Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 73 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and Amendments 272 and 274, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

Protecting the environment is important to me. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, I believe that over the last 10 years we have seen many severe weather events that have had a direct impact on our land, our nature and, above all, our soil texture and quality. The land has been leached of essential nutrients, thereby disabling agricultural production and the capacity to produce food. This debate is really all about food and the quality of food for consumption by all our citizens.

There is a value and a benefit to the environment in making financial provision, financial entitlement and financial qualification a means of encouraging a reduction in climate change emissions. It is worth remembering that our Select Committee report entitled Hungry for Change, which was published last week, stated that the features of a sustainable food system are that it should be environmentally sustainable, that land must be managed to ensure that it is used appropriately and is continuously viable for food production, and that the negative impacts of GHG emissions and water and air pollution on habitats and diversity must be substantially reduced, while carbon sequestration and flood management are enhanced. It is important that the forthcoming national food strategy considers those factors, as well as ensuring that our food supply is socially and economically viable.

Therefore, I have no problem in supporting these amendments, because I believe that we have to reduce our CO₂ emissions. We have to make that contribution to net-zero emissions and there should be financial payments to our farming folk that recognise that. What better way to do that than to recognise it on the face of the Bill? I hope that in replying the Minister will indicate the Government’s response to these amendments and set out how they intend to contribute to net-zero emissions through farming and food production.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 272 and 274 in the names of the two noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Jones, respectively—you can never have too many Lady Joneses, in my view.

These amendments would put an urgency and a framework into the objective of substantially reducing the carbon impact of farming, and would include a series of targets and interim targets in line with successive carbon budgets under the Climate Change Act. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, said that the amendments were too declamatory and mandatory, and that is why I support them. We need a bit of backbone to make sure that this vital purpose is achieved.

Agriculture accounts for 11% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and that percentage has not reduced very much over the last 10 years. Unless change can be incentivised financially, agriculture will account for a greater proportion of our UK emissions, as other sectors decarbonise quickly. On the other hand, land is an essential resource for tackling climate change through its ability to sequester and store carbon, and that needs to be taken into account at the same time.

I know that the Minister will say that the purposes in Clause 1 already enable support to be provided for measures to combat climate change. However, the amendments before us provide a much stronger framework to drive the urgent changes required in agricultural practice, and I urge him to consider the extra welly that they will provide for this vital purpose.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. As the UK shares more than 100 stocks with the EU, it is critical that a clear and robust approach is developed to the management of shared stocks, to perhaps avoid another mackerel war, where coastal states set their own unilateral catch limits above scientifically recommended levels. If accepted, this amendment, along with Amendments 12 and 13, would ensure that the joint fisheries management statement and fisheries management plans were drawn up jointly with any coastal state that shares stocks with the UK, recognising that the management of shared stocks must be co-ordinated at a supranational level.

As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, co-operation in this matter is inevitable, as has already been stated by the chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. Only this morning, I was talking to the chief executive of the Anglo-North Irish Fish Producers Organisation, and he too agreed with the sentiment. He also suggested, as I now suggest to noble Lords, that that is possible if you follow the scientific advice, which I have no doubt that the quota arrangements will be based on.

I look towards the Irish Sea, which is adjacent to me. It is managed on a joint basis already, as it was prior to our membership of the European Union, through the Wassenaar agreement between the old Northern Ireland Parliament and the then Government of the Republic of Ireland. That has since been implemented through legislation, because a Supreme Court judgment required it. Having said that, with the UK leaving the EU, I was pleased that the Minister provided me with an undertaking at Second Reading that that agreement would still stand and that the outworking of that agreement would still enable that joint working and joint management plan between the two jurisdictions that covers the Irish Sea in terms of fisheries to continue.

My argument is if that can take place at the moment, as it has over many years, why can it not take place in other discussions about joint management plans with other nations within and without the European Union? As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, fish migrate, mate and multiply in waters, and do not respect territorial boundaries, so there is a need for the joint management plans to be discussed with other coastal states to ensure that we achieve what is in the best interests of our fishing industry and our fishers.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I too support Amendments 8, 12 and 13, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others, which take account of the fact that, as he said very vividly, many fish stocks swim across the boundaries of UK waters and need to be planned for in conjunction with other fishery states. I am aware that these considerations are normally included in coastal state negotiations as they are currently conducted, but there is a need for the Bill to have a simple reinforcement that would be met by putting these amendments on the face of it.

Amendment 51, also in this group, is a rather neat amendment, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. It aims to ensure join-up across Government when negotiating international arrangements other than fisheries to ensure that the fisheries objectives are not forgotten or traded away in other international negotiations. Alas, we already see examples of this emerging in the US trade deal, impacting not fisheries but agriculture. I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Deben—we do not know whether or not he is in his place—when he was Minister for agriculture and then for the environment, used to come back from international negotiations and report to the environmental NGOs in a somewhat crestfallen manner that one of his aspirations had bitten the dust in the negotiations as a trade-off for some abstruse automotive deal or in a backdoor pact on an immigration issue. This amendment would at least ensure that our UK negotiators across departments would by law have to respect the fisheries objectives—as amended, I hope, by this evening’s overarching sustainability objective from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs.

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[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick [V]]

My Lords, I find that I have a certain sympathy with Amendments 9 and 28. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—who moved Amendment 9—and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, I think that it is important to link the fisheries objectives to the practicalities of the Bill in terms of outworking, effort quotas and quotas generally. Can the Minister clarify whether those will be based on the science in terms of historic catches?

For a long time, fishermen, the fishing industry and fishers generally were concerned that quotas did not always relate to what was in the sea—that is, the volume of particular species of fish. They felt that the science was not necessarily always accurate. I would appreciate it if the Minister could provide in his winding-up speech an update on how the outworking of the Bill, including the intentions of this amendment, will reflect the requirements regarding gear and the science, as well as how the science will direct and fuel the quota arrangements and allocations, so that fishermen do not feel that they are penalised in future.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for sorting me out on Amendment 51 when I jumped the gun on the groupings. I also commend him for his two amendments in this group.

One regret with this Bill is that we did not have an opportunity to see a completely brand spanking new Fisheries Bill that codified all the legislation, irrespective of whether it came from Europe or was domestic. That would have been a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has done that for this particular element of the common fisheries policy and has translated it into a brand spanking proposed new clause for the Bill. I very much support him in that. Perhaps we should have got him to write the fisheries legislation in its totality, but I remember what happened when we let him loose on the NHS legislation—we did not much like what he produced—so perhaps that is not such a good idea after all. Well done to him on this piece of redrafting. I hope that the Government accept that this particular piece of this patchwork Bill has been codified successfully.