Fisheries Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)
Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Luke PollardTuesday 15th September 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Brendan O'Hara
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 108, in clause 48, page 31, line 23, leave out
“the UK Exclusive Economic Zone”
and insert
“England or the English zone”.
This amendment turns the UK-wide requirements around remote electronic monitoring systems into England-only requirements.
Fisheries Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Luke PollardTuesday 8th September 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Fisheries Act 2020 View all Fisheries Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 8 September 2020 - (8 Sep 2020)
Luke Pollard
The right hon. Gentleman highlights a good topic, which I did not touch on, but am happy to, about the optionality of safety. My view and that of the Labour party is that safety should be a minimum standard, not an optional extra. Under the clause 35 financial assistance powers, the Secretary of State has the ability to arrange financial assistance for
“maintaining or improving the health and safety of individuals who are involved in commercial fish or aquaculture activities”.
He has the ability to do that: there is not a minimum standard that insists on it.
If the right hon. Gentleman suggests that clause 35(1)(e), on which we can still table amendments as we have not reached it yet, should be a compulsory measure—that the Secretary of State should ensure that there is always funding to create a minimum standard—I would agree. In the absence of a minimum standard, clause 35(1)(e) solely suggests that the Secretary of State can fund such provision if he or she wishes. That is a very different point from a minimum standard, and that is why it is so important that there should be a safety and workforce objective that establishes at a high level the belief that there should be minimum standards.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in your place, Mr McCabe, as well as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. It is a pleasure to get the band back together, with a few notable extras.
We are absolutely in favour of amendments 71 and 72, and if they are put to a vote we will support them. The public asset objective for our fisheries is hugely important and runs parallel with the Scottish Government’s aim of managing Scottish fisheries as a national asset.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport was right to highlight the barriers that have been put in the way of those wishing to join the industry, through the concentration of incredible amounts of quota in the hands of a tiny number of very wealthy individuals. If the fisheries industry is to be a public asset, it has to benefit the public that it should serve. At the moment, it fails to do that.
It is correct that the safety of the workforce has to be paramount. No one in this room with a fishing community in their constituency has not felt the pain of a fishing tragedy. In my own Argyll and Bute constituency we went through something similar a couple of years ago. Every community has a tale to tell. We need to make safety a top priority, as part of the creation of an environment that will encourage more people to join the industry.
Those two issues are closely connected. If we create a safe environment in which young people believe that they can prosper and have a future in the fishing industry, through safety measures and through a change to the quota system, we can make fishing an attractive career of choice. That will help to alleviate a lot of the issues that we currently face in trying to attract people, particularly young people, into the industry.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport is correct when he says that the treatment of many non-EU nationals and non-EEA nationals who have worked in the fishing industry has to be looked at, but I would not go so far. From my experience of speaking to local fishermen in my constituency, they tend to be extremely good employers, but there has to be a minimum standard set and a minimum requirement for anyone wishing to employ people, regardless of where they come from, in the fishing industry.
If amendment 71 is pushed to a vote, we will support it as we are in broad agreement with the hon. Gentleman.
Brendan O'Hara
On a point of clarification, amendment 76, to which the hon. Gentleman was referring, is about the elimination of incidental catches in all circumstances. Anyone who has been a recreational fisher, or even guddled about in a pool, will know that incidental catch or bycatch is almost inevitable and almost impossible to eliminate. Surely we should be asking that commercial fishing businesses do an awful lot more to innovate and upgrade their equipment to avoid it. Is he seriously asking us to support an amendment that calls for the elimination of the bycatch in all circumstances? That seems to be an impossible ask. Surely we should be looking at a more innovative solution.
Luke Pollard
One of the difficulties of having so many amendments grouped together is that we cannot get into each one individually. That is a probing amendment to find out what the plan is. I will return to species in a moment, but to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question on bycatch, the discard ban was introduced with good intentions—to borrow the Minister’s phrase from earlier.
