution, so inevitably there were one-third fewer exceedances. Even with the best of intentions, there needs to be a higher level of scrutiny to make sure that there is no inadvertent, even if not deliberate, weakening of existing environmental protection.

There is also inconsistency in the duty to consult. For example, some of the regulations talk about consulting, as the Minister mentioned, but there is a very good consultative body—the UK technical advisory group—for the water framework directive, the groundwater directive and the priority substances directive, yet no mention of those directives needing consultation despite the standard and regular consultation process that already goes on with it.

At the end of the day, there is the vexed question of compliance. You could say that it is Parliament’s job to scrutinise secondary legislation and make sure that it is okay, but the reality is that we will have a new environmental regulator. Prior due diligence on the sorts of changes that would go through in secondary legislation is not currently in that regulator’s role, and it ought to be.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, our Benches certainly accept that, if we are to leave the European Union, the Secretary of State or the devolved authorities need these powers to ensure that the legislation, such as it is, does not remain static but moves forward in the light of scientific knowledge and understanding. The number of areas that we are talking about in environmental legislation is reflected in this jumbo statutory instrument, so we also accept that the only way to provide them is probably through the secondary legislation route, given the chances of us being able to get primary legislation slots for all the changes that might be necessary.

However, following what the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said, we are disappointed that the opportunity has not been taken in this jumbo SI to ensure maximum protection for the environment. That is particularly so when we are having these discussions in advance of an environment Bill that sets the framework for future UK legislation outside Europe; and in advance of creating the office for environmental protection, which, in addition to statutory authorities such as the environment agencies, will be able to hold people to account.

In a slightly different way, I want to pick up a point that the noble Baroness made about changes being made only in response to scientific and technical advances. In some areas—she alluded to one, and I have another on water quality—the regulations pin down how the Secretary of State or devolved authorities can use these powers. Regulation 32(3) alludes to the fact that the devolved authorities can use the powers on water quality by looking to scientific evidence only where there will be possible harm to the aquatic environment. So, this instrument contains provisions on how the devolved authorities or the Secretary of State can use those powers to protect the environment. If it is good enough in the case of water quality to limit the powers that the Secretary of State can use in response to scientific and technical changes—and to do so only to advance environmental protection—why is that not the case in all areas? The phrase about it being in response to scientific and technical changes does not have a rider; it says that it ensures the equivalent or a higher level of protection for the environment. I think we are both making the same point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, also mentioned consultation but I want to pick up on a slightly different point. Given the nature of these changes, it is critical that all relevant stakeholders are consulted. However, there is an omission on the issue of environmental noise, which the statutory instrument covers. In his summing up, can the Minister say specifically why environmental noise does not merit consultation? He referred to it in general terms but not specifically. Of course, we can change negative statutory instruments to affirmative ones, but it would reassure us parliamentarians and bring us a degree of comfort if we knew that all the changes had been subjected to scrutiny by all the relevant bodies.

Ash Dieback

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the ash is a very important tree in our ecosystem, which is why we are investing in trying to find, through science, the best and most tolerant trees. We are planting 3,000 of them, out of hundreds of thousands of saplings, precisely because we recognise that that work must be done. Many research faculties, such as those at Kew, are engaged in the process. It is encouraging that we are learning much more about the genome of the ash, which is much wider than that of the elm. The noble and right reverend Lord is absolutely right—we take this seriously, as we must, because our ecosystem will be in peril if we do not deal with these diseases.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister may recognise that ash dieback is a serious problem but I want to press him further. A load of other diseases are waiting in the wings, some of which will make ash dieback look like a walk in the park. Can the Government tell us what they plan to do to develop an accreditation system for UK-sourced and grown trees, so that the trees we grow in this country are sourced, grown and propagated here, rather than imported? That would address at least one source of disease, if not all of them.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. That is why our work with the UK plant biosecurity alliance and the Horticultural Trades Association is so important in forming an assurance scheme that is precisely about growing more in Britain and having heightened biosecurity.

Plant Health (Amendment) (England) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on bringing these two instruments before the Committee this afternoon. I am also grateful to him that Fera will be involved in this, since he will recall that Fera is in the Thirsk and Malton constituency. As a slightly amusing story, I remember seeing a beetle at Fera that had been extracted from a wooden bed. It had been quite scary for a honeymoon couple to have heard its constant scratching. Finally, the morning after their nuptials, they called the hotel staff in and found out that the beetle had been imported within the wood that the furniture was made from. It was obviously more company than they had bargained for. I yield to no one in my admiration for the work that FERA does.

