Fisheries Bill (Fifth sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Members for Waveney and for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport for tabling these amendments, which deal with an important point. I have a concern about what is described in the briefing we received today from Greener UK as a “fundamental flaw”. The more I think about it, the more I understand that to be the case. The concern is that public bodies currently have to act in accordance with the joint policy statements. That may be good in so far as those statements marry up with the Bill’s objectives, but it leaves rather a lot depending on the content and substance of the statements.

The advantage of the amendments, which are essentially the same in their import, is that they would place a duty on public bodies to have regard to the objectives. Those objectives are good—there is broad consensus that they are exactly the objectives we ought to set in respect of fishing policy. It seems to me that tying public bodies into the objectives, rather than just the policy statements, is a good idea that would strengthen the Bill significantly. I suspect such a provision might have been put in the Bill anyway, had it spent a little longer in the oven of Government.

I am interested to hear the Minister’s thinking. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Waveney intends his amendment as a probing amendment, but Members inevitably will wish to return to this matter, either in Committee or at a later stage.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

It is a pleasure to start with this very important clause, which sets out our sustainability objectives. I hope I am able to reassure hon. Members that the two amendments are unnecessary because of other provisions in the Bill.

The fisheries administrations are already covered by the joint fisheries statement and, in the case of England, the Secretary of State’s fisheries statement. Clause 2 sets out a clear requirement to publish a joint fisheries statement explaining how we intend to achieve the objectives set out in clause 1. Clause 6(1) contains a requirement that the functions of national authorities must be carried out in accordance with the joint fisheries statement.

One of my issues with amendment 36 is that it uses the words “must have regard to”. I believe that the structure we have put in place—with a joint fisheries statement that explains in great detail how we intend to achieve the objectives, is regularly reviewed, can be updated when circumstances change, and must be followed—is more powerful than saying simply that authorities must have regard to the objectives. We want this to be an obligation that we seek to follow in the best possible way, while recognising the complexity of the marine environment and how things are subject to change.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

Is part of the problem, as we heard during the evidence sessions, that other Administrations do not necessarily have to follow what is set down in the joint fisheries or ministerial fisheries statement—they merely need to explain why they departed from it?

[George Eustice]

That provision is only for a force majeure event such as a major crisis or something that would require an Administration to move outside the plan, and they would have to explain why that had happened. The requirement to follow the joint fisheries statement applies equally to all Administrations in the UK and it is legally binding.

Other public bodies—for example, the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities—are already covered by legislation, and those obligations are set out in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, which was introduced by the previous Labour Government. Section 153 of that Act sets out clear duties for IFCAs to

“seek to ensure that the exploitation of sea fisheries resources is carried out in a sustainable way…seek to balance the social and economic benefits of exploiting the sea fisheries resources…with the need to protect the marine environment from…the effects of such exploitation”,

and finally to take any other steps that are necessary for sustainable development. Obligations for the IFCAs are therefore already covered by the 2009 Act.

[Owen Smith]

I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation, but I do not really understand what he means by force majeure events. This seems to me to be quite simple. Clause 6(1) states:

“A relevant national authority must exercise its functions…unless relevant considerations indicate otherwise.”

I would be grateful to know what “relevant considerations” might mean, because that seems to be fairly broad criteria. Clause 6(4) states simply:

“If a relevant national authority within subsection (5)(a) or (b) takes any decision in the exercise of its functions…otherwise than in accordance with the policies contained in an SSFS that are applicable to the authority, the authority must state its reasons”.

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[The Chair]

Order. The fact that the Minister mentioned clause 6 is not a good reason to question the Chair’s decision on the matter.

[George Eustice]

I concede that I started this by mentioning clause 6, but I did so in the context of obligations that were to give effect to the measures in clause 1—we will return to that issue in further detail later on.

My third point is that the Environment Agency has a role when it comes to fisheries, and particularly freshwater fisheries—for example, the regulation of salmon. It is covered by separate legislation, and the Environment Act 1995 places a duty on the EA to promote the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty and amenity of inland and coastal waters, and land associated with such waters, as well as the conservation of flora and fauna that are dependent on the aquatic environment.

For the reasons we have set out, we believe that the joint fisheries statement and obligations in clause 6 already give effect to the obligations and objectives in clause 1. Public bodies that are not covered by the joint fisheries statement are covered by other legislation, notably the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the Environment Agency.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, as I sense he is coming to the end of his remarks. Will he confirm that the contents of the joint policy statement could be subject to judicial review?

[George Eustice]

Lots of things in our constitution are subject to judicial review. If a joint fisheries statement were published and there was some doubt as to whether those objectives were being delivered, there is always a basis in our constitution for that to be legally challenged. However, I believe we will be able to work together with all Administrations to ensure that the joint fisheries statement sets out how we intend to deliver our objectives.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about why we chose to do that via a joint fisheries statement, he will know that the marine environment is a very dynamic place where new challenges present themselves. To have a dynamic, detailed plan that is updated periodically and remains relevant, which refocuses us on our objectives and learns lessons from what may or may not have worked, is more powerful than the two amendments would provide.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister is being generous with his time. He sets out a process that we hope would be followed in optimum circumstances. In fact, very often that is not the case; other considerations come into play. We have to produce legislation suitable to deal with the worst possible circumstances, not just the base that we hope for. Surely, the advantage of putting this into the objectives, rather than just remaining with the policy statements, would be that those who wanted ensure that the policies meet the objectives would not have resort to that sort of expensive legal procedure.

[George Eustice]

I simply believe that the approach we have set out, of a joint fisheries statement that can be regularly updated and can express in great detail how we intend to deliver those objectives, is more powerful than a simple addition to the clause. In this Bill we give legal effect, via the joint fisheries statement, for a requirement on Administrations to follow those objectives.

There are occasions, as the right hon. Gentleman will know from his constituency, when we have to do annual fisheries negotiations with Norway and the Faroes, and we have to do the coastal states negotiations on issues such as mackerel. Sometimes, countries such as Norway use other scientific measures, although maximum sustainable yield is one of their approaches, too. Sometimes, we have to reach an agreement, and if we are too inflexible in our approach to reaching an agreement with countries in those circumstances, everybody unilaterally sets their own quota and goes their own way, and the marine resource suffers. It is important that our plan has the flexibility to enable us to reach a settlement with our near neighbours such as Norway and the Faroes.

I hope I have been able to persuade hon. Members that the approach we have set out deals with the intention behind the two amendments, and that they will not feel the need to press them.

[Peter Aldous]

I have listened carefully to the Minister’s points. Although it was important to highlight the issue we need to take into account, I am generally content that the existing provisions, particularly the joint fisheries statement, cover the matter On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: 36, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert—

“(1A) Any public authority with functions relating to fisheries activities or fisheries management must have regard to the fisheries objectives in the exercise of those functions.”—(Luke Pollard.)

This amendment would place a duty on public authorities to have regard to the fisheries objectives in exercising their fisheries functions.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[George Eustice]

I do not believe the amendment is necessary, for reasons that I will set out. I will describe in a moment what we intend to do on quota allocation.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport highlighted, case law in this area is very clear. We have an unwritten constitution, elements of which do not need to be put in statute. We do not need to put in statute that Parliament is sovereign. We do not need to put in the Bill that fish live in water. Certain things are facts, not objectives. We do not have an objective to make fish a public asset; it is a statement of fact that they are a public asset, and our common law tradition enshrines that.

The case law is very clear. The UK Association of Fish Producers Organisations brought an important test case in 2013, when my predecessor moved some quota. Mr Justice Cranston, the judge who took the case, noted Magna Carta and what it sets out, and its implications were that fish stocks are a public resources. As he stated:

“Consequently, there can be no property right in fish until they are caught.”

The nature of our unwritten constitution, our common law tradition and our case law make it clear: fish are a public asset. Furthermore, articles 2 and 56 of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea recognise that coastal states have sovereign rights over their resources, including fisheries in their territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, and we are signatories to that convention.

I do not believe it necessary, but I wish briefly to explain why in our White Paper we set out clearly that fish are a public asset. As we diverge from relative stability shares and additional fishing opportunities come in, we have been explicit that those new fishing opportunities will not be allocated along current fixed quota allocation lines, and that initially, as a first step, we will allocate the quota differently. We are considering a number of measures. First, we could put additional fish into the under-10-metre pool—the inshore pool—to give extra fishing opportunities to our smaller inshore fleet. Secondly, other parts of the Bill we set out an ability for us to use some of that additional quota to create a national reserve to help manage the landing obligation and deal with the problem of choke species and discards. Thirdly—again, this is set out elsewhere in the Bill—we have outlined the possibility for a producer or organisation to tender for fishing opportunities for a year or a number of years, based on their track record on issues such as creating opportunities for new entrants, their sustainability, the amount of benefit they deliver for coastal communities and so on.

We have been clear that new fishing opportunities will be allocated differently. In the longer term and once we have established alternative methodologies, if we gave sufficient notice—the judgment I mentioned earlier suggested that the Government would need to give seven years’ notice to people who currently hold FQA units—it would be possible gradually to start to move away from the FQA system altogether. We do not want to do that expeditiously, for the reasons set out in our White Paper. Complex business models have been built under the current FQA regime, and people have borrowed money to buy vessels with FQA units attached. As we leave the EU, a lot of changes will already be happening and we do not want to compound them by destabilising the system entirely. We have been clear that we will stick with existing FQA units for existing fishing opportunities, but we will diverge from that over time. To do that, we must simply give notice in a policy statement or document that we intend to do so; it does not need to be placed in the Bill.

[Mr Carmichael]

Would the insertion of the amendment prevent the Minister from doing that?

[George Eustice]

It would not, but nothing in the amendment is necessary, and when we draft legislation, it is important to include that which is necessary. Arguably, there would be nothing wrong with a piece of legislation that stated “Parliament is sovereign”, except that that which can be given can be taken away. We have an unwritten constitution and a common law tradition in this country because there are certain things that we do not want to call into question by including them in a Bill. We certainly do not want to downgrade this to a mere objective when it is about a long-established right and a national resource that cannot be turned into a property right, and that is a long-standing point in our constitution.

I understand the thinking behind the amendment and the points raised by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. I hope I have been able to reassure him that is unnecessary and, more important, that I have enlightened him of the Government’s intentions and approach as we move to a new system and regime for allocating quota.

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[The Chair]

Does the Minister wish to reply?

[George Eustice]

indicated dissent.

[The Chair]

He is not required to do so.

[Luke Pollard]

I welcome the Minister’s words about allocation of quota. We will come to that in due course. In consideration of the first two amendments, an awful lot of fishers will watch this Committee and will ask why Ministers are resisting fish being a public asset in this Bill. They will ask, “What are they trying to hide or trying not to say?”

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman seeks to downgrade something that is a fact—fish are a national asset—to become a mere objective.

[Luke Pollard]

For someone who is still quite fresh in Parliament, it is very curious that a downgrade to an objective is better than not having something in the Bill at all. Not mentioning it seems to be the higher state for something—that is not what most fishers will take from this debate.

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[Luke Pollard]

The amendments relate to the importance of marine planning in the conservation and exercise of the fishing sector. We have tabled new marine planning objectives and I am grateful for the work of many stakeholders in reinforcing the importance of marine planning, in particular the Blue Marine Foundation.

The UK and devolved Administrations are preparing marine plans under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 and the Marine Act (Northern Ireland) 2013. It is important that marine plans are incorporated in the joint fisheries statement and the Secretary of State’s fisheries statement, and vice versa. It is vital that the Fisheries Bill works in concert and tandem with the existing legislative framework.

The Marine and Coastal Access Act is an important piece of legislation passed in the final years of the Labour Government, as was mentioned by the Minister. It is curious that there is not an automatic read-across from that Act to the provisions in the Bill. The amendment seeks to reflect the importance of marine planning in the Marine and Coastal Access Act in the Fisheries Bill.

We heard in evidence last week from Dr Amy Pryor, who is the programme manager at the Thames Estuary Partnership, chair of the Coastal Partnerships Network and a member of the Coastal Communities Alliance. She said that she would like to see more formal recognition of that in the Bill and perhaps an extra marine planning objective that could set out these matters. The amendment seeks to ask the Minister why marine plans are not mentioned in the Bill and I would be grateful for his response.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman asks why marine plans are not included in the Bill. The answer is really quite simple: the previous Labour Government did all that was required in this space. As he highlighted, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 already sets out our approach to marine management. Specifically, in chapter 4, section 58 (1) requires public bodies to consider marine policy documents in any decision making. Such documents include marine plans and UK marine policy statements.

A number of regional marine spatial plans are under development, and under the Marine and Coastal Access Act, we have a network of marine conservation zones and are building a blue belt around our shores. Many byelaws introduced by IFCAs give effect to the protections required under the marine conservation zones. As with some of the other amendments that the hon. Gentleman tabled, we believe that this is unnecessary, since our approach to marine spatial planning is set down in the Marine and Coastal Access Act. I would also point out that it is not really an objective to have marine planning. It has been a legal requirement since 2009, and those plans have been rolled out. It is already a legal requirement that decision makers and public bodies must follow those plans.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Is the Minister saying that, if we accepted this amendment, we would be duplicating the existing law and therefore creating a significant amount of confusion?

[George Eustice]

I would make two points. First, it is unnecessary, since we already have legislative requirements that require public bodies to do this. Secondly, in common with the previous amendment, it does not sit easily as an objective. It is not an objective to have a marine plan; it has been a legal requirement for almost a decade. I hope that, given the fact that I have given credit to the Labour party for introducing the Marine and Coastal Access Act, which has delivered these things, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport will not see the need to duplicate that which has already been done.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the Minister for his response and for saying more nice words about the previous Government—more of his colleagues should receive that memo. I hope that was not the last mention of it.

The purpose of the amendment was to set out the importance of marine planning in general, and I am grateful to the Minister for doing that. Some good steps are being taken. I welcome the extension of the blue-belt policy. The Minister will know that my colleagues from Plymouth and I have been arguing for the creation of the country’s first national marine park in Plymouth Sound. We also need look internationally, and I hope Ministers hurry up with the designation of the South Sandwich Islands as a marine park. I do not feel that the amendment would duplicate the legislation, as the hon. Member for Nuneaton said, but I am grateful for the Minister’s words, which make it clear to all stakeholders how important marine planning is to our fragile marine environment. As a result, I will not press the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave that the amendment be withdrawn.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is right. Any of us who represent fishing communities know the devastation that can be caused when a boat is lost. Indeed, just at the start of this year in my constituency, the Nancy Glen sank off Loch Fyne with the loss of Duncan MacDougall and Przemek Krawczyk. The devastation felt is something I never want to see again. Anything that improves safety on board has to be supported.