There is a real crisis of fish being discarded over the side of boats because people do not have the quota to catch that fish. Fishers are being put in a difficult position by existing regulations—regulations that Ministers themselves may decide on, even if under an EU directive on how things work. In mixed fisheries—which I believe is what is around Scotland, and is certainly around the west country, which I represent—for fishers to target specific species is difficult, resulting in an inevitable bycatch. The difficulty is that the discard ban states that a fisher cannot catch that, discard it or land it.
That poses questions about how a reformed discard ban would work under the new freedoms that the Minister has set out. Greater quota pooling, for instance, might be one way, especially for smaller boats, to make sure there is sufficient quota within a pool to ensure that bycatch is adequate there. There needs to be a greater understanding of the need to allocate more quota for some of those things, especially in mixed fisheries, to cope with that. The fundamental point—which I think the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute was getting at, and to which I hope the Minister will respond in the spirit in which the amendment was tabled—is that the discard ban currently does not work for our fishers and certainly does not work for our environment. The intention behind it is good. We need to preserve that intention, but also ensure that the fish our fishers are catching get a good price and are preferably landed at their local port.
The hon. Gentleman also noted at the start of his intervention, in relation to the difference between commercial fishing and recreational fishing, that there is a real challenge, which we will come to later, in applying restrictions to recreational fishers who are not taking the volumes of fish out of the water that some of our commercial friends are. There is a tendency to regard the two slightly differently, which I think he hinted at in his intervention.
To briefly return to the amendments, I am grateful to hear the Minister say that the Government have declared a climate emergency. That is very welcome news. My recollection of the debate is that the Government did not oppose the declaration but did not support it either. I am very happy to hear that the climate emergency declaration is now Government policy and not just parliamentary policy. The subtle distinction is important, because if it is a Government declaration of a climate emergency, the Minister has made a bigger announcement today than perhaps she wanted to. It is important, because we are in a climate emergency and there is a climate crisis that affects our fish stocks.
One area that the Minister hinted at, which is important and why Government amendment 1 needs to be looked at again, is the changes in fish and where they reside. As the Minister knows, fish do not follow international boundaries. Laws that seek to govern fish to follow international boundaries are problematic. The Minister set out how she hoped to ensure that those fish with high survivability are returned to the sea and not landed dead —I think she mentioned that in relation to amendment 78. I agree with her, but the Minister’s statement is at odds with DEFRA’s decision not to grant the bluefin catch-and-release fishery in the south-west, because bluefin tuna, bless them, have very high sustainability and can be caught time and again. The experience for the fish might not be one that many of us would like, but a fish in the sea is worth so much more to our recreational fishing sector that charters boats to recreational anglers than it is from being landed and eaten in our food supply chain. I agree with the Minister when she talks about high survivability and hope she will respond to that point.
The bluefin catch-and-release fishery was something that I mentioned in my remarks, and the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) also made a powerful case in support of it. The catch-and-release bluefin fishery would not only enhance our scientific understanding of the changes causing these wonderful creatures to enter more of our British waters, or to return after a great absence to our British waters, but could create an enormous number of jobs across the west country, and they could in due course appear in the North sea, where tuna was present before the decline of fish stocks.
I have taken up enough time on this. Suffice it to say that Labour Members disagree with Government amendment 1. We would like to see sustainability as the primary mover of sustainable fisheries. The message that removing that sends to all those that care about our oceans is a poor one. Fishing should be sustainable economically and environmentally, and we should be unafraid of saying that sustainability is the primary driver of fisheries management. If we do not have sustainable fisheries, we will not have jobs in fishing or the fish in the sea that we need. To pre-empt what you might be about to say, Mr McCabe, the amendments sandwiched between that and amendment 73 are designed to probe the Minister for an explanation of the position on each of those points—which she has done in part, with the challenges that I have posed. However, amendment 73, which concerns net zero and decarbonising our industry, is absolutely critical to the future of the sector. I hope the Minister will set out the Department’s, and indeed the Government’s, plans to decarbonise the industry. She needs to be under no doubt about how seriously we take the importance of hitting net zero for fishing.