I have a couple of questions for my noble friend the Minister. My noble friend Lady Byford referred to plant health and pests in the air. What shocked me and colleagues on the EFRA Committee in the other place in the midst of the ash tree dieback was the fact that we were exporting seeds to be sown in parts of Europe such as, dare I say, Denmark—I am half Danish, so there was obviously some embarrassment—and Poland, which then grew these ash trees. We then reimported them to the UK as saplings with the Chalara fungus; I will not even try to say its name. We were reintroducing the ash tree saplings to this country with that disease. Can my noble friend give the Committee a reassurance that, under the arrangements set out in the statutory instruments today, that will not happen and that we will continue to update the list of species at risk which fall under these regulations on plant health and biosecurity? As the EU continues to amend that list, in the event of no deal will we share the information on our list as we go forward? Will we update our list with any updates to the EU list as well? I am sure that my noble friend will say that that is a matter for negotiation. Will he please make it a priority for our negotiations?

It is obviously of some concern that the threat is not just from dieback to ash trees. Currently, horse chestnuts, pines and other trees are also threatened. Have we learned nothing from elm disease? Kew Gardens and the arboretum at Castle Howard fulfil a national role in making sure that we continue to have seeds which we hope will be free of these diseases. Can my noble friend reassure the Committee that there will not be any threat in future?

In the Prime Minister’s Statement in the other place, there was a lot of talk about the Irish border and the arrangements in Ireland. At the moment, there is no Northern Ireland Assembly. We understand that this issue was raised for the first time two weeks ago by the Minister’s Defra colleague in the other place, particularly in respect of the arrangements for his department. There are going to be no checks at the borders on plant health, but they will be, as it states, in some internal location. Is this entirely sensible when we are dealing with something as fundamental as plant health and biosecurity? If there is an alert for a particular plant disease, should we not reimpose checks at borders for this purpose to make sure that we keep the national biosecurity safe?

In the smaller regulation as I shall call it—the Plant Health (Amendment) (England) (EU Exit) Regulation—paragraph 2.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum sets out obligations,

“for the control and management of plant health risks”,

for the import of plant material from third countries and the movement of such material,

“within the EU single market”.

Given that our position will be that of a third country, can we clarify what the status will be for plant movements between here and the EU?

On page 21 of the SI, Regulation 19 refers to,

“Prevention of the spread of tree pests: England”.

Again, can we ensure that there will not just be plant passports, as it goes on to say, but physical checks, if there is reason to believe that there is a specific threat? At the moment, we know of threats to three particular tree species. We need to be careful and to understand what our status will be in relation to the EU if we crash out and leave with no deal.

I hope that we can give these instruments a fair wind, but both instruments raise a number of issues of potential concern to the biosecurity and plant health of this country.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, as several noble Lords have pointed out, plant health is a vital issue. I declare an interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust.

Pressure from introduced diseases and pests is serious and growing. Already there has been reference to the publicity surrounding ash dieback, which could kill off 80% of our ash trees and change the nature of our countryside and hedgerows. I am sure that noble Lords—particularly those of my age—will recall the devastation from Dutch elm disease. “You haven’t seen anything yet”, because poised and waiting to come over are killers such as xylella fastidiosa, to which the Minister referred. This is a Darth Vader of plant disease. It could infect a whole range of species of plant and trees. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, talked about three species that are under threat. In reality, it is pretty well true to say that every native tree species is at risk of pest or disease. So plant health needs to be taken very seriously. I thank the Minister for his explanation of these two regulations and for the briefing meeting he set up with himself and senior Defra officials.

The regulations are indeed intended to replicate the current arrangements in Europe, but they contain some differences and illustrate some serious issues. First, as has already been noted, they move the line of defence against the risk of the importation of disease from the port to the importer’s premises in the case of regulated material from third countries. The new process means that the premises of these importers of regulated plants and trees will have to have their process authorised and provide specific inspection facilities, which will then be subjected to a yearly audit. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, Defra has estimated that between 80 and 100 premises may want to be authorised, but authorisations opened before Christmas and only 33 have gone through the process so far. There is a way to go in achieving readiness. Can the Minister tell us what his department is doing to ensure that all those who need to be designated will be designated in time, whenever “in time” might mean?

I must admit that I was concerned that, in the interests of not gumming up the ro-ro ports and creating friction in the trade process, we would no longer stop and check these materials at ports. I was assured by the Defra chief plant health officer that the plants and trees concerned would be transported in bonded conditions so that the disease could not be spread in transit before they had been checked. Can the Minister assure us that such bonding or sealing provisions, as he called them, will work so that there is no risk of trailing pestilence across the country in the interest of simply avoiding embarrassing queues at the post-Brexit ports?

