Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Kinnoull and Viscount Trenchard

Report stage
Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean in bringing back his excellent and very necessary amendment. I supported his identical amendment in Committee and had intended to add my name to this one too, but I was beaten to it by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who is not in his place. Nevertheless, I entirely and whole- heartedly support this amendment.

I remember that the Minister told your Lordships’ Committee:

“The Government wholeheartedly support the objectives”


behind my noble friend’s amendment. But he clearly did not think it is necessary and has not tabled his own amendment. However, he did acknowledge that the intent of the existing regulations

“is not currently being achieved”.—[Official Report, 22/10/24; col. 565.]

My noble friend Lord Forsyth has rightly tabled this amendment again and has so well explained the serious damage caused to the Atlantic salmon population by open-net salmon farms in Scotland, many of which are not adequately regulated. In particular, my noble friend has drawn your Lordships’ attention to the harm cased by the toxic chemicals used to treat the infestations of sea lice and the damage caused to the wild salmon’s DNA, which is specific to each river system, by interbreeding with escaped salmon from the open-net farms.

It is true that apart from one salmon farm in Northern Ireland, open-net salmon farms are at present confined to Scottish waters. However, we absolutely do not want them in England. I strongly support my noble friend in bringing back this amendment. I should also declare an interest as a salmon fisherman on the River Tamar in Devon. I strongly support the noble Earl, Lord Devon, in bringing up the problem of the oyster farming in the south-west river estuary systems.

Before I finish, I will ask the Minister again the question I asked in Committee concerning the unnecessarily restrictive licences issued for the shooting of cormorants which prey on wild salmon. Does he know how many gamekeepers are employed by the Crown Estate and how many cormorants they are licensed to shoot each year? I look forward to other noble Lords’ interventions and the Minister’s reply.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make two very short points relating to the reasoning the Minister gave in response to these amendments earlier. I should also say that my sympathies lie with my noble friend Lord Devon, in that I wish this were a wider aquaculture thing, and that the commissioners were able to consider the environment for all of aquaculture, for the reasons I gave in Committee; I will not repeat them.

The first logical problem I had with the Minister’s response was in relation to how many salmon farms there are and the intention of the current commissioners of the Crown Estate not to do any salmon farming. The difficulty I have is that salmon was an incredibly common thing to be fed to people in Victorian times. We are able to legislate on the Crown Estate for only the first time in 63 years, so if we are legislating for 63 years’ time, I feel that logically we need to think a bit more about protection further than however far out the current commissioners look, which, I imagine, is something like five years.

I feel that we are going to have to improve aquaculture around our waters because of the lack of calories that we are producing for our population. Therefore, it is poor logic to say that we do not need to legislate for salmon because we are not interested in salmon farming at the moment. I hope the Minister might address that in his remarks.

My second logical problem is that the Minister was able helpfully to list a number of statutory instruments in Scotland setting out the rules for salmon farms, but those all apply to salmon farms that have already been established. The problem I was told about by Crown Estate Scotland is that, because it is not really able to look at economic benefit, sometimes it might let through licence holders of lower quality that then create the problems. Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said so eloquently, they are not being held to account by these complicated rules because there is not really a police force. In any event, there is no one to fine, because often the reason that things have gone wrong is that the small entity that owned the farm has gone bust, even though it was, in fact, a subsidiary of a very big entity. That entire list is irrelevant. What matters is not what happens after you have established a salmon farm but the decision to establish it in the first place. I would be very interested in any help the Minister can give on those two logical issues.