Fisheries Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Luke PollardTuesday 8th September 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Fisheries Act 2020 View all Fisheries Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 8 September 2020 - (8 Sep 2020)
Brendan O'Hara
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman. That has taken an awful lot longer than I imagined it would. I was primed for that one at 9.35 am morning. Obviously, clearly not, but I appreciate his sentiment.
Given the circumstances in which these resolution mechanisms have been put in place, there is a massive potential conflict of interest if the UK Secretary of State, who is also in charge of English fisheries, is the person we charge to found that dispute resolution mechanism. Rather than the Secretary of State having this power, surely any dispute resolution mechanism would have to be created by all four nations, which would be bound by it. It should be something that all four nations and Administrations can agree to. I do not think anything else would work practically or politically.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
The reason why we discussed this mechanism in the previous iteration of the Fisheries Bill Committee was the very real fear that a dispute might arise between the Westminster Government and a devolved Administration in the preparation of the annual fisheries statement. Let me take the Westminster Government and Holyrood as an example, although it could be one of the others. A dispute could become a political game. So the purpose of this mechanism was to say, “What happens in that scenario?” It is not out of the question that there could be a disagreement between the fisheries approaches of the devolved Administrations and the United Kingdom.
This amendment was proposed in the previous iteration of the Committee to challenge the Minister, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East has done here, to say what would happen in the event of a dispute. The answers that were given in the previous Fisheries Bill Committee were very weak, and there is still no solution to what would happen if a devolved Administration took issue with the Secretary of State’s fisheries statement, or if the fisheries management plans, as detailed in the joint fisheries statement, were not compliant with the obligations set under the Secretary of State’s joint fisheries statement but were compliant with the devolved Administration’s approach. That is an important issue.
Brendan O'Hara
Does the hon. Gentleman accept the premise that the Secretary of State is also the person who is politically in charge of English fishing, and that there would be a potential conflict of interest if that individual was charged with setting up the dispute resolution mechanism? We absolutely agree that there should be a dispute resolution mechanism, but it should not be for the Secretary of State alone to decide what it should be.
Luke Pollard
I am afraid that the remit of the Fisheries Bill affords us only the ability to give certain responsibilities to certain people, and the Secretary of State is responsible for the Secretary of State’s fisheries statement, so he seems to be the logical person to look at in that respect. I am pleased that the SNP wants to see a dispute resolution system in place. I say to the Minister that there is a good argument for having a plan before a dispute arises. Given that fishing is so political and important to the livelihoods of our coastal communities, as the shadow Minister said, having a dispute resolution system in place makes good sense, and it is better to design one when the Administrations are not in dispute than to cobble one together when they are.
Fisheries Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Luke PollardTuesday 8th September 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Fisheries Act 2020 View all Fisheries Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 8 September 2020 - (8 Sep 2020)
Brendan O'Hara
On a point of clarification, amendment 76, to which the hon. Gentleman was referring, is about the elimination of incidental catches in all circumstances. Anyone who has been a recreational fisher, or even guddled about in a pool, will know that incidental catch or bycatch is almost inevitable and almost impossible to eliminate. Surely we should be asking that commercial fishing businesses do an awful lot more to innovate and upgrade their equipment to avoid it. Is he seriously asking us to support an amendment that calls for the elimination of the bycatch in all circumstances? That seems to be an impossible ask. Surely we should be looking at a more innovative solution.
Luke Pollard
One of the difficulties of having so many amendments grouped together is that we cannot get into each one individually. That is a probing amendment to find out what the plan is. I will return to species in a moment, but to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question on bycatch, the discard ban was introduced with good intentions—to borrow the Minister’s phrase from earlier.