Once the plants and materials are held in authorised premises, they will need to be inspected by the Animal and Plant Health Agency before they can be moved and distributed. As has already been noted, that will require more staff, including additional plant health inspectors. Support staff will also be needed to manage the uplift in the number of phytosanitary certificates required to ensure that exports from the UK to the EU can be handled. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred to that. Defra kindly provided us with figures showing that an additional 117 plant health inspectors and support staff, and an additional five Forestry Commission inspectors, will be recruited. This is a virtual doubling of the workforce. Can the Minister tell us the estimated cost of this new regime? It sounds expensive. Simply doing some sums on the back of a fag packet indicated that the staff alone could cost upwards of £3 million. The public are wholly unaware of these sorts of costs when making their minds up about the value, or otherwise, of Brexit and its variants—so much for the Brexit dividend.

Of course, we are only one country, even if we are four nations. Much depends on effective arrangements being in place—particularly in Scotland, which will subject to separate legislation. Can the Minister tell us whether that legislation has been passed in Scotland and, if not, when it will be passed?

The Minister referred to a new criminal offence being created to provide an enforcement mechanism in the event of failure to comply with a notice issued in respect of a demarcated area. Your Lordships will remember that the House expressed concern about the creation of criminal offences by statutory instruments during consideration of the then EU withdrawal Bill. While this new criminal offence does not count as a relevant criminal offence under the Act, can the Minister confirm the maximum penalty for the offence?

Of course, the new regime deals only with legitimate trade, although the Minister is of the view that it will provide more information for traceability should an outbreak take place. The Minister assures me that the Animal and Plant Health Agency is hot on the tracks of any illegal imports, and I assure the Minister that the agency is regularly under-cover as a mystery shopper at car boot sales in car parks.

These SIs basically recreate a slightly less satisfactory UK regime to replace the existing EU regime for plant health. At heart, this is a lipstick-on-a-pig situation—you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. The scale and threat of plant and tree disease is increasing. In general terms, the Government’s policy for all but regulated materials is of surveillance to spot infestations early once introduced to this country and contain them with vigour. This does not keep out pests and diseases and is insufficiently robust to tackle the current and future threat. Brexit has few merits in my book, but one of them would come into play in this instance: as part of reclaiming our borders, we would have a chance to do a New Zealand or an Australia and adopt a policy of no entry for any plants and trees unless they are demonstrably disease and pest free. If that were in conjunction with a major push for plants to be UK sourced and grown, to reduce the need for imports and to give a valuable boost to the UK nursery trade, that would genuinely be in the spirit of Brexit—I never thought that I would use those words.

I look forward to discussions with the Minister on how we can improve the plant health regime in the context of the forthcoming biosecurity strategy.

Conservation of Habitats and Species (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I welcome and appreciate the Minister’s introduction. Overall, what he said is reassuring. In addition to the point that has already been made, I want to pick up on scientific input, which was mentioned in the Minister’s introduction. Will he clarify in a little more detail the point that changes will be allowed only due to “technical and scientific progress”? The statutory instrument does not specify where the expert input will come from and whether it will involve the statutory nature conservation advisers. Will the Minister elaborate a little on the nature of the scientific input, how it will be taken into account, the degree of transparency in the publication of any scientific advice and how it will work across the four nations of the United Kingdom?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his exposition on these three statutory instruments. I shall start with the first two on the conservation of habitats and species. I have spent almost 30 years of my life campaigning for the nature directives—for their introduction, refinement and implementation, and, on occasion, in their defence. They have been hugely instrumental in protecting internationally important species and habitats, so I say to the Minister: tread gently because you tread on my dreams.

I am delighted that the Government accepted many of the concerns of the NGOs and others, and withdrew and then relaid the first statutory instrument. I commend the excellent work of Greener UK and its constituent NGOs in that respect. The SIs are certainly in better shape now, but there remain a number of points on which I seek ministerial assurance.

We welcome the new provision for statutory guidance to be produced in consultation with the appropriate nature conservation body. This guidance will be required urgently to ensure clarity across all sectors on the meaning of all these changes. I hope the Minister can assure the Committee that consultation on the statutory guidance will begin right away and not take more than a few months to conclude.

We welcome the new regulation introducing management objectives for special protection areas and special areas of conservation, and for their joint network, but I must admit that I am rather perturbed at the wording of the first SAC objective, which talks about achieving,

“a favourable conservation status … (so far as it lies in the United Kingdom’s territory, and so far as is proportionate)”.

This proportionality is about the management of sites, not their designation, and seems to introduce a new restriction that is not in the habitats directive—which, of course, I read nightly before I go to bed. The Minister kindly organised a briefing session with his civil servants, where it emerged that this was about prioritisation, and we explored on what basis that prioritisation process would take place. Surely if a site has been designated as being of international importance, the objective of achieving favourable conservation status ought to be axiomatic; we do not designate sites in order to watch them get worse. We may have only a small proportion of a particular European habitat and species, but we should still have a responsibility to get it into favourable conservation status. Equally, if we are the principal guardian of a habitat such as blanket bog or a species such as the great crested newt, we have a particular responsibility on behalf of the European biosphere to do a good job in looking after them. Do the Government think we have too many newts and blanket bog sites? I may be misjudging the Government, and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what is intended by the concept that management effort should be “proportionate”.