I question the amendment in relation to wages and salary protection, but the SNP supports the principle. The Scottish Government—notably Fergus Ewing, the Cabinet Secretary—have written to industry stakeholders along those lines and spoken to the Government and officials about regularising the visa situation to ensure that non-EEA workers are subject to UK employment law. We are keen to get full implementation of ILO 188, the International Labour Organisation work in fishing convention. We have concerns that the wording of the amendment means it would not apply to the many fishermen who are self-employed, or to the significant proportion of the industry who are share fishermen, to whom such things as the national minimum wage do not apply. We need to ensure that anything in the licence works in tandem with existing law and check the exact implications of the amendment.

It is complex, so although we agree with the spirit of the amendment, particularly about safety on board, we must ensure that we get things right. If the amendment is pressed to a vote we shall support it but, if the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport does not press it, we will have an opportunity to work on a proposal covering more of the industry. We could work on that together and perhaps bring it back on Report.

[George Eustice]

This issue is obviously incredibly important. Fisheries and fishing are one of the most dangerous occupations. Every year we have a fisheries debate—we have one tomorrow. Tragically, we always have to reflect on those who have lost their lives to put food on our tables. I know that there has been a tragedy linked to the constituency of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, with the loss of the Solstice and a crew member. The report was published recently and the hon. Gentleman has had a lot of dealings with the family.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised an important point and told a rather depressing story about a young man who was wearing a personal flotation device for his safety and was ridiculed. That underlines an important issue. We need to try to get a culture change—a change in attitude in some sectors of the fleet—so that safety is given more prominence.

I want to return later to a couple of issues raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, which are covered elsewhere in the Bill, about how we define under-10s. There are also other issues about monitoring of smaller vessels. However, first it is important to recognise that safety, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledges, is first and foremost a matter for the Department for Transport. I think I am right in saying that he, along with me and many in the industry, attended a meeting organised by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who has responsibility for shipping. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, she takes this very seriously. We got fisheries stakeholders together specifically to discuss what more can be done to promote safety. He highlighted important schemes, including the use of personal location devices. Quite a lot of progress has been made, too, on personal flotation devices, which are discreet and do not get in the way of fishermen’s manual work but inflate when they come in contact with water.

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[George Eustice]

As discussed under the previous amendment, climate change is obviously incredibly important. As the hon. Gentleman points out, we have some fantastic marine science laboratories, including in his constituency, that study the long-term effects of climate change, and its impact on, for instance, the availability of plankton and, in turn, our fisheries food chain. DEFRA is therefore responsible for mitigating the effects of climate change. However, the amendment, in common with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, is not necessary, for reasons I will explain.

I feel that, as a Conservative Minister, I am paying too much tribute to legislation introduced by the last Labour Government, but—I am sure this will not have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s attention—they introduced the Climate Change Act 2008, which set out clear targets in a range of sectors, including marine and shipping. The 2008 Act is the cornerstone of the approach of this Government and this country to tackling the effects of climate change. Although managing a reduction in carbon emissions is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—energy sits within its remit—DEFRA is responsible under the Act for climate change mitigation. We produce regular reports to update both the House and the country at large on our approach.

I will make a couple of points on the other international agreements. The UK is a signatory to those various conventions and agreements and is therefore bound by them under international law. We do not need to state that in the Bill.

I also point out that the hon. Gentleman’s list is a partial one, omitting a number of important international conventions to which we are a signatory. The problem with placing on statute a partial list is that it casts doubt over our commitment to the other agreements. If we are to do a list, we must at least include them all but, in any event, we believe that a list is unnecessary. However, I will just point out some of the other important international agreements and conventions to which we are a signatory and which are not currently covered. There is the UN fish stocks agreement, which sits alongside the UN convention on the law of the sea, and the Oslo-Paris agreement, which is the cornerstone of our international agreements dealing with challenges such as marine litter and marine pollution more widely.

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[Luke Pollard]

Given all the Minister’s praise for the good done by the last Labour Government, I am amazed at his temerity for even wanting to stand against them at the 2010 election.

[George Eustice]

It would go well beyond the scope of the Bill, but I could give many reasons why I did not stand for Labour.

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful to the Minister for stating that he remains a Conservative.

When considering this type of legislation, it is important that we raise the volume on climate change. Labour’s genuine concern is that, since the abolition of the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the political priority and the volume of the debate on climate change has been much reduced. It is not spoken about as frequently and it needs to be.

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out our international obligations and for spending so much time talking about how it is in our country’s interest to pool our sovereignty and to work with our international partners where there are common interests. I am also grateful to him for expanding on the list of international obligations that the UK has signed up to and that we need to continue to be involved in to ensure that our waters are properly managed.

I beg leave to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Luke Pollard]

I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 1, page 2, line 11, after “marine” insert “and aquatic”

This amendment would add the avoidance of the degradation of the aquatic environment to the definition of the “ecosystem objective”.

The amendment is about the ecosystem and aquatic environment around our fisheries. The aim is to tidy up a part of the Bill that is inconsistent across the board by enhancing the ecosystems objective and ensuring that it includes the avoidance of degradation of the aquatic environment.

Hon. Members who have had the fortune of sitting in Westminster Hall with me will know of my passion for protecting our marine archaeology, and shipwrecks in particular. I talk a lot about shipwrecks and the importance of creating a wrecks at risk register to ensure that we understand what those pieces of marine heritage are and better protect what lies under the sea. I am pleased that clause 40 refers to

“features of archaeological or historic interest”

in the definition of marine and aquatic environment, as it means that every time there is reference to the marine environment, heritage should be included automatically. That is a useful inclusion, consistent with the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 in respect of the responsibilities of inshore fisheries and conservation authorities. However, the definition and scope of the marine and aquatic environment is not taken up consistently in the rest of the Bill, which is a missed opportunity.

The matter should be dealt with consistently. It seems odd, given the power of the Secretary of State and devolved Ministers to make provisions for a conservation purpose which includes the marine and aquatic environment, that this is not mentioned as an element of the fisheries objectives or within the scope of the fisheries statement. Will the Minister confirm where we are in relation to the aquatic environment, as well as the marine environment?

[George Eustice]

First, I will explain the effect of expanding the provision to include the aquatic environment. The hon. Gentleman has defined it as covering heritage assets on the sea bed, notably shipwrecks, and I will return to that, but first let me say that referring to the aquatic environment as well as the marine environment would also cover all our inland waters, so all of our freshwater bodies.

We already have a regulatory framework for the management of freshwater fisheries, and the Environment Agency is the government agency that leads on the aquatic freshwater environment. Relevant pieces of legislation include the water framework directive—obviously an EU directive, but all the domestic provisions put in place under the water framework directive will come across as part of retained EU law under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018—and the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975, which governs in particular waters in so far as they affect salmon conservation. There is also the Water Resources Act 1991 and, as I mentioned earlier, the Environment Act 1995. We therefore have a comprehensive suite of existing legislation pertaining to the freshwater environment.

Returning to the separate issue of heritage assets such as shipwrecks, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledges, the famous Marine and Coastal Access Act established a licensing regime for people exploring shipwrecks, for example. He may know of the frequent controversies, with divers complaining that some of that licensing regime is too onerous and that it affects their ability to remove ghost nets or litter from shipwrecks, for example, without a licence. There is therefore a comprehensive—some say onerous—licensing regime in place to protect shipwrecks. In addition to the licensing regime for the marine management organisation established under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, we also have the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, which allows the Secretary of State to protect wrecks in territorial waters and sites of such wrecks.

We have comprehensive legislation that covers the issue of the aquatic freshwater environment and the protection of heritage assets such as shipwrecks. Therefore, an expansion of the ecosystem objective to cover heritage assets in the way outlined by him is unnecessary in the light of the other legislation that we have in place.

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. It is important that when we are looking at our marine environment, we look at not only the fish in it but at aspects of human history. When we get to talking more broadly in this place about the wrecks at risk register, I hope we have a new ally. Given what the Minister has said, I do not wish to press the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Peter Aldous]

I beg to move amendment 79, in clause 1, page 2, line 11, at end insert—

“(c) to ensure that fishing activities are managed in a manner that contributes to the achievement of good environmental status as set out in Article 1 of Directive 2008/56/EC and is consistent with all other international and domestic environmental legislation.”

 

The amendment would add to the ecosystem objective. Taking account of the fact that fishing can have significant implications for the health of the wider marine environment, it would impose a duty to deliver fisheries management in a way that is coherent with other relevant environmental legislation. It would also set ecosystem management in an international context, ensuring that we adhere to international environmental legislation. In many respects, the amendment can be viewed as providing belt and braces—perhaps even duplication—but ecosystems around the world are interconnected and it is important that we recognise that. I tabled the amendment to seek assurance and confirmation from the Minister that the Government are thinking globally and are aware of their international obligations and duties.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend highlights the marine strategy framework directive, which sets out the commitment to good environmental status. It is important to recognise that we are already legally bound to deliver that commitment to good environmental status, because the directive has already been put into our domestic law through the Marine Strategy Regulations 2010. We already have those on our statute book.

My hon. Friend will be aware that we are bringing across all retained EU law, including objectives of this sort, under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We have been clear that we do not intend to have regression in our approach to environmental protection, although once we are free of the European Union there will be things that we can do better and more effectively. We can tailor legislation that works to deliver some of these objectives better than we can as a member of the EU, where legal requirements do not always achieve the desired outcome as effectively as they could.

On my hon. Friend’s wider point about working internationally, we have been absolutely clear that we are leaving the European Union because we want to make our own laws again, but in doing so we intend to reassert ourselves on many international conventions, where we have, frankly, lost our voice. We find ourselves in an extraordinary situation in many of the regional fisheries management organisations and in important conventions, such as the convention on international trade in endangered species and the convention on biological diversity, where, even though we are a signatory, we are not allowed to speak as an independent country.

The supposed duty of loyal co-operation means that we must always vote the way the EU tells us to vote. This leads to situations, for instance on the International Whaling Commission, where the UK would often wish to go further than the European Union is willing to and we are forced to follow an EU line. In the final days of the last Labour Administration, the then Secretary of State ordered officials to vote for a more restrictive measure to protect bluefin tuna under CITES regulations. The EU started infraction proceedings against the UK as a result of us exercising that decision to try to protect bluefin tuna. Infraction was only avoided by the then Labour Government giving an apology and saying that they would not do such a thing again.

Since the Lisbon treaty in particular, the UK’s voice on the international stage has been undermined. As we leave the EU we will take our own independent seat on regional fisheries management organisations and other important conventions, and I believe that we will have more influence. I hope that I have been able to reassure my hon. Friend that we are not by any means retreating from the world. Indeed, as we leave the European Union and become an independent country again, we will be able to have our own independent voice on these critical international organisations, where we are well placed to lead.

[Peter Aldous]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reassurance and confirmation that the UK is very much aware of its environmental responsibilities and is thinking globally. He is right to be adopting that approach. I will highlight two issues. The UK overseas territories might be small in land mass, but many sit in enormous oceans. We also have, in my own constituency, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, which is an arm of DEFRA. Over the last few years, CEFAS has been very successful in winning work all around the globe. It is very important. We have a great opportunity. It is something that the British people feel very strongly about as well.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point. CEFAS is the world’s pre-eminent fisheries science agency and its views are sought after around the world. Dr Carl O’Brien, the lead scientist at CEFAS, spoke in the evidence session. It does a lot of work in the middle east, in countries such as Kuwait, as my hon. Friend will be aware.

[Peter Aldous]

I am pleased that the Minister has given me the assurance that I was seeking about the Government’s aspirations and ambitions. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

To pick up on that last point, my amendment is probing, albeit with a serious purpose at its root. Essentially, the problem is that for years we have had conflict between what fishermen believe is in the sea and what scientists say is in the sea on the basis of the data that they have. The data that would be produced by the full documentation of catches—which is an important principle, whichever jurisdiction we are dealing with—would be the best possible evidence. It would be in the interests of the industry, and it would certainly be in the interests of the scientific community as a whole.

For years, I have complained about the fact that the source of the conflict between the industry and the scientists is that much of the data collected is almost two years old by the time it is used for the purposes of decision making. We know the situation in the marine environment can change massively over that time. As a consequence, we have a mismatch between the scientific evidence and what fishermen believe is in the sea.

What we propose would allow for a much earlier “quick and dirty” analysis of what is in the sea, and would offer the opportunity of different fisheries management systems. At the moment, given the way in which we use science, I would be very cautious about the idea of moving to anything like a real-time closure, for example. The science, of course, is always evolving and improving, but this is not a novel process; this approach is taken in a number of other fishing jurisdictions. If reliable data is coming from the industry itself, the objectives of real-time fisheries management will be much more easily achieved.

Amendment 24, which stands in my name, is probing, but it strikes at the heart of the approach that the Government will be taking, especially in later parts of the Bill, which deal with the practical ways in which fisheries management is to be undertaken. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, for example, is keen to see the creation of advisory councils.

[George Eustice]

I will begin by setting out what is required now, what regulations we will have as a starting point, and some of the things that the Government are already doing in this area. First and foremost, the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 will incorporate all existing EU rules on data collection on to our domestic statute book. A significant amount of data is already collected: for instance, vessels over 10 metres in length are required to provide logbook data, which includes details of fishing activities, the catch, the type of fishing gear used, and the area where the fish were caught. Landing declarations are required, with information on the weight and representation of fish, and sales notes on the first sales of fish are also required. There is a comprehensive system of data collection, right from the point of catching and where those fish were caught, through to sales.

We have taken some steps in the past year to begin to improve data collection on the inshore fleet. Traditionally and currently, the under-10-metre fleet has been required to provide only sales notes. We have said that from next year, we will introduce a requirement for IVMS on inshore vessels, so we will know where those vessels are catching their fish. We will also introduce catch reporting as part of a step towards a new settlement with the under-10s: we intend to give them more quota but, in return, have a better understanding of how they are fishing and what they are catching. I believe that through those steps, by extending some of those provisions to the under-10-metre fleet, we will improve the documentation of where fish are caught and how they are caught.

The amendments are unnecessary, because they attempt to dip a toe into the type of detail that would be covered, in my view comprehensively, through the joint fisheries statement. Under that statement, we would have to demonstrate how we are delivering on that scientific objective. That is inevitably going to include how we are funding fisheries science, what the priority species are to move from a data-limited assessment to a full MSY assessment, what the challenges are, and what other issues we need to address. The matters that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport seeks to cover in the scientific evidence objective should be picked up in much greater detail in the joint fisheries statement.

On the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who has lots of fishermen in his constituency, as long as I have been in post, I have been told that the scientists are always out of date and do not know where the fish are anyway, so they send survey vessels to the wrong place. I have looked at the issue in depth. We use a range of data, as Dr Carl O'Brien pointed out. We look, in real time, at landings data and the size of the fish being caught. There is the Endeavour—the survey vessel that CEFAS operates out of Lowestoft, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney—which goes to the same grounds every year to sample fish. There is an important reason for that: although the fish might move, there has to be a consistent yardstick to assess the same area; otherwise the control and the ability to monitor trends are lost.

That is not the only data that the scientists use. They use landings data and the survey vessel that goes to the same locations, but they also place observers on fishing vessels with the fishermen who say, “We know where the fish are and CEFAS don’t,” so we are monitoring that as well. We will never perfect the science, but the algorithms and models that the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea uses to predict stock trends factor in that some of the data may be a little dated. A constant refrain of fisherman is that the science is out of data and the scientists are in the wrong place anyway but, although we will never get it perfectly right, we do everything that we can to mitigate the types of effects that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland described.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister actually makes the case for moving towards full documentation of catches very well.

[George Eustice]

As I explained earlier, we already have full documentation of catches on the over-10s, and next year we will introduce full documentation of catches for the inshore fleet. A linked issue is so-called remote electronic monitoring, which is basically cameras on vessels. Other parts of the Bill give us the power to require cameras on vessels, which could improve our abilities on enforcement and data collection.

We have the ability now, which we will retain in future through provisions in later clauses, to make real-time expeditious changes where required. We have had, for instance, issues with spurdog bycatch in parts of the west country. We had a successful spurdog bycatch avoidance programme, which was put together expeditiously in partnership between CEFAS and the industry in the west country, to assist fishermen to avoid those bycatches or to help them deal with them when they have been unable to avoid them.

I hope that I have reassured the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen of our progress in that area and of our commitment to science. The joint fisheries statement will cover those issues in greater detail.

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out measures to address the data deficiency. To realise the aspiration of my party and, I hope, of the Government to have the most sustainable fisheries in the world, it is important that we match that with a commitment to having the best data in the world. Although we already have the world’s best fisheries science, fishers and stakeholders are concerned that there is insufficient coverage of that best science across every single fish stock, so I am grateful to the Minister for setting out how that can be enhanced.

We must send a loud and clear message that we need better data and baseline stock assessments. That needs to be done in conjunction, collaboration and co-operation with the fishing industry, rather than science being done to fishers, which is often their view. The more we can do in a collaborative way, the better. In the light of the Minister’s remarks and as the Committee will discuss data later on, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

Amendment 30, which stands in my name, is probing. I confess that its genesis is in briefings from the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. I eventually tabled it because, on balance, it is an important issue that needs to be teased out. The amendment may not be the ideal way of doing it, because the enforceability of the duties of the other Administrations—Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Ministers and Governments—is questionable, but the thinking behind it is important.

Essentially, given the devolved nature of fisheries and the fact that we will have the objective of equal access, we have to find a way around the conflict between the different systems that will be put in place in the different jurisdictions. If opportunities for fishing are to be taken up in England by boats from Scotland, or vice versa, or in Northern Ireland by boats from the west of Scotland, or vice versa, we need to find a way to ensure that the regulation is as accessible as possible.

Devolution is a good and worthy objective, which my party has supported for many years, but it can occasionally trigger the law of unintended consequences. If we do not manage the different systems in good faith, the people who have to comply with or enforce the regulations may be left in a difficult position. That is the issue that we seek to bring to the Minister’s attention by way of the amendment. I will not press it to a vote, but I am interested to know how exactly he envisages that will work in everyday, or every year, fisheries management considerations.

[George Eustice]

To address the amendments, I probably need to explain how quota flows through the various systems at the moment from the point at which it is created internationally. Both amendments stumble into the thorny area of our devolved settlement, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out.

As an overarching point, we have sought to achieve through the Bill a system that enables us to manage our fisheries domestically in a way that respects the devolution settlement that has been established. To be honest, we sometimes have particular challenges in fisheries, because on one level they are about international agreements with other countries, which are a reserved UK competence, but on another level many elements of fisheries management have been devolved. In some areas, it has been challenging to put together arrangements that ensure that we have a UK framework, where it is needed, in a way that respects the devolution settlement, but I believe the Bill achieves that.

Let me explain how quota is created. First, we have an international fisheries negotiation between the UK and the EU, or the UK and a third country in the future, where, species by species, a total allowable catch and an allocation to the UK of that TAC are agreed. The UK Government then allocate that quota—our share of the TAC—to the devolved Administrations, currently following FQA units attached to the vessels where they are registered. That means we give Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales an allocation of quota. How they allocate that within their fleet is then a devolved competence.

A few years ago, the Scottish Government did a consultation on moving away from the FQA unit approach and allocating quota in a different way. Although they ultimately stepped back from that, it is a devolved responsibility for them to decide how to allocate that bit of the quota that the UK Government have allocated to them. The difficulty with both amendments is that they cross a line in terms of the devolution settlements, because they start to fetter the ability of the Scottish Government, the Northern Ireland Administration or the Welsh Government to allocate their own quota in the way they see fit.

We intend to pick up these sorts of issues through the joint fisheries statement. Indeed, we already wrestle with these challenges and we have a concordat and memorandums of understanding to manage these issues. Sometimes we have some tension between Scotland and other Administrations over where vessels are registered and where they are fishing, which can lead to disputes that we have to resolve. Due to the nature of our devolved settlement, the one thing we have become used to in fisheries is finding a way through the concordats, the memorandums of understanding or, in future, the joint fisheries statement. The challenge that both amendments alight on is not new; indeed, we have wrestled with it for some time. The solution to the problem lies in the joint fisheries statement that will set out common understandings in the way we approach these particular issues.

While I recognise that both amendments highlight an important issue, the issue goes wider than the Bill because it goes right to the heart of the devolution settlement. One thing we resolved not to do with this Bill is to attempt to rewrite or overturn the devolution settlement. In the absence of that, the joint fisheries statement is our solution to some of the problems the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has highlighted.

[Luke Pollard]

rose—

[Luke Pollard]

I am more than happy to, Mr Gray. As a Janner, speaking slowly is not something I am accustomed to doing, but I will try my best.

When considering these amendments, it is important to look at how devolution and access to water can be well managed through the Bill. We know that we have problems relating to equal access, both in internal jurisdictions within the United Kingdom and with our friends from the EU and Norway. Any access must be properly managed and properly understood. This concern is often raised by fishers in Plymouth, who sense that the rule of equal access is not currently being obeyed or applied with the same level of effort and energy as it should. That refers in particular to when there are restrictions or a closure in a UK six to 12 miles area that affects UK fishers but not necessarily others. The Minister talks about the importance of having a level playing field between all those different bits.

[George Eustice]

Obviously, there will be licence conditions on all foreign vessels fishing in British waters in future. Technical measures of that sort would be a requirement on those seeking access to our waters.

Seahorses: Illegal Trade in the UK

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing this debate and on his support for the protection of seahorses, one of our most unusual and beautiful fish. He has most eloquently described their unique nature and their role in coastal ecosystems, and I join him in paying tribute to the Seahorse Trust and others for their work in raising awareness of their plight. While only two species inhabit UK waters from Shetland to Devon, there are over 50 species that inhabit many of the shallower coastal waters across the globe. As my right hon. Friend said, they are unlike most other fish in the way that they look and the way that they live. This even extends to their reproduction, as it is the males that take on eggs from the female and then take responsibility for giving birth to and raising the young seahorses.

Seahorses do not, however, differ from other species of fish in the pressures that they face and the threats to their survival. Seahorses are caught for the aquarium and traditional medicine trades, or sometimes simply for trade as curios. They are affected by pressures on their environment such as habitat loss, and they can be affected as bycatch as a side effect of fishing activities targeted at other species. Trade in seahorses to the UK is mainly in live animals, the majority of which have been bred in captivity. Between 2010 and 2015, the UK imported around 21,300 live seahorses that had been bred in captivity and 1,700 live wild seahorses.

As I said earlier, there are two species of seahorse in the UK: the short-snouted seahorse and the long-snouted seahorse. Both species are listed on the OSPAR list of threatened or declining species and habitats and, as a contracting party to OSPAR, we are committed to taking measures to protect them. Both native seahorse species have a wide distribution around the UK and are found all around the British Isles and Ireland, right up to the Shetland Islands. Seahorses feed mainly on very small marine crustaceans. Adult seahorses can eat between 65 and 70 of these a day, whereas the fry eat up to 3,000 plankton-sized bits of food every 24 hours. Seahorses are often taken by predatory fish, and they have to rely on their camouflage to avoid detection as they are poor swimmers.

The protection of endangered species around the world is a key priority for this Government. The wellbeing of our society depends on a healthy environment, and that requires policies to deliver healthy ecosystems, global biodiversity and the conservation of species. My right hon. Friend can be assured that we are taking action, bilaterally and through international agreements, to protect wildlife populations both around the UK and further afield, whether they are threatened by poaching, habitat loss or unsustainable use. The United Kingdom is rightly recognised as a global leader on environmental issues, whether by raising the illegal wildlife trade up the international agenda or through our commitment to tackling climate change, deforestation and ocean acidification.

At home in our waters, we are providing increasing levels of protection to marine life, including seahorses, through the designation of marine conservation zones. They provide a means for protecting seabed habitats and the species that live on and in the seabed, such as seagrass beds and the seahorses that live in them. We have so far designated 50 marine conservation zones—some of them, such as Torbay and Beachy Head West, with the specific objective of protecting seahorses. We have consulted on a third tranche of MCZs where we have proposed to designate a further 41 sites. Some of these, such as Studland Bay, Beachy Head East and Bembridge, will again specifically protect seahorse populations. We expect decisions on third tranche site designations by June next year.

As with illegal trade, we are also working to protect marine species on a global scale. The UK and our 14 overseas territories are custodians of the fifth largest marine estate in the world. We have committed to create a “blue belt” to protect and conserve around 4 million sq km of waters around the overseas territories. Seahorses also receive protection through the UK’s Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and through the listing of seahorses under CITES—the convention on international trade in endangered species—and related EU regulations. Trade in seahorses is indeed regulated rather than prohibited. In the UK, it is an offence to trade in species of seahorse native to the UK unless there is evidence that the seahorses have been captive bred. Where there is illegal trade in seahorses—for example, where there is no evidence that the specimens were legally imported—we can prosecute under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species Regulations 2018.

In the UK, seizures of seahorses at our borders are thankfully few and far between. In the past calendar year, there have been 14 in total, and none has been of a significant nature. They have primarily involved traditional medicine products of which seahorses were identified as a component. As we have heard, though, protections are only as effective as the enforcement behind them. I can tell my right hon. Friend that there was a conviction with a fine in 2014 at Bromley for the offence of selling a product containing seahorses. There was a further case in 2015 in which someone was cautioned. Of the 14 seizures I mentioned, one involved five live seahorses for the marine trade in which permit errors were identified, one seizure of 13 dried seahorses that were part of a Chinese medicinal package, and 12 seizures of pills in which seahorses were identified as being one of the medicinal ingredients.

We recognise the importance of tackling wildlife crime and have therefore increased funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit to provide intelligence and support for local police forces. The unit plays an important role in supporting police forces to detect and prevent wildlife crime, including the illegal trade in seahorses, and it has, for instance, acted on information from the Seahorse Trust, which my right hon. Friend mentioned, on potential illegal activity. Nevertheless, my right hon. friend has suggested that we should evaluate the effectiveness of the protections already in place. He will therefore be pleased to know that we made such a commitment when we hosted the illegal wildlife trade conference in London in October. We committed there to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of preventive and criminal justice responses and other measures related to the protection and monitoring of wildlife and forest products. That will be undertaken by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime in the coming months and will help to identify any shortcomings in our regulatory regime.

With respect to the illegal wildlife trade, the Government have a strong record of leadership, and the UK is at the forefront of international efforts to protect endangered animals and plants from unsustainable and illegal trade. This trade is not limited to certain countries or regions and is a truly global phenomenon affecting plants, animals, fish, birds and insects, and the Government are committed to tackling all the elements. We are committed to working with our international partners around the world to tackle the growing problem, and our response must rest on international co-operation. It is working with other nations to reduce demand and disrupt this crime that will truly make the difference. To support those efforts, the Government are investing £36 million to try to reduce demand, strengthen law enforcement and develop sustainable livelihoods. We need to eradicate the market for illegal wildlife products, ensure our laws are strong enough to deter the criminals, rigorously enforce those laws and provide sustainable livelihoods for those who might otherwise be tempted by the short-term gains of poaching.

My right hon. Friend raised the fact that the trade in endangered species is being facilitated online, which can present particular challenges. That is why we are working closely with the private sector across the transport, financial, tourism, cyber and technology sectors to increase the levels of ambition and commitment by businesses to assist us in tackling the illegal wildlife trade. Some significant and hugely encouraging steps have been taken recently. In particular, the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online has brought together the world’s biggest e-commerce, technology and social media companies to join forces in shutting down online marketplaces for wildlife traffickers. NGOs and global companies such as eBay, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are working to unite the industry and maximise impact for reducing wildlife trafficking online. They are committed to reducing wildlife trafficking across online platforms by 80% by 2020. The related global wildlife cyber-crime action plan also includes commitments from its partners to work with companies to ensure that policies and reporting mechanisms for customers and users are easy to access and user friendly.

This has been an important debate, with a different conclusion from the debate we have been having all day on Brexit. It shows there is more to life than Brexit. The plight of our seahorses, which my right hon. Friend has highlighted, is important, and I hope I have been able to reassure him of the seriousness with which the Government take this issue, of the steps we have taken and of the global action we are taking to tackle this particular challenge.

Question put and agreed to.

Fisheries Bill (Third sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for coming. You are very welcome. I invite the Minister to ask the first question.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Q147 Could each of you explain to us what you think the main flaws and weaknesses in the current common fisheries policy are, but also which of its elements and principles you would like to be retained in a domestic Bill?

Andrew Clayton: I think the biggest weakness in the current common fisheries policy, following the reforms in 2013, is that those reforms have been under-implemented. For example, the legally binding requirement to fish at sustainable levels that was written into the CFP was a classic EU fudge. It was put in there with a deadline of 2015 where possible, and by 2020 in any event, so we are only now coming to the crunch in terms of delivering that and making sure that fishing limits are sustainable when they are set each autumn. The Fisheries Minister will no doubt have a torrid time in Brussels in two weeks, trying to make sure that deadline is achieved. The fudges in agreeing those objectives have added further delay to making that policy sustainable, even though a lot of work has been done in the four years since the policy came into effect.

Debbie Crockard: One of the weaknesses of the CFP is its lack of flexibility and ability to react quickly when situations arise. That is something that can be quite difficult if there is a situation that requires reactivity. That is one of the biggest weaknesses, but one of the strengths—one of the strongest things that came out of the last reform of the common fisheries policy—was the legally binding requirement to fish at maximum sustainable yield, which is definitely something that we would like to see.

Rebecca Newsom: We would say that the strengthened version of article 17 of the CFP was an important step forward, but it has not been implemented in the way that we need in terms of environmental and social criteria. We welcome the transposition of article 17 into the Bill, but it urgently needs to be strengthened in order to deliver on environmental, social, and local economic objectives.

Helen McLachlan: I agree with my colleagues and just add that the commitment to take a more ecosystems-based approach towards our fisheries management was a welcome inclusion in the CFP, and we need to take that broader perspective—take fisheries out of a silo and look at the environmental impact, not just on target stocks but broader than that, on other marine species and habitats.

[George Eustice]

Q Is it your view that if we move away from the multilateral kind of discussion that takes place at December Council, with qualified majority voting being the underlying principle for decision making, and instead we move to something that is more of a bilateral agreement between the UK and the EU, and given that we have set out clear environmental objectives that we have brought across from the EU in clause 1 of the Bill, then to answer Andrew Clayton’s point, it should be easier to deliver those objectives, because it will be a bilateral agreement rather than a qualified majority vote?

Andrew Clayton: I would agree that the deal making might be made a kind of cleaner process through that bilateral discussion, but the big concern for me is that the precautionary objective brought into the Bill is insufficient. It actually undercuts the CFP; it is a lower level of ambition than exists in the CFP at the moment. The UK is signalling with this text as it stands that it will aim lower, and that will certainly make it harder to get that kind of agreement.

[George Eustice]

Q Would you expand on that? I know that you have raised this point with me, and I can make a direct comparison between what we have—clause 1(3)—and article 2.2 of the CFP. With the absence of targets that are now past, or they will be past by the time this Bill is commenced, the wording is identical.

Andrew Clayton: The fudge that was agreed in 2013, and the legally binding objective that at the time was welcomed as a big win for the UK in negotiating that legally binding requirement, was CFP article 2.2, which is written in two parts. The first part of the CFP objective is an objective to restore biomass, defined in terms of maximum sustainable yield. It was felt at the time that it was very difficult to make a biomass objective legally binding, because you would be holding Ministers to account for putting fish in the sea, so it was agreed at the time that there should be a second clause to that objective with the aspiration to restore biomass. The second clause, which is the more important and more binding, actually relates to exploitation rates—setting fishing limits. It is that more binding clause that brings in those legal deadlines, saying that by 2015 where possible, and by 2020 in any event, fishing limits should be set in line with that scientific advice on maximum sustainable yield. It is that binding part that we can hold Ministers to account to and it is that binding part that is having an impact in the EU decision making. That is the kind of element that is in the forefront of Ministers’ minds when they are setting fishing limits in the December Council.

[George Eustice]

Q But the use of the term “exploitation rate” was only in the context of describing the 2015 where possible and by 2020 on all quota stocks.

Andrew Clayton: Yes.

[George Eustice]

Q So it is the date that is the only thing—

Andrew Clayton: Personally, I think the date is a moot point, because the UK is committed to achieving that date by 2020. I realise the timing of this Bill taking effect is uncertain, but either way the UK is committing to achieving that job.

The net effect of removing that second clause is that the future Fisheries Bill would therefore just have an aspirational objective to restore biomass at some point in the future, with no deadline. That still leaves Government and Ministers under short-term pressure every autumn to take that short-term view, to overfish in any given year, and there is always an excuse that can be made that overfishing for one more year might be justified in some way, with this longer term biomass objective in mind. The history of the CFP shows us this, but it is not even a historical point that I am making. We have just literally agreed and signed up to a deal this week to set limits for 2019 for mackerel higher than scientists advise, and the only kind of saving grace in that decision was that the Commission announced that they would not be able to do this again next year because of this 2020 deadline. This deadline is biting at the moment; we need to stick to that and not go backwards on the progress we have made.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally on that, there is something else in the Bill that is not in EU law: the requirement for a joint fisheries statement. That is a statutory requirement to have a plan agreed by all parts of the UK that sets out how we will deliver those statutory objectives in clause 1. Is that not the right place to define and describe in more detail how to deliver that biomass objective?

Debbie Crockard: That may be a good place to define it, but the problem with the joint fisheries statement is that, under clause 6(2), if a national authority takes the decision to act other than in accordance with the JFS, it simply has to state the reason why. There is no binding duty to follow that JFS. If it goes against the JFS and sets fishing limits that are not legally bound, there is nothing to hold it to account in that situation.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q One of my concerns about the Bill is that it does not go far enough in addressing data deficiency. We have data for a number of stocks, but for an awful lot of stocks—some quota and some non-quota—we do not have a baseline stock assessment or an understanding of how much fish is in the water that we may be catching off-quota. What could be improved in the Bill to address that data deficiency?

Helen McLachlan: That is one of our concerns. It is not really addressed fully by the CFP either, which is why we think the Bill is a great opportunity for the UK to start to fill that gap. You are absolutely right: we do not have an effective means of documenting what we remove from the oceans. There are requirements to log what is taken. We have operated a landings-based system to date, but we should now move over to a catch-based system, with which we should be able to monitor what comes up in the net. We are not able to do that now; the systems are simply not in place. We would like to see the Bill address that with a verifiable, fully documented catch commitment, supported by the use of electronic monitoring in the first instance, for example.

As you say, it is not only the catch but what else comes up in the nets that we can start to gather data on, which can be fed into stock assessments, increasing confidence in those assessments. That, circularly, is good for best management practice. We advocate a verifiable, fully documented fishery approach with the support of electronic monitoring on the vessel. When under a piece of legislation that prohibits discarding, as we are now, that activity occurs at sea, so we need some means of monitoring effectively at sea to take account of that. Improving data collection would be absolutely fulfilled by that requirement.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I thank our new set of witnesses for joining us. Could you please introduce yourselves very briefly?

Andrew Pillar: My name is Andrew Pillar. I am representing Interfish and Northbay Pelagic, which are primary processing and exporting businesses in Plymouth and Peterhead, but I am also wearing a hat here on behalf of the Scottish Pelagic Processors Association.

Mike Park: My name is Mike Park and I am chief executive of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association, representing over 240 businesses.

Andrew Brown: My name is Andrew Brown and I am the director for sustainability and public affairs at Macduff Shellfish, which is the biggest shellfish processor in Europe.

Daniel Whittle: I am Daniel Whittle from Whitby Seafoods, which is the UK’s largest scampi manufacturer. We are somewhat unique, in that we are entirely supplied from the UK and supply into the UK. I would say we are also representing Northern Ireland, because we have a factory there and are very dependent on its supply.

[George Eustice]

Q Obviously, some of our most important fisheries agreements are those with Norway and the Faroe Islands and the coastal states agreements on species such as mackerel, all of which are currently handled by the EU, where we do not have a direct seat at the table in the way the other coastal states do. Would you explain some of the consequences of that lack of representation by virtue of the fact that we are an EU member?

Andrew Pillar: I have attended many of those meetings with teams travelling from the UK, and it is an extremely frustrating position to witness that power being taken out of the hands of a team representing the UK and placed in the hands of the EU, making decisions that are not best aligned with the interests of the UK catching and processing sector. We have seen in recent years this becoming a very difficult issue in terms of negotiating away access to UK waters, in the coastal states agreements, for a period of time that has been inconsistent with the best interests of the UK.

Mike Park: You will be aware that the EU-Norway negotiations are going on in London as we speak. They failed to come to a conclusion last week. I have been going to these negotiations for over 25 years, I think, and one aspect of the negotiations that we look at with envy is the Norwegian Government always sitting with their sector. They normally have five or six fishermen bound roundabout them so that they can feed from one another in terms of what the appropriate output should be.

I also feel sorry for some of the member state officials, such as the officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Marine Scotland, who sit in these meetings, because very often they are kept out of the heads of delegation meetings, where the detail of the discussions and sometimes the conclusion agreements are set. For 25 years we have sat there, looking at Norway with envy, thinking that at some point we would like to do that, and I think that, as we move forward, perhaps we will. For us, it has always been a negative that the fishermen of Europe are not talked to in any way other than a loose way, and we are certainly not bound into any of the negotiations to feed in in an appropriate manner.

Andrew Brown: I can say a little about this: I used to be involved in these negotiations for the Scottish Government. It was very difficult to try to continue the dialogue with the industry as the negotiations went on. One of the roles I had was to speak to Mike and his like as the negotiations continued. I think there is something in what Mike has suggested.

Daniel Whittle: I do not get to go to the negotiations, but in the previous session there was talk about TAC being set above the recommended scientific advice, and I know a good example of where that happens: area 7 in the Irish sea, for nephrops, where there is a large, 20,000-tonne fishery. Every year they set it above that because the French and the Spanish have quotas that are largely unused, so they set the TAC above what the recommended scientific advice is, to allow that to happen. There is nuance in when the TAC is set above what the scientific advice is.

[George Eustice]

Q In conclusion on this point of the important fisheries in the North sea, is it your view that British interests get traded away by the EU in order to get advantages for other member states?

Andrew Pillar: The opportunity for us is not to be underestimated—to be at the table as a coastal state. That is the prize we in the industry see. Mike touched on that point about the industry working with Government to best achieve those objectives. There will be some trading and negotiations, but they need to be right for the UK and at this moment we are not in that position because we are not a coastal state, but this framework will enable that and delivery of a coastal state has to be the objective.

Mike Park: There is a typical example going on just now in the current negotiations, where the quota of North sea haddock next year will come down by approximately 30%. We would like to get some trade in from Norway to help us through next year, but that has now been balanced against north Norway cod, which the Spanish and French are lobbying heavily to get. That could mean that we do not get the haddock we want in the North sea. The answer to your question, Minister, is yes, it works against us at times.

[George Eustice]

Q All of you export some of your products. In the event of a World Trade Organisation scenario with most favoured nation tariffs, how high is the tariff on the fresh fish that you sell, and are you more worried about tariffs or the possibility of border inspection posing some disruption to the supply chain? Which concerns you most when it comes to trade?

Andrew Brown: As a shellfish processor, we are highly reliant on exports, particularly to Europe, which is the destination for 95% of our scallops, for example. At the moment we enjoy free and frictionless trade, so the implementation of MFN tariffs would have significant effects. We have done some calculations for the shellfish industry as a whole. We are looking at perhaps £43 million in additional costs on shellfish exporters if we moved to that, plus, with third-country agreements with the likes of South Korea, probably another £5 million on top of that—that is per annum. Whether some of that can be absorbed by the customers and buyers in Europe is a difficult one to see. It is a competitive market; therefore, we have concerns that this will have an impact on our competitiveness and on how well we are able to sell our product.

The non-tariff barriers are equally, if not more, important. If we move to a stage where we need health checks and border checks at both sides of the border, that will cause a delay. For shellfish—a highly perishable, high-premium product—a 12-hour delay can reduce value by almost 50%. If you are delayed for 48 hours, you have more or less lost that consignment. The non-tariff aspects are really significant for the shellfish sector and for other sectors.

[George Eustice]

Q On scallops, the MFN tariff is 8%. Arguably, that is a bit like VAT—it is a tax on the consumer, ultimately. I know some in the fish processing sector have said, “Yes, we would obviously rather have tariff-free trade, but don’t sell out the catching sector on our behalf.” I wondered whether an 8% tariff, at the end of the day, given the fluctuations in market price anyway, is hugely problematic.

Andrew Brown: Of course, we do not welcome such a tariff. We have to remember that the shellfish sector is not really gaining anything in additional quotas through Brexit. These are non-quota stocks, other than the langoustine, which we already have a very large share of, so there is no benefit to us—to the shellfish sector—from the Brexit process. We do not expect our catches to be able to go up much, and we require access to some European waters for scallops and crabs, so there are multiple threats to the shellfish sector. We need to ensure that the sector is not forgotten about in the larger discussion on fin fishing.

[Luke Pollard]

In previous sessions, you might have heard me asking about a national landing obligation—a requirement to land fish caught under a UK quota in UK ports. Would that have an impact on the processing side of the businesses that you represent? In the interest of complete disclosure, I also declare an interest, because Mr Pillar and Interfish are based in the constituency that I represent. What impact would a landing obligation to land fish in UK ports have on your sector? Would it be beneficial?

Andrew Pillar: One of the key things in the port that we originate from, in Plymouth, is the market—the auction—and the opportunity for fishermen at all levels to access that and sell their catch. That is from the under-10 fleet right through to larger vessels. As it stands, that business has absolutely no security and no certainty that there will be a supply of fish coming into that marketplace if operators were to choose to put their fish into the back of a lorry and send it directly overseas, which can and does happen. In some ports around the country, that has evolved under the CFP to a situation where markets have failed and there has not been the opportunity to have a diverse marketplace for small, medium and larger vessels.

In the pelagic sector, the opportunities around employment export, upstream and downstream, are wide-ranging. To be competitive in many of those markets, it is essential to have a critical mass—a business must have that critical mass. In the UK, we operate with very different bases for business in terms of business rates, labour costs and harbour costs, which do not put processing on an even playing field with many of our competitors, but we must recognise that it is a competitive market. What we do have is some of the best, highest quality seafood that we will stake our case for being sustainably produced within British waters. That is a highly desirable product and not to be undervalued.

Mike Park: From a Scottish perspective, in terms of landing to the market, up in Scotland all our vessels operate locally. We do not fish north Norway, the Mediterranean or the Pacific or anything; we fish around our coasts.

The vast majority of the demersal fish comes in to ports such as Peterhead, which is the largest white fish port in Europe, and Fraserburgh, which is the largest nephrops port in Europe. You see the investment going on there: we have a new fish market there, and last week we landed 36,000 boxes of fish into that fish market, which is unprecedented elsewhere. You see a significant investment in new vessels—replacement vessels, not additional vessels. You see an enthusiasm up there, which is built on the fact that the stocks are on our shores, we take care of them and we land it back to our markets. There is a small amount that goes to northern Denmark for the Christmas market—we utilise their market for saithe over that period—but apart from that, everything largely comes back home to Scotland.

Fisheries Bill (Fourth sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I beg to move,

That the order of the Committee of 4 December be varied, by leaving out “and 5.00pm” in paragraph (1)(c).

This amendment has been agreed by the Whips.

Question put and agreed to.

Examination of Witness

Griffin Carpenter gave evidence.

[The Chair]

Q 194 I invite the witness to introduce himself and his organisation.

Griffin Carpenter: My name is Griffin Carpenter and I am a researcher at the New Economics Foundation. My work on fisheries policy takes a mixed-method approach; for example, last year I produced an economic impact assessment of Brexit scenarios across the UK fishing fleet—large and small quota holders and non-holders—and followed up the work this year by going to four case study ports and interviewing fishers about what future fisheries legislation could deliver for them.

[George Eustice]

Q You will be aware that our White Paper on the Bill set out our intention to start to depart from fixed quota allocation units as the basis of quota allocation, to create the possibility of tendering quota to producer organisations based on their sustainability track record, what they give back to local communities and what they offer new entrants, and to use quota to help with the discard ban and possibly to put more into the under-10 pool. Do you broadly support that direction of travel?

Griffin Carpenter: Yes, I was pleased to see what was in the White Paper. We have been calling for some of those things for years. As the method of doing that we proposed something like a quota reserve, where the Government set aside some quota and some is allocated based on historical track record and some is set aside saying that we have multiple objectives for fisheries management—new entrants and the landing obligation, as you say—so this quota can be served for different purposes. I think of it a bit like agricultural subsidies where, over time, some continue to be based on production or land area, but some are set aside saying that we have many objectives in this sector. The Government need to retain some quota to do that.

The problem is that that is not followed up in the Bill, which just transposes article 17, which, as written, is not being implemented by member states. That is the problem with article 17. I was a bit disappointed to see the Bill not go through with what was in the White Paper. I think it could be more specific and say, “Rather than just transposing article 17, let’s put in actual criteria such as contribution to local economies or low environmental impact”, but that is not in there right now.

[George Eustice]

Q A lot of this comes down to the difference between a White Paper, which explains the Government’s policy on something and what they intend to achieve with a Bill, and the Bill itself, which is simply the legal powers required to carry out the White Paper. There is a clause in the Bill that gives us the power to have a super-levy on over-quota fish or, indeed, to have a tender regime for different quota. Does that not give all the powers we need? What powers are missing?

Griffin Carpenter: The powers are there. I understand that the Fisheries Bill is enabling legislation and this Committee has had to struggle with asking questions about an enabling piece of legislation. I have a couple of comments. If we want to do something about existing quota—not just the idea of quota that is gained—we need to do something in the Fisheries Bill itself. For example, you have heard other witnesses say, “With extra quota we can solve all problems—any issues around new entrants, the small scale sector and so on—as long as the existing quota is protected.” Of course, that is their interest—they are the quota holders. But we have been working with people who do not hold the quota and they are interested in breaking the lock around existing FQAs.

In essence, fisheries have been accidentally privatised. Every year, quota is allocated to the same holders, and there is a legitimate expectation that that continues in future. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other organisations are too scared to break that hold on the quota and say, “This year we will allocate quota differently.” It has not been done; it is basically privatised now the claim is so strong. If there is ever a point to break that link, it is now.

We are redoing our fisheries legislation, so at the same time as allocating fishing opportunities, I would put something like a seven-year notice period. In seven years, all quota goes back to the Government and we can decide who gets to fish 100% of our quota, rather than just the idea that some quota will be gained. That is great if it happens, but we do not know for which species or whether that is the species required for the landing obligation or the small-scale fleet.

[George Eustice]

Q Do you accept that a lot of business models have been based on buying vessels with the quota attached and, therefore, there is a legitimate expectation, having paid money to get the vessel with its entitlement to some kind of property right, even though it is not an indefinite one?

Griffin Carpenter: Exactly. When those purchases are made, it is not known how strong that property right is. There is an issue with banks not understanding if they can give a loan to a fishing vessel because they hold a quota: how long is that good for? If the stocks go up and down, what earnings will they have 10 years from now? The point of the notice period is to get around that. To give a couple of examples people can look into, the Faroe Islands recently renationalised all their fishing opportunities, and Denmark has a notice period and has extended it recently. It reallocated some quota from large to small and, as something of a compromise, extended the length of the notice period, to say, “Okay, we reallocated from large to small, but we won’t touch this again for 14 years—that’s your notice period.”

[George Eustice]

Q Do you not think that might change from species to species? It might not be a straightforward seven-year period if you were to do things fairly.

Griffin Carpenter: Are you saying what will not be fair by species?

[George Eustice]

Yes. A seven-year period might not be fair for everyone because some might have paid more for different types of entitlement.

Griffin Carpenter: No. If we are dealing with this as a public resource, the claim is the same no matter which fish species it is. The idea is that it is a public resource. We are happy for some members of society to have that right to fish, and not others, but we still reserve the right to change that in future. That is true whether it is mackerel, herring, cod or haddock.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q The NEF study of small fishers around the UK was interesting in highlighting the views of the under-10 fleets in particular. If there is an opportunity, as the Minister outlined, to reallocate future quota or, subject to amendments being accepted, reallocate existing quota, what do you think the opportunity is for small fishers in particular and coastal communities from any type of reallocation from our EU friends to those communities, or from big boats to small boats?

Griffin Carpenter: There are two different types of potential reallocation: one from European fishers to UK fishers, including the small scale; and the question whether we change those distributions in the UK share. The principle is the same: can the small-scale benefit from having additional fishing opportunities, however those come? Our research has shown that there is a desire for fishers.

There is some confusion because small-scale boats often target shellfish. They are not fishing a lot of quota right now; they are catching crab, lobster, cuttlefish and anything they can get their hands on. Nephrops are subject to quota. People say, “They don’t have quota so they don’t need quota,” but if you speak to them, they say, “If we had it, we would love to use it,” because a lot of small-scale fisheries are mixed—they will do something for one season and then switch to quota species if they have it.

There is also a problem with new entrants, which overlaps a bit. You heard earlier that, traditionally, the route into fisheries for young people—fewer are entering at the moment—is through shellfish, because it is so hard to get your hands on quota. You might be able to buy a fishing licence, but buying a quota is too much. Having some quota set aside for small scale, and the overlap of small scale and new entrants—young fishers—is a huge opportunity.

There is a sustainability point, too. There is increasing pressure on shellfish stocks and we do not have good stock assessments on those. Some of the warning lights are coming up now: we are getting lower catch per unit effort, which means that where you do not have stock assessment, that is the warning light. If there is too much pressure on shellfish, what will these guys do? They need some quota to release the pressure on shellfish stocks such as crab or scallops, so they have another seasonable fishery.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have just over three minutes, if there are any further questions.

[George Eustice]

Q The Bill envisages a joint fisheries statement, but also something called a Secretary of State’s statement, which would include a whole plan for the English fleet about how it contributes to coastal communities and supports livelihoods. In what way does that fall short of what you are seeking? It is a clear commitment for a plan that will outline how we allocate fishing opportunities to help those objectives.

Griffin Carpenter: It is a commitment for a plan, but I am saying we should think about that plan right now and what should be in it, rather than leave it to each Government to decide. We have seen that, through article 17, it has always been in UK jurisdiction to decide how to allocate quotas. That is not a power that the EU had that we are taking back; it was always up to us and we have not taken that opportunity. Now is the right time to have that conversation, and the Bill is a piece of legislation that we can put that in.

It is roughly the same with the discussion about MSYs. Yes, in the fisheries statement, they can say how we are doing—how the stocks are doing in reference to those MSY values—but we should have that as a duty. Be specific in the Bill and say, “You cannot fish above MSY.” We are going to be post 2020, so you might as well just say, “We will be fishing in line with MSY.” We are past the deadline.

[Alan Brown]

Q A few witnesses have commented that they do not think there is enough information or transparency regarding the discards prevention scheme that is in the Bill and how it will actually work in future. Do you have any views on that?

Griffin Carpenter: It is an interesting question. From my reading of it, it seems to take from the Norway model, which is that some discards are landed but there is a fee attached to that. Instead of the landing obligation, we will say, “The quota is set at this level. You cannot fish above that, otherwise you get choke problems.” It is more of an economic incentive, rather than a hard line.

That needs to be compensated for with lower quota, because we are saying that there is going to be some fishing above that line, but we will have an economic incentive so you do not land as much. I think the principle is a fair one—switching incentives—but that should be compensated for in our expectations about how much above that quota we are actually going to fish.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

Q Carl and I have worked together on many late nights at December Council.

The Committee is hearing a lot about MSY and the use of it as a guide to fisheries management, but I wondered whether you might be able to explain to everyone, first of all, the types of raw data that CEFAS collects through things such as a survey vessel, Endeavour, the work done on fishing vessels and on landings to gather the raw data, and, secondly, how that data is used—as close to layman’s terms as you can—to create the MSY position for a given stock.

Dr Carl O'Brien: Before the common fisheries policy was agreed, most fisheries management went through the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission. The data that was used by the NEAFC and that is used by the Commission comes from ICES. At the moment, ICES is made up of 19 member countries that are not just from Europe; it also includes Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, Norway, America and Canada.

Each country records landings data, which is done for us through the Marine Management Organisation. It records effort data, which is the so-called fishery-dependent data. We also have fishery-independent data: in our case, we have the research vessel Endeavour, which goes to sea and surveys around our waters for distributions of individual species. We record the type of species and their size. We take the little earstones, otoliths, out of their ears and age them in a way that is similar to ageing trees—if you slice through the otoliths, you can count growth rings.

We have length measurements of fish, we have age readings, we have species composition, and we have species distribution. All that information is given to ICES. In the case of the UK, because we have devolved Administrations, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England—England does some of the sampling for Wales—combine their data together and it goes in as the UK data. Countries within Europe, such as Germany and France, do something very similar.

The landings data and the biological data are all put together and we carry out formal assessment models. These can be data-intensive and very complicated mathematical models, or they can be more simplistic models, using life history characteristics—things based on growth rates and size of individuals.

Essentially, the assessments are international. It is not the UK assessing our fish stocks in our waters; it is done internationally, there is international agreement and it is not just within the EU but outside the EU as well.

[George Eustice]

Q When we talk about data-limited stocks, what typically is lacking for a stock to be data-limited rather than one with a full dataset on which you can judge MSY?

Dr Carl O'Brien: Before I joined fisheries in the mid-90s, virtual population analysis was used, which is an age structure-based model. You actually use age data. As long as you can age fish, you can model the development of fish as they grow, the same as you would with human populations—one-year-olds become two-year-olds, who then become three-year-olds. You can take into account natural mortality through natural deaths and also exploitation rates—death through fishing.

The typical data-rich models are those that have the age-based data. The data-limited ones are those where, for various reasons, we either cannot age the fish or it is too expensive to age the fish, so we have simpler methods, such as the size of the fish or maturity ogives, which are simpler types of metrics. However, we can still come up with so-called proxies. Back in 2015, within ICES, I was developing methods with our Portuguese and French colleagues to come up with MSY proxies, which, as the Minister knows, the Commission will now accept as MSY values. They are not treated as second-class MSY values. They are appropriate for the data-limited stocks.

[George Eustice]

Q Could you explain briefly the difference between the biomass MSY and fisheries MSY, and why FSMY is deemed the right measure to use for fisheries management?

Dr Carl O'Brien: Partly because it is a question of input and output. To a certain extent you can control fisheries exploitation—the harvest rate. You can control how many boats go to sea and, by implication, how many fish are taken out of the sea. The biomass is a consequence of your management being appropriate or right for the sea and for the species. If you get the balance between exploitation or harvest rate correct, your biomass should continue to grow. One is input; one is output.

[George Eustice]

Q Would you explain where, from a scientific point of view, using MSY throws up practical problems—for instance, with mixed fisheries or where there are choke species—and what we might do to overcome some of those problems?

Dr Carl O'Brien: Do you want to know the history of MSY before I answer that, or can I take it that you know it?

[George Eustice]

You gave us a bit of the history. My question is more about where it poses practical problems, on mixed fisheries and choke species.

Dr Carl O'Brien: The problem is that the stocks in European waters, Icelandic waters and Faroese waters, and in the Barents sea for Norway, are assessed on a single-species basis. The reference points that we have in terms of biological reference points and harvest rates are determined on a single-species basis. Unfortunately, when you put your fishing net in the water, you cannot catch just cod or haddock, or if you try to fish for plaice you cannot catch just plaice; you end up with sole and other species, so you have the so-called mixed fishery problem.

The reference points themselves would be fine in an ideal world where you could fish for just those species. The mixed fishery issue is that you cannot simultaneously achieve all those single-species FMSY values. The approach that scientists have come up with is basically to ask, “Can you find a range around MSY?” The UK was very instrumental in this, and the Minister took our paper to Council in, I think, 2013—the first time we tried it with the Commission.

The idea was to look at ranges. Can you find a range of fishing mortalities that are consistent with high long-term yield? The value that ICES took was 95% of the maximum. Some academics, such as Ray Hilborn, take 80%, which ICES thought was going too far—that could give you quite high Fs. ICES is being quite constrained in the way in which it is trying to manage the mixed fisheries and the choke issues. The reason for the range is that it allows you to try to deal with some of the mismatches between the availability of fish on the ground and the fact that the gear may not be as selective as it needs to be.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally, Norway uses MSY, but also uses a number of other measures. It is sometimes argued that following MSY on its own gives you too much volatility and year-to-year change in stock management. Is there anything that we can learn from the Norwegians’ approach? Do they have a point in terms of having a slightly more holistic approach to sustainable fishing?

Dr Carl O'Brien: Norway, like Iceland, although it wants to follow the general principle of maximum sustainable yield, is not wedded to it to the exclusion of other principles. There may be reasons why one year you might choose to exploit at a slightly higher rate than MSY, rather than at or below MSY.

The Norwegians also have the idea of so-called “balanced harvesting”. Rather than trying to decide how much cod, haddock or whiting you want, you decide, based on the trophic level of where species live, how much you could take out of that part of the system for it to remain balanced. That includes not only the fish species that we look at, but seals, seabirds, whales and other parts of the ecosystem.

We can learn from Norway that if you focus just on fish themselves and the fisheries, you will lose a part of the ecosystem around seabirds, cetaceans and whales. That is something that we need to incorporate into our models. The Government’s 25-year environment plan mentions an ecosystem approach to fisheries management, which I interpret as, starting with the mixed fisheries models, asking how you expand those to take into account other aspects of the ecosystem.

[Luke Pollard]

Q One of the concerns that many stakeholders have raised with us is about data deficiency, especially on non-quota species. How would you recommend that the UK Government and the devolved Administrations address that data deficiency, especially among species where there might be concerns but not a huge amount of evidence gathered to date?

Dr Carl O'Brien: I think you would be surprised how much evidence has been gathered for non-quota species. Seafish had a project called Project Inshore, which I think is now in its second phase, looking mainly at shellfish species. Quite a lot of data has been collected from around the ports by Project Inshore, with the support of the fishermen and the IFCAs. There is a lot of information from that project.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is committed to progressing its assessments of species like scallops, whelks and crabs. There is a commitment from the Minister’s Department to actually improve data collection and the assessment of those species. I think things are all going in the right direction. At CEFAS, we started this work back in 2010 with ICES, recognising that not having assessments of non-commercial species or data-limited stocks was a drawback to fisheries management.

The Minister answered a parliamentary question in January, when we came back from December Council, which quoted 31 stocks out of 45 being exploited at MSY. We do not exploit just 45 stocks as a nation—we exploit in excess of 150. A lot of those are data-limited and they may be small tonnages, but they are very important species for local fishermen, certainly down in the south-west. I think we are improving the quality of the data we have available. It is not just for scientists; it is for the fishing industry and for the likes of Seafish.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We are in the last minute.

[George Eustice]

Q I have a quick question. We have heard some representations that we should make the MSY commitment more rigid in the Bill. If the price of getting an agreement with Norway is showing some understanding for their other scientific metrics, is it better to show that flexibility or to walk away and let everyone unilaterally set their own quota?

Dr Carl O'Brien: No, I think it is better to be flexible. I came into fisheries in the mid-’90s when exploitation rates were horrendous—cod stocks were being fished to fishing mortalities of 0.8; we are now down to levels of 0.4 or 0.3. We should still have that flexibility when we deal with Norway. I also think that it has to be an international negotiation. The UK cannot go it alone.

[The Chair]

On behalf of the Committee, Dr O’Brien, I am grateful for your evidence today. We discharge you and invite our next witnesses to the table.

Examination of Witnesses

Dr Amy Pryor and Elaine Whyte gave evidence.

[The Chair]

I welcome our next witnesses and remind Members that we have to finish this session at 3.30 pm. Could the witnesses introduce themselves and their organisations?

Dr Amy Pryor: I am Amy Pryor. I am the programme manager at the Thames Estuary Partnership, chair of the national Coastal Partnerships Network, and a member of the Coastal Communities Alliance.

Elaine Whyte: I am Elaine Whyte. I am a member of the Community Inshore Fisheries Alliance, and also of the Clyde Fishermen’s Association.

[George Eustice]

Q Obviously, a number of the areas that you cover will be highly influenced by the work of the IFCAs—the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities. What is your view of how that model works?

Dr Amy Pryor: From a wider stakeholder coastal communities perspective, we think IFCAs have grown from strength to strength since they were set up under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. I lived through them being set up, and they have grown in terms of gaining the respect of the local fishermen and putting in place fisheries partnerships with those fishermen to get better data and better science. I attended an IFCA meeting just last week, and the representation on the IFCA boards is second to none—it is absolutely fantastic. The only thing I would say is that there is an opportunity to get even better locally managed inshore fisheries by formally empowering the IFCAs within the Bill, certainly within England, instead of focusing just on the national fisheries administrations.

[George Eustice]

Q Obviously, IFCAs now have the power to make bylaws through their local authority sponsors. What additional powers would you be seeking through the Bill?

Dr Amy Pryor: First and foremost, I was referring to formal recognition in the wording of the Bill. However, if we could move to a more nimble, agile approach—as the scientist before us was saying—and have more locally based management of the fisheries based on local science, that ecosystem-based approach objective could be realised much more easily. There could maybe be more formal powers in terms of quota allocation based on the science of the local fishery.

[George Eustice]

Q You would like almost a consultation role for the IFCAs in the way the quota allocation is done.

Dr Amy Pryor: I am not sure about a formal consultation role. Yes, that would probably work, but there could be a better link between the fisheries data and the local situation, because each coastal environment has a unique set of challenges. Take the Thames estuary, for example. It is an estuary; it is a highly dynamic mixed fishery. All of the fishing communities around the Thames estuary are non-nomadic: they cannot go much further than a few nautical miles offshore, so they are very restricted by their quota allocations, which results in a large amount of discards and a large amount of bycatch. They are the first ones who do not want to see that happen, so having additional powers within the IFCAs to work with the science on a more local, regional level would lead to more agile and much more relevant fisheries management in the local setting.

Elaine Whyte: It is slightly different for Scotland: we have the inshore fisheries groups, which are also fairly new in terms of taking on the same kind of role as the IFCAs. However, I agree that they have come on leaps and bounds in the past few years. Local management is absolutely key, as is the socio-economic link to local communities. For instance, we often talk about choke species; we hear a lot about whiting and cod on the west coast, but down in the south-west, it is spurdogs. Those are the regional issues that we can work through with bodies like IFGs or IFCAs.

[George Eustice]

Q We have had some representations about the suitability of more of an effort-based quota, particularly for the inshore fleet, rather than a tonnage quota. As we set out in our White Paper, we certainly want to pilot and explore that for the inshore fleet. Do you think that would make more sense as a management tool for fishing effort?

Elaine Whyte: Again, it is regional, and it depends on the fishery, but trials should certainly happen. We often say that the Clyde is already operating a days at sea scheme; we go to sea only five days a week in the mobile fleet. There are various ways to look at it, but going regionally, looking at what works for each specific fishery, and ensuring that we have trials is the right way to go.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally, some shellfish, particularly crabs and lobsters, tend at the moment to be managed predominantly by IFCAs through technical conservation. We also have the western waters regime, which is effectively a days at sea quota regime, which is not very satisfactory. A number of people have said that we should move either to a catch quota system for crabs and lobsters, or to restrictions on the number of pots that can be used, for instance, and try to do that nationally. Do you think that that is worth exploring, or should it just be left to the IFCAs?

Dr Amy Pryor: I really think it should be left to the IFCAs. I must admit that I am not very up on lobster and crab fisheries. We do not have them here in the Thames estuary, as much as we would like them. It comes back to my point that, if it is locally managed and the IFCAs are running those decisions, they will have all the information, along with the stakeholder engagement consultation from the wider coastal community, to input into those management decisions. I think regional and local would work best.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Coastal communities have been among the hardest hit by austerity since 2010, but there is a real chance that fishing could be part of a coastal community renaissance, if it is delivered in the right way. What are the things that you are looking for in the Bill to deliver the renaissance that, whichever side of the House Members are on, we all want to see in our coastal communities?

Dr Amy Pryor: There is actually a very large correlation between small inshore fleets and coastal deprivation in some of our most deprived areas along the coast. There are two things. First, there is a lack of join-up between marine planning and land planning processes. Each goes to the relevant high or low water mark, but they have different types of indicators and they do not link in any meaningful way.

Coastal areas tend to fall down the cracks between two planning systems, and what goes hand in hand with that are the financial funding streams that go along with it. The coastal communities fund, for example, is fantastic for the coastal communities that can access it, but if you look at the local economic plans of each of the coastal community teams, very few of them even recognise fisheries as an industry that is relevant for the area. That is obviously a massive missed opportunity. They also do not really recognise the water—the role of the health of the marine environment—in driving the tourism that is central to their local economy.

In terms of the financial assistance elements of the Bill, it would be fantastic to see recognition of the need for a more holistic, integrated approach to our funding streams that recognises those multiple benefits so that we can really generate them. That would ultimately benefit the fishing industry, but in a way that better embeds it in the wider coastal community and opens up the routes to market and the innovations in marine businesses that we would all like to see on the coast. That could contribute to the local economy, instead of thinking that tourism alone will drive that. It would also recognise that fisheries are a major part of tourism. They shape the cultural identity of—

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

Q This is an enabling Bill, but what degree of certainty do you feel about what fishing is going to look like in Great Britain in the years to come as a result of the Bill? Are you confident?

Elaine Whyte: I heard a comment yesterday, I think, or the day before about how the market will take care of fishing. I do not think that is fair. I think that we have to try to support our industry, to get the best of national benefit for our fishermen. I am confident that we could have a better future, but it depends on a lot of things. We are not quite clear when we are coming out. We are not quite clear what this financial framework means, across all the sectors, for the UK. And what does that mean? Does it mean that every year that we are negotiating a deal with the EU we could barter fishing rights away for another sector? Those things are still a concern for us.

[George Eustice]

Q I want to come back to something that Elaine Whyte said earlier about the concern that there might be different rules for different parts of the fleet, with Northern Ireland having access to west of Scotland waters, for instance. Could you explain a bit more what your concern is? Obviously, the Bill is trying to resolve quite a difficult tension, which is that fisheries is a devolved matter, yet it is also highly affected by international negotiations, which are reserved. The way it does that is by giving each Administration the ability, through clause 10, to have licence conditions, but then separate to that, in clause 31 and schedule 6, it gives the Administrations the ability to set their own technical conservation measures, so if they wanted to have a closure, for instance, that would apply to everyone, whether or not it was on the vessel licence. There are two means of doing it, and I think the Bill squares that rather difficult circle through that means.

Elaine Whyte: It potentially does, but it does not square the tariff issue, so that is something that we would still have a concern about. Some of our members have mentioned the issue of nomadic rights, and of course we understand that, but we always think that there should be some link to the coastal communities around about. They should not be disadvantaged by lack of access to their own stocks, in a sense, as well. That is important to us domestically as well as between different countries and the UK.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Q Mr Grant said, and I think we would all agree, that we hope to see young men and women from throughout Scotland going into a revived indigenous fishing industry, but we need to have an industry there for them to go into. How do we bridge that gap? Who will crew the boats and the fish processing plants while we wait for that throughput? Given the geography of the west of Scotland in particular, the inshore fishing fleet is now at a critical point, is it not?

Elaine Whyte: Yes, it is. We have some boats that are about 60 years old, which is not right, so we have to look at how we can help our infrastructure. There are ways to do that. The Western Isles had a very good boat-building scheme, which was very low-risk and allowed people to come in. We need to start building up those facilities along the coast. I would say that we need that not just on the west coast but all around the coast.

Fisheries Bill (First sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am delighted to welcome the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and the National Fisherman’s Federation Organisation to give evidence. For the sake of Hansard, will you kindly introduce yourselves before we start questions?

Bertie Armstrong: Certainly, in alphabetical order, I am Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, which is the trade association that looks after the catching sector in Scotland. It has nine constituent associations and a geographical spread. It covers some 450 fishing boat businesses from smallest to largest.

Barrie Deas: I am Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, which is the representative body for fishermen in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Q What have been the main shortcomings of the common fisheries policy from your perspective, and what would you hope to achieve through a domestic fisheries policy?

Bertie Armstrong: The central ill of the common fisheries policy is the matter of the distribution of catching opportunity—the so-called relative stability—which places us, from our waters, in the position of 60% of the seafood assets removed from our waters being in the hands of non-UK EU fishing nations. The relative figures for other coastal states, one of which we will become on Brexit day, are Norway 85% or thereabouts and Iceland 90%. So the primary ill is common access to our waters and statutorily giving away that amount of our natural capital.

The second ill of the CFP is that it is distant and remote, and the process is effectively moribund. It is dysfunctionally distant. It is centralised by treaty and cannot be uncentralised or regionalised to any proper extent. The Bill must seek not to replace one unworkable system with another.

Thirdly, and finally, some political elements of the CFP in terms of practical fisheries management are counterproductive and unworkable. For instance, no one wishes to discard our perfectly edible fish, but the way it is linked to the CFP will simply not work.

Barrie Deas: I very much share Bertie’s views. The essential problems with the common fisheries policy for the United Kingdom lie in its inception, which was based on the principle of equal access, and ten years later, the principle of relative stability that allocated shares that do not reflect the resources that are in our waters. The comparison is with what we would have been had we been an independent coastal state for the last 45 years, like Norway. It is a huge disparity.

We are tied into an asymmetric and exploitative arrangement. The departure of the UK from the EU and therefore from the common fisheries policy provides us with the first opportunity to break free of that. The content of the Fisheries Bill is extremely important in terms of taking the powers to control who fishes in our waters—the access arrangements—and to renegotiate the quota shares.

I very much share Bertie’s view that the common fisheries policy has been cumbersome to deal with and very remote from where the impact of the decisions are felt, which has led to a huge gulf between fairly grandiose legislation and failure at implementation level. The gulf between primary legislation and its implementation has been recognised by the Commission and in the common fisheries policy. In recent years there has been an attempt to address it by introducing an element of regionalisation. Unfortunately, the treaty of Lisbon and the introduction of co-decision making into fisheries involving the European Parliament has moved active decision making even further away from where it counts and where its effects are felt. In that sense, we have moved in the opposite direction.

[George Eustice]

Q Obviously, at the moment every part of the UK has access to each other’s waters. The Bill protects that in the first clause by having a key purpose of equal access. Are you happy with that approach?

Barrie Deas: Yes. I think there always has been the right of UK fishing vessels from any part of the country to fish anywhere in the waters. We think that is an important principle that should be retained. The NFFO has some problems with the impact of the devolution settlement on fisheries, which makes it much more complex, but the fundamental principle of equal access for UK vessels is one that we support.

Bertie Armstrong: Likewise, the Scots fleet would like to continue to be able to catch its prawns off South Shields as well as in the Fladen Ground, but we are too small. I think the central and relevant point is that there has been no arm-wrestling and no desire for regionalisation of the catching area. The heft of the UK exclusive economic zone is great because of the area and its seafood contents; it is not great in terms of home nation fleets. I do not think there is any sense in splitting it up, or any requirement to do so.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally, on the issue of a fair sharing methodology in future international negotiations, do you share the approach outlined in our White Paper, which is a move to using zonal attachment as the basis for future sharing arrangements?

Bertie Armstrong: From my point of view, in the strongest possible terms, there has to be some sort of principle for division. Given the fact that there will be access as we have access, for instance, to Norway, there will be access by European boats to UK waters. We need to be very careful not to put anything on the face of the Bill that is obstructive.

Barrie Deas: The most extreme example of the distortion in quota shares is English channel cod: the UK share is 9% and the French share is 84%. Other examples include Celtic sea haddock: our share is about 10% and the French share is 66%. Those kinds of distortion have been part and parcel of relative stability and equal access, and they need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The principle of zonal attachment is used in the division of quota shares between the EU and Norway, so it is already accepted by the EU in that context. Obviously, it does not work to their advantage in relation to the UK, which is why it is not unexpected that they are very unhappy about the change. The broad picture is that the principle of zonal attachment, reflecting the resources that are in the UK water, should be the basis for allocating quotas in the future, in our view.

Bertie Armstrong: May I add a practical example of the ills of not doing that? To make a discard reduction or ban, or a landing obligation, work, the fishing opportunity in the area has to resemble what is in the ocean. The great distortions of the CFP mean that you simply cannot make that work, because you get choked immediately on having caught all of one species and still having quota for another. There needs to be an underlying principle, and zonal attachment is the one that, by common sense and instinct—apart from the fact that Norway has accepted it—makes the most sense. If we approach the whole of our new role as a coastal state with the idea that common sense and sustainability are central, we will do well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q With no further ado, I welcome the representative of the UK Seafood Industry Alliance. Will you kindly introduce yourself for the record?

Andrew Kuyk: Thank you, Mr Gray. My name is Andrew Kuyk. I am director general of the Provision Trade Federation, which is a food trade association, but as part of that role, I also represent the UK Seafood Industry Alliance, which represents UK fish processors and traders.

[George Eustice]

Q We heard earlier about the problems with relative stability as a sharing basis. I know that in a former life you had a role in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when things such as relative stability were set up and principles such as the Hague preference were established. Could you explain to the Committee the genesis of the existing relative stability shares and why the UK ended up with a smaller share than has seemed appropriate?

Andrew Kuyk: How long have you got?

[The Chair]

We have until 10.55, so let us try to keep it brief.

Andrew Kuyk: This is going back into history. At the time, I was first secretary, fisheries, in the UK permanent representation in Brussels, so I was the desk officer for these negotiations. I will not go into it in too much detail, but Committee members may recall that we had already joined the EU by that stage. The common fisheries policy had to wait another four or five years; it was a lengthy and difficult negotiation. The background was that, at the time we joined, we did not have an exclusive 200-mile zone, although the concept existed. We joined the EU and became subject to what was known as the common pond. There was equal access within that, save for some coastal rights under the London convention. Also, prior to the CFP, fisheries were managed by things such as the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission—NEAFC. There was a concept of high seas and so on. Total allowable catches and quotas, as a management instrument, were familiar, but they were not done within the EU, so we had to invent that system.

The reason why there is an apparent imbalance in some of the quota shares is that the negotiation was done with reference to what was called track record, which was the catches historically taken by the various component parts of the EU fleet. Prior to our joining, most of the fish that were relevant to our domestic market were fished off countries such as Iceland and Norway. We had what then was our distant water fleet—large vessels based in Hull and Grimsby that went quite far afield to get the main species on which our market depended. Therefore, our track record was on those vessels, in waters that were not immediately covered by the EU common pond.

Also at the time—this is going back some 30 years—there was not—

[The Chair]

Mr Kuyk, I am keeping a close eye on the clock and would be most grateful if you would restrict your remarks as much as you can.

Andrew Kuyk: I will get there quickly now. The smaller vessels were not subject to logbooks and recording of catches. Our track record was good in relation to the bigger vessels, and the track record used for the decisions was going back 10 or 20 years prior to 1980. The track record for the smaller vessels was not so good. Therefore, one of the reasons why the quota shares do not necessarily reflect current realities is that they were backward-looking and based on partial data. That is the short answer to your question, Minister.

[George Eustice]

Q Thank you. Now I fast-forward to your current role. Most of your members import large quantities of cod, predominantly, from Iceland, Norway and even, I think, Russia, Finland and the Barents sea. Can you explain the nature of the preferential trade agreements we have with Iceland and Norway, and also the process of autonomous tariff rate quotas for other countries?

Andrew Kuyk: Briefly, for the benefit of the Committee, we have what I term the supply paradox. Roughly two thirds of what we eat in this country, we import, and a lot of that is not from the EU. Some 80% of what is caught by UK vessels is exported, mainly to the EU. The reasons for that are largely to do with consumer choice. The main species consumed in the UK are cod, salmon, haddock, tuna, shrimps and prawns. Obviously, the tuna and most of the shrimps and prawns are not available in UK or EU waters. The salmon is largely aquaculture. On species such as cod and haddock, we are very far from self-sufficient. Our total consumption of cod in the UK is about three times the total EU TAC for cod, so we are about 10% self-sufficient in cod.

We import that raw material because that is the market demand. A lot of that does not come from the EU, but a lot of it comes via the EU, which complicates the trade statistics. The Minister has referred to the autonomous tariff quota system—ATQs. This system is a regulation that normally runs for three years. It recognises that the EU, not just the UK, is a deficit market in fish. That relativity—about two thirds imports—applies to the EU market as a whole, so the EU recognises that the fish to meet consumer need are not available under its jurisdiction. Although there is an external tariff, it has these autonomous tariff quotas. Specified quantities are admitted, either tariff-free or at a reduced tariff, and they are negotiated on a three-yearly basis. We are just about to conclude the next agreement, which will run for only two years, rather than three.

Most of those imports come in through some kind of preferential arrangement. We pay some tariffs on some of them. There is the complication of trans-shipment through the EU; some of those are landed in, say, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven or wherever and then come to us as part of free circulation within the single market.

In summary, imports come through a variety of arrangements; some come as a result of the EU-Norway agreement. Various agreements are in place that give us the benefit of significant tariff reductions. Those are necessary, because otherwise we would not be able to supply market demand in the UK.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally, leaving aside shellfish and some of the species that we export for which tariffs are quite low, and looking specifically at your members who predominantly process highly processed cod products, what proportion of their production is re-exported to the EU, and what proportion of those highly processed products is sold in the UK?

Andrew Kuyk: I am not sure I would use the term “highly processed”. Quite a lot of it is things such as bread-crumbs; I do not know whether you regard that as a high degree of processing. It is to do with the presentation. These are consumer-ready, convenience products—fillets with some kind of coating. There is a growing line in ready meals—a meal opportunity: a fish product with vegetables and a sauce, and so on. Most of those imports are for domestic consumption, because we are a deficit market. There is some re-export. I do not have an exact figure, but I would imagine it is something like 10% or 15%—not more than that. The vast majority is to supply our domestic market.

[Luke Pollard]

Q The Bill does not talk very much about processing. If we were to include an economic link for anyone catching fish under a UK quota, where more fish was landed in the UK ports, what would the impact of that be on the UK processing sector?

Andrew Kuyk: It is difficult to say. Again, without going too much into the history, we used to have what I would call an end-to-end processing industry in the UK, where a whole wet fish would go in one end of the factory and a product would come out of the other. Over the years, that has become rationalised and specialised, and a lot of that first-stage processing now happens elsewhere. Some of it happens on board vessels, on factory ships. Some fish—I know this sounds anomalous, but it is sheer market economics—are sent to places such as China, where they are filleted, and come back as frozen blocks. The raw material for quite a lot of our processing industry at the moment is a pre-prepared product—it is not the fish straight from the boat.

That could be a problem on two or three different levels. It is a problem and an opportunity. Clearly, if there was more domestic supply available, the UK processing industry would do its best to cope with that, but that would require investment. I was listening to the earlier session. The front end of the processing factory does exist on a smaller scale in some parts of the country, but for the people who supply the vast volumes—a sort of 80:20 thing—that front end, the lines of people physically filleting the fish and so on, does not exist any more. To reinvent that, you would need the labour, which I know is a tangential issue not to do with the Fisheries Bill, but it is a broader issue for the food industry in relation to Brexit—the supply of labour—and you need the skill. You need both the people and the skill, and you would need some physical investment in capacity, more storage, more chilling and so on.

It is not as if there is under-utilised capacity. It is a function of modern business that capacity matches throughput and the market, so there is not excess processing capacity waiting for new supplies of fish. It would have to be put in place. It would require money, people and skills. To invest the money, you would need a sound business case that could give you a projection of what your price and what your market share would be. The price, critically, would depend on what your broader trading relationship was—tariffs and currency—and what the competition was. It is quite a complex jigsaw, but the short answer is that there is not significant under-utilised capacity that, at the flick of a switch, could suddenly cope with an influx of domestically caught fish.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

It is a great pleasure to welcome back Mr Martin Salter, who was the Member of Parliament for Reading West for a number of years and is a dear old friend of mine, and Paul Trebilcock from the UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations. Mr Salter is from the Angling Trust. Perhaps you could kindly introduce yourselves briefly for the record.

Martin Salter: Thank you, Mr Gray—I miss our late-night train journeys back to Swindon. My name is Martin Salter, formerly of this parish and now head of campaigns for the Angling Trust, the national representative body for all forms of recreational fishing. That includes sea angling, which according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is an industry in its own right worth £2 billion to the UK economy, generating 20,000 jobs and supporting thousands of coastal businesses.

One of the reasons we were very keen to give evidence before you is that, despite the warm words from Ministers and in the White Paper, recreational sea angling is not mentioned in the Bill, and we are hoping that you will put that right.

Paul Trebilcock: I am Paul Trebilcock, chairman of the UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations. All producer organisations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are in our membership. Our members account for more than 40% by value of fish and shellfish landings in the UK.

[George Eustice]

Q I will start with a question for Paul Trebilcock. The very first clause of the Bill sets out a number of important environmental targets for the sustainable harvest of our marine environment. In the south-west we have particular challenges with maximum sustainable yields in a mixed fishery. Would you explain, from the point of view of fishermen in the south-west, the types of challenge we have as we try to abide by that target?

Paul Trebilcock: I should probably say at the outset that the fishing industry clearly has an interest and a priority to ensure the long-term sustainability of all our fisheries. Sustainability is at the very core of what we want from the Bill and the UK acting as an independent coastal state. However, in the words of Karl O’Brien at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the MSY concept is scientifically illiterate. To have all stocks at MSY at a particular point in time is just not possible. In particular, in ultra-mixed fisheries, as we have in the south-west, there will always be ups and downs and natural variants. We are trying to manage a dynamic natural resource.

The concept of MSY is a good principle. Working towards MSY proxies on the key driver stocks is probably more practical than what we have at the moment, with an arbitrary legally binding commitment in the common fisheries policy that gives us some perverse pieces of advice. Zero TACs on stocks does not mean they will not be caught in mixed fisheries; it just means they are not taken account of in practical fisheries management. A far better way would be to have the MSY framework as an aspiration and to move towards it, and wherever possible have as many stocks as possible in that MSY range.

[George Eustice]

Q Some people say we can learn from Norway, which uses MSY and other approaches, too. Is there anything you think we can learn from that?

Paul Trebilcock: As I say, I think there are lessons to be learned from independent coastal member states such as Norway. Its approach to fisheries management takes the whole ecosystem into account and does not try just to manage stock on arbitrary numbers. There are lessons to be learned, such as using proxies or other indicators to ensure that the whole mix of stocks is going in the right direction and perhaps using the MSY as the driver for some of the key economic stocks. It is about trying to take into account that we are trying to manage a dynamic natural resource rather than something that neatly obeys some scientific modelling.

[George Eustice]

Q Mr Salter, I feel you are a bit glass half empty about the Bill. Clause 28(1)(e), which I am sure you have read, creates the powers to give financial assistance for

“the promotion or development of recreational fishing.”

That is in the Bill and it is the first time ever that we have created power to give financial assistance to angling. Is that something you welcome?

Martin Salter: What do you think, Minister? With due respect, it is obviously right and proper that the European maritime and fisheries fund makes some of it available to the commercial sector. That is fine, but you had six direct references in the White Paper to recreational fishing. One of the great failures of the common fisheries policy is the failure to recognise recreational angling as a legitimate stakeholder in the European fishery. That is a failure of the CFP that the Bill could put right. You could do that, as we state in our evidence, by putting on the face of the Bill, “The UK Government recognise recreational sea angling as a direct user and a legitimate stakeholder in the fishery.” That would be a win-win situation and it would add to the very welcome news that we are going to have access to EMFF funding.

[George Eustice]

Q I have done this job for five years. We meet every year—you are always invited ahead of the December Council, along with the commercial fishing sector, to discuss our priorities. Bass has dominated discussions, certainly in the past three years. What is it that you seek for us to do with legal powers? Obviously the Bill is about legal powers. Are you saying you would like a licensing regime for recreational anglers? In what way would you like us to legally recognise you?

Martin Salter: We, like you, are looking forward to saying goodbye to the annual horse trading that takes place at the Fisheries Council. It is worth putting on the record that, despite the reform of the CFP, some 44% of total allowable catch limits were set above scientifically recommended limits. That process is far from perfect, and it is to be welcomed that the Bill and particularly the White Paper talk in terms of world-leading fisheries management.

However, the point for politicians is that it is easy to claim that we are going to be an independent coastal state, but that does not deliver sustainable fisheries. Senegal is an independent coastal state, and its fisheries have been wiped out by super-trawlers, which are mainly European and have used their economic power to destroy the livelihoods of artisanal fishermen in independent coastal states. You will deliver sustainable fisheries management by having world-leading sustainable fisheries policy. You will deliver that by looking at the very best in the world. You should look at Norway and in particular at the United States. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act 1976 puts a statutory duty on the eight regional fishery councils to take action to rebuild fish stocks.

You asked what we are seeking. We would like to see on the face of the Bill a binding duty for Ministers to set total allowable catch limits in line with scientifically recommended evidence, rather than this dreadful horse trading that takes place every year at the European Fisheries Council, which is no model of sustainable fisheries management at all.

[George Eustice]

Q Do you not think that that is there in the very first clause of the Bill, in subsection (3), which states that the “precautionary objective” is to ensure that “living marine biological resources” are exploited in such a way that they are harvested

“above biomass levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.”

There is a legal commitment there.

Martin Salter: There is, but there is a section in the Bill about binding duties. Frankly, Minister, if I were in your shoes, I would want a binding duty. I would want to make it crystal clear that we are going to end the discredited system that has operated under the common fisheries policy and replace it with a legally backed duty to fish at sustainable levels, just as we have legally backed targets for climate change and emissions.

I am afraid I do not agree with Paul and my colleagues in the commercial catching sector about having MSY as an aspiration. Minister, you have piloted bass conservation measures more than anybody else, but usually in the face of opposition from the commercial catching sector. We have seen those conservation measures start to lead to the rebuilding of bass stocks in the UK, which is really to be commended. We need to be bold, we need to be outliers, we need to learn from the best in the world, and we need it clearly and simply on the face of the Bill.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Paul, at the moment, not all UK fisheries are classed as sufficiently sustainable under the UK Government’s procurement policies for the Government to buy fish from them. What needs to happen for all UK fisheries to be classed as sustainable, so the UK Government’s procurement policies enable their fish to be bought and so we can be proud that all our fisheries are sustainable?

Paul Trebilcock: I think we are well down the track on that one. Increasing numbers of UK fisheries have either achieved accreditation and are now Marine Stewardship Council-accredited, or are going through the process. Growing numbers by volume and across Scotland, England and Northern Ireland are achieving that. We are definitely moving in that direction, and the UK fishing industry is currently on a trajectory toward having all its fisheries on a sustainable footing. Contrary to Martin’s view, I think the people who will deliver a sustainable fishery and fishing industry are the fishermen themselves, those who are actively at sea. Currently, there are elements of the common fisheries policy, whether it be relative stability shares, access arrangements or some of the technical measures, that hamper the travel toward that sustainability.

The UK operating as a genuine independent coastal state, with a practical and balanced fisheries policy that takes into account all three pillars of sustainability—not just the environmental but the social and economic pillars—will in a very short space of time take the UK further down that track and ultimately toward our shared aspiration of all UK fisheries operating in a sustainable way that will allow the UK Government and anybody else to buy with a clear conscience.

Fisheries Bill (Second sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I shall hand over to the Minister for the first questions.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Q60 This morning we heard in evidence that the principle of relative stability had served the inshore fleet particularly badly because of the data and the absences of data in the ’70s and ’80s when the track record was established. What are the key priorities of the inshore sector as we leave the European Union and set our own domestic policy?

Jerry Percy: We have long argued that relative stability needed to be reviewed, primarily because of the very bad deal that the under-10-metre sector has always had in the UK, not just because of relative stability but because of the way in which quota was allocated back in the ’90s, when we did not have a seat at the table and therefore, despite being nearly 80% of the fleet, ended up with less than 2% of the overall UK quota. Relative stability really does need to change.

Our priorities are, overall, to ensure that the under-10-metre fleet—unquestionably, it has been massively disenfranchised over the past few decades—comes out of it with a significantly increased allocation. We have argued strongly that the current method for allocating quota is unfair and discriminates against the under-10s, and of course the myriad coastal communities they support. I have been in the fishing industry as a fishermen and in other roles off and on for over 40 years, and I have seen the demise of any number of coastal communities, the fleets that they supported and the people who supported them over that period. Our main aim is to ensure that the under-10s specifically get a fair deal come the new horizon.

[George Eustice]

Q On management, we outlined a number of ideas in the White Paper. Some have suggested that we should move away from a Marine Management Organisation-administered under-10-metre pool and towards a producer organisation for the inshore sector. What is your view of such an approach?

Jerry Percy: You will not be surprised to hear that I am very supportive of the idea, having written the initial paper back in 2012. There is absolutely no doubt about that. To put it into perspective, at the moment I gather that the UK has had infraction proceedings served upon it by the European Commission for failure to manage and regulate its producer organisations adequately. I have not seen the detail but I would have thought that the Commission was concerned that, despite the fact that the coastal PO—the producer organisation dedicated to the under-10-metre sector—has had official recognition by the UK Government and by the Commission for over a year, we are still refused the ability to manage the quota of our own members. This is particularly important with the run-up to the landings obligation, where the ability to acquire quota retrospectively will be vital.

With the greatest respect to the Marine Management Organisation, the disparity between the rationale for MMO management of quota and that by the producer organisations, which are very focused on the commercial benefits of their particular members, is huge. This has resulted in this year to date, for example, in only just over 50% of the under-10-metre quota actually being fished, although that is down to a number of issues. One of them is undoubtedly the inflexibility in the Government trying to manage the quota, so I am particularly supportive of the coastal PO.

I fail to understand why the Government have not permitted us to have exactly the same rights—no more; no fewer—as the existing POs. In fact, in your own words, Sir, in a letter earlier this year, you said that as soon as we had the correct infrastructure in place you would like to see us going ahead and doing this sort of management. We have had the infrastructure in place for a considerable amount of time, yet we are still refused the ability to manage for the benefit of our members.

[George Eustice]

Q But do you accept that there could be more than one PO covering the inshore sector?

Jerry Percy: I do not think so.

[George Eustice]

Q You shouldn’t force everyone to join it if they don’t want to.

Jerry Percy: No, there is always a choice about whether you join a producer organisation or not. To be honest, there is absolutely no reason why any under-10 metre vessel even slightly reliant on quota should not join the coastal PO. The membership fee is £1. More importantly, however, membership should give those vessels access to far more flexible and user-oriented management of their quota, rather than the current situation.

[George Eustice]

Q I have two other points that we raised in the White Paper that I want your views on. First, do you think that the under-10-metre category is still the right criteria to use, or should we look at other measures, such as engine capacity or the zone in which they fish, so that there would be a different way of defining the artisanal, small-scale fleet? Secondly, we have obviously had quite a lot of representations about the possibility of moving more to an effort-based regime for the inshore fleet rather than a quota system. What is your view of that?

Jerry Percy: In response to your first question, there is no doubt that the arbitrary under-10/over-10 metre divider has been an unnecessary nuisance, frankly, especially as time has gone on. Yes, 20 or 30 years there was a very significant difference between what was in the ’90s a much more artisanal fleet and today’s under-10 metre boats, which can be 9.99 metres and highly efficient. One of the purposes of developing the coastal PO initiative was that, rather like other examples one might think about in the current climate, you tend not to go to war with people you are trading with, and there has always been a difference of opinion between under-10s and over-10s and their POs.

Losing the 10-metre measure in the fullness of time would be a very positive step forward. Clearly, if you look at the breakdown of the under-10s, which are some thousands of vessels, you see that the vast majority are less than 8 metres in length, and again you can go down. So there is a strong argument for taking any boat up to 6 metres completely out of the quota system, whether or not you replace it with something like effort management. I can speak from experience. While a modern under-10 metre boat has a very significant fishing capacity, far in excess of what it would have been 20 or 30 years ago, it remains the case that boats that are less than 18 feet would really struggle to make any significant impact on stocks.

At the same time, we have said all the way along that although the effort management suggestion is ostensibly a fairer way of allocating access to the resource than quota, with all its issues and problems, we really need to have a proper, full-scale and focused trial before anybody could say unequivocally, “This would be the most effective and efficient way forward.”

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q A real consensus is emerging around the Bill that there should be more focus on giving more quota—more fishing opportunities—to the smaller boats. The question is about how we do it. From your point of view, what would be the best way within the Bill, and within the powers it contains, to encourage more fishing opportunities to be held by smaller boats, which generally speaking are the least impactful on the environment and contribute more to their coastal communities?

Jerry Percy: There are two main answers to that question. At the moment, despite the claims that we are going to be an independent coastal state and take back control, nearly 50% of the UK’s allocation of quota is held in foreign hands. Now, although a lot of that is the pelagic species, such as mackerel, herring and blue whiting, nevertheless fish quota, whether we like it or not—we do not—has become a commodity and gaining more access and a fairer balance post Brexit, when the Bill comes in, would be a particular opportunity.

There are opportunities. The Government have always been concerned that if you tried to repatriate quota, then you get a whole queue of people lining up for a judicial review, but it was clear from the judicial review in 2012 and from legal advice subsequently that that is entirely practical. In fact, the Faroe Islands has just instigated a similar sort of system. Rather than us arguing that one should rob Peter to pay Paul, it is at heart the allocation system that is at fault. It is based on historical rights.

As I said, I go back far too many years in this business. In the 1990s, the Government said to the over-10-metre vessels, “Go out and fish and record all your catches, and we will take a three-year average and provide you with your fixed quota allocation—your proportion of the overall UK cake.” Not surprisingly—the larger-scale representatives admitted this in the judicial review I mentioned—they did ghost fishing. If you went out and caught 10 tonnes, you might put down 12 or 14 tonnes just to make sure that you had good opportunities. I dare say that if I had been in that position I might have thought the same. The whole thing was predicated on a lie, frankly, and it has gone on ever since. Historical rights are really not an effective method, for any number of reasons.

The answer to your question, which we put forward in our response to the Bill, is that clause 20 effectively takes in article 17 of the common fisheries policy. We suggest that should be amended so that quotas are allocated according to social and environmental criteria and economic benefit for coastal communities. Some 80% of the under-10 metre fleet use passive rather than mobile gear, so their environmental credentials are better, and their economic credentials are certainly more significant. We would take our chances with everybody else, but that would provide a level playing field, irrespective of size of vessel, and your allocation of the resource would be based on environmental, social and economic criteria.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Good afternoon, Mr Haslam. For the benefit of the Committee, could you introduce yourself and your organisation?

Phil Haslam: Good afternoon. My name is Phil Haslam and I am the operations director of the Marine Management Organisation, which is an arm’s length body of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with the competence to deliver marine planning and licensing and, in this context, fisheries management, control and enforcement regulation.

[George Eustice]

Q I am sure that the Committee will have noticed from your biography that you have long experience in the fisheries protection fleet and the Royal Navy, and most recently at the MMO. Before getting on to the work we have done on future enforcement, I wonder whether you could describe to the Committee what the MMO control room in Newcastle does, how we monitor fishing vessels and how many fisheries protection vessels we currently have access to.

Phil Haslam: The mechanism we use to conduct fisheries control and enforcement is risk-based and intelligence-led. The mechanism by which we do that ashore is to have up to 75 warranted officers who can be deployed—routinely, circa 50 are able to be deployed—and we are situated at 14 offices around the coast of England. The MMO regulates only within English waters. That is one element of our business: shore-based inspections of landing, marketplace inspections and the like. The risk-based, intelligence-led description is basically what it says. We understand where risk may arise and we have a level of intelligence that we apply to that, which can make our operations targeted.

At sea, our surveillance is conducted by vessels from the Royal Navy fishery protection squadron, which we contract on an annual basis for a set number of hours. They conduct patrol and inspection routines on our behalf on the direction of the Newcastle fisheries monitoring centre ops room. The way that works operationally is that we direct them to conduct a patrol in a certain area, we direct the outcomes we wish to see, and then it is down to the commanding officer in the vessel to deliver them. On the number of ships that are available to us, both because of budgetary restraint or constraint within the MMO and the availability of Royal Navy vessels, the Royal Navy is this year providing 2,000 hours of patrol time within English waters.

[George Eustice]

Q I understand that at the moment there are three offshore patrol vessels, two of which are normally on duty in English waters. Could you explain what has taken place, as part of your planning over the last year for enforcement after we leave the EU, to get additional offshore patrol vessels from the Royal Navy? What discussions have been had and what work has been done with Border Force on the ability to redeploy some of its assets? Could you explain anything you have done by way of procuring aerial surveillance from, say, the coastguard service?

Phil Haslam: As a result of the referendum and the fact that we will be becoming an independent coastal state and taking back control of our waters in the future, a risk-based analysis has been done of what could happen after that exit moment, and based on that analysis we have identified increased risk across the piece. Our work has driven us to look at our current surveillance levels and to judge what we will need to effectively enforce the integrity of the exclusive economic zone from the fisheries point of view. That has led us to bid for an uplift in surface surveillance and within that to move away from having all our eggs in one basket in relation to the Royal Navy, to come to a mixed economy of providers for both the inshore and the offshore element of the patrol requirement.

We have come up with a greater amount of surface surveillance that we need in the round, and the mechanism to deliver that will of course include the Royal Navy. We have dialogue with Border Force as well, to see what utility there is within its vessel fleet—it is predominantly its cutters. Similarly, the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities, which are the small English-based regional organisations that have a jurisdiction of the nought to 6 miles of inshore fisheries, have a fleet of vessels that we may be able to get some utility out of. Also, we are speaking with colleagues in the devolved Administrations to see what utilities are there. We are trying to get a blended provision of surface surveillance.

Aerial surveillance is a capability that is being reintroduced. The idea is to have routine overflight of our waters so that, should there be vessels that should not be there and are not discernible through remote location devices, we have, basically, a set of eyes in the air that can see them. In terms of monitoring vessels at sea at present, there is a system called the vessels monitoring system, which gives us the position statement of vessels of 12 metres or longer.

[George Eustice]

Q Finally, the Ministry of Defence recently announced that it had delayed the decommissioning of the existing three offshore patrol vessels, and it intends to introduce four new ones, I think. How much difference will having that extra capacity in reserve make, should it be needed?

Phil Haslam: It will make an enormous difference. As you stated earlier, at the moment the fishery protection squadron is relatively constrained in the number of vessels it can put to sea, and that matches our constraint in being able to contract them. Having more vessels available to us to police a very large EEZ gives us that flexibility to deploy ships to the right place at the right time. By keeping the batch one offshore patrol vessels in service for longer and introducing the batch twos incrementally, as they come off the build, there will be a larger hand of cards to be played with.

[George Eustice]

Q I have one other final point. Enforcement is obviously devolved, so what you have described is what is taking place and what is planned for in England. Could you describe how the challenge differs, for instance in Scotland, where we obviously have a large interest? What work do we do with Marine Scotland and its enforcement vessels?

Phil Haslam: Fisheries enforcement is devolved, as you state. The way the Scottish do it is to have three vessels that conduct enforcement up to 330 days a year within their waters. They contract two aircraft as well, to provide oversight. At this moment, they have the kind of surveillance capability and control and enforcement capability that we are building up to.

[Luke Pollard]

Q A moment ago you gave the figure of 2,000 hours of surveillance. Could you give us a sense of how the number of hours that have been deployed for enforcement has changed since 2010?

Phil Haslam: Yes. Royal Navy vessels used to be contracted on a 24-hour-day basis. That was always non-exclusive, so they were not passed to the MMO, where we would have command and control of them; they would conduct our business but always with the risk of higher priority national tasking taking them away. But we did have more of them in 2010, and over time, with reductions in the MMO budget, we have had to roll back the number of hours, or days, we can contract, moving from 24-hour days to 12-hour days and then to nine-hour days.

When I came into this job we were relatively constrained regarding where we could deploy them for that part of the day. The idea of going to hours was to give us the flexibility to deploy them where the need was, rather than where they were shackled. So there has been a reduction, but on the other side of that, with the vessel monitoring system we have an understanding of what is going on in our waters. We have a picture against which we can patrol. So it was risk-based.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sweeney]

Q I was asking whether there should be a specific capability defined in the Bill about what our asset should be for fisheries protection.

Phil Haslam: No, because I think it involves over time the introduction of technology that may come downstream. At the moment, the reason we do what we do in the manner that we do it is to get evidential quality, should we need to take compliance activity. We still need inspectors to step on board fishing vessels.

[George Eustice]

Q I want to come back to a couple of points that were raised earlier. Could you tell us what work has been done in terms of personnel to identify people who have recently served in the Fishery Protection Squadron and who, if you needed a surge in capacity, might be able to be deployed again and already have the required training?

Phil Haslam: We have spoken about increased surveillance as part of the package to deliver an enhanced control enforcement capability. People are central to that. In the first instance, we are recruiting additional people into the MMO, so I will go from the cadre of warranted officers I have now to an increased number. That is actively under way. Also, to provide contingency planning, we have looked within the