There is a real crisis of fish being discarded over the side of boats because people do not have the quota to catch that fish. Fishers are being put in a difficult position by existing regulations—regulations that Ministers themselves may decide on, even if under an EU directive on how things work. In mixed fisheries—which I believe is what is around Scotland, and is certainly around the west country, which I represent—for fishers to target specific species is difficult, resulting in an inevitable bycatch. The difficulty is that the discard ban states that a fisher cannot catch that, discard it or land it.
That poses questions about how a reformed discard ban would work under the new freedoms that the Minister has set out. Greater quota pooling, for instance, might be one way, especially for smaller boats, to make sure there is sufficient quota within a pool to ensure that bycatch is adequate there. There needs to be a greater understanding of the need to allocate more quota for some of those things, especially in mixed fisheries, to cope with that. The fundamental point—which I think the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute was getting at, and to which I hope the Minister will respond in the spirit in which the amendment was tabled—is that the discard ban currently does not work for our fishers and certainly does not work for our environment. The intention behind it is good. We need to preserve that intention, but also ensure that the fish our fishers are catching get a good price and are preferably landed at their local port.
The hon. Gentleman also noted at the start of his intervention, in relation to the difference between commercial fishing and recreational fishing, that there is a real challenge, which we will come to later, in applying restrictions to recreational fishers who are not taking the volumes of fish out of the water that some of our commercial friends are. There is a tendency to regard the two slightly differently, which I think he hinted at in his intervention.
To briefly return to the amendments, I am grateful to hear the Minister say that the Government have declared a climate emergency. That is very welcome news. My recollection of the debate is that the Government did not oppose the declaration but did not support it either. I am very happy to hear that the climate emergency declaration is now Government policy and not just parliamentary policy. The subtle distinction is important, because if it is a Government declaration of a climate emergency, the Minister has made a bigger announcement today than perhaps she wanted to. It is important, because we are in a climate emergency and there is a climate crisis that affects our fish stocks.
One area that the Minister hinted at, which is important and why Government amendment 1 needs to be looked at again, is the changes in fish and where they reside. As the Minister knows, fish do not follow international boundaries. Laws that seek to govern fish to follow international boundaries are problematic. The Minister set out how she hoped to ensure that those fish with high survivability are returned to the sea and not landed dead —I think she mentioned that in relation to amendment 78. I agree with her, but the Minister’s statement is at odds with DEFRA’s decision not to grant the bluefin catch-and-release fishery in the south-west, because bluefin tuna, bless them, have very high sustainability and can be caught time and again. The experience for the fish might not be one that many of us would like, but a fish in the sea is worth so much more to our recreational fishing sector that charters boats to recreational anglers than it is from being landed and eaten in our food supply chain. I agree with the Minister when she talks about high survivability and hope she will respond to that point.
The bluefin catch-and-release fishery was something that I mentioned in my remarks, and the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) also made a powerful case in support of it. The catch-and-release bluefin fishery would not only enhance our scientific understanding of the changes causing these wonderful creatures to enter more of our British waters, or to return after a great absence to our British waters, but could create an enormous number of jobs across the west country, and they could in due course appear in the North sea, where tuna was present before the decline of fish stocks.
I have taken up enough time on this. Suffice it to say that Labour Members disagree with Government amendment 1. We would like to see sustainability as the primary mover of sustainable fisheries. The message that removing that sends to all those that care about our oceans is a poor one. Fishing should be sustainable economically and environmentally, and we should be unafraid of saying that sustainability is the primary driver of fisheries management. If we do not have sustainable fisheries, we will not have jobs in fishing or the fish in the sea that we need. To pre-empt what you might be about to say, Mr McCabe, the amendments sandwiched between that and amendment 73 are designed to probe the Minister for an explanation of the position on each of those points—which she has done in part, with the challenges that I have posed. However, amendment 73, which concerns net zero and decarbonising our industry, is absolutely critical to the future of the sector. I hope the Minister will set out the Department’s, and indeed the Government’s, plans to decarbonise the industry. She needs to be under no doubt about how seriously we take the importance of hitting net zero for fishing.