I turn to reporting, which has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. We welcome the change to the instrument, which brings in a requirement for reporting on progress, and on exceptions and derogations, but, as the noble Baroness said, the regulations do not make provision for anyone to review these reports or highlight any lack of progress, as is currently undertaken by the European Commission. As it stands, the statutory instrument is a diminution in protection for these vital species, sites and habitats. Although the reports will be forwarded to the Berne convention, the convention has not exactly been alacritous in following up failings and enabling action to be taken.

I ask the Minister to ensure that provisions be made for an independent review to be included, with the stress on the word “independent”. This would preferably have been in the legislation but we are now beyond that point, so can the Minister assure the Committee that a suitable independent body such as the OEP will be given this reviewing role? Although the progress in setting up the OEP is slightly glacial, the first report under these provisions is not due for two years, so I hope it would be set up in time to pick up the reviewing function.

The regulations introduce a new power for the relevant authorities to make changes to the birds and habitats directives’ annexes and the habitat regulations’ schedules, which will include prohibited methods of capturing and killing mammals and fish. Changes would be allowed on the basis only of technical and scientific progress. I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that expert input, and a duty to consult relevant statutory nature conservation advisers and take account of their advice, is needed in connection with this change, particularly since the changes would be achieved through negative procedure SIs, with their inflexibility to challenge once laid. It would be useful if the Minister could say whether the guidance that will be issued for this SI will confirm the process by which the Government will seek expert input, including from the statutory advisers, and whether this process will be agreed with the devolved Administrations.

On the amendment to Regulation 36, to move the paragraphs on prohibited means of killing mammals and fish into a schedule that would then be amendable by Ministers, could the Minister confirm, firmly and unequivocally, that these powers will not be used to roll back animal welfare standards? I am not sure the Government understand what a hornets’ nest they are inviting in making it easier to challenge what has been quite a difficult process of changing this particular set of provisions about killing.

A highly important issue, which some may see as a bit of a sideshow, is the name of the network of sites designated under the nature directives—currently Natura 2000. I declare an interest, because about 25% of the sites in that network were designated under my chairmanship of English Nature, a piece of work of which I am immensely proud. We are talking about my children and I love them all.

The statutory instrument proposes that this network be called the national site network. This has problems on three counts. The first is practical: sites of special scientific interest are also known as national sites, since they are important for national and not European criteria. Also, planners across the country risk getting mightily confused, as there is already reference to national sites in the National Planning Policy Framework. These are different sites with different criteria.

The second issue is that several of the Natura 2000 sites in Northern Ireland span the border with the south. I have happy memories of driving along the border in the dark during the Troubles, in an RSPB Land Rover, which I hoped was clearly marked, trying to track down the last crekking corncrake in Northern Ireland. If we crash out on 29 March and have a hard border in Northern Ireland, presumably wildlife will have to wait at the border, in common with everyone else, but we certainly should not call these border sites national sites because they are clearly transnational. Also, “national” has a distinctly different meaning in Northern Ireland.

The third and most important reason for not calling the network of sites the national site network is that the one thing that distinguishes the sites designated under the nature directives is that they are not national in importance, but designated for the very reason that they are international in importance. Therefore, could I persuade the Minister to confirm that no matter what this statutory instrument calls the network, the Government will swiftly announce that for the purposes of clarity it will forthwith be known as the international site network? This network would include the Ramsar sites to complete the set, and would be clearly distinguishable from the SSSIs and the marine conservation zones.

On the impact of the statutory instruments on provisions in Northern Ireland, the office for environmental protection will not operate in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is also the only country in the UK that does not have an independent nature conservation advisory body, so who will take an independent role in overseeing the implementation of these statutory instruments in Northern Ireland? For example, when I spoke on the need for reports to be reviewed by an independent body or for independent conservation advice to be taken, it was not clear who could take this role in Northern Ireland. We are sweeping away the powers that the European Union had in ensuring protections were enforced, but we are not proposing anything to replace that vital function in Northern Ireland. In the absence of a functioning Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, what do the Government propose?

I see from the scrutiny of these statutory instruments in the other place that the Minister indicated that DAERA civil servants had asked that the possibility of the OEP covering Northern Ireland should be kept in play until Northern Ireland Ministers returned and could decide. Can the Minister cast more light on this? I hope he will confirm that these are issues that need to be tackled and tell us what discussions have been held on this with Northern Ireland civil servants. I hope the Minister will also agree that continued environmental co-operation on the island of Ireland will be vital post Brexit, since it is, after all, a single biogeographic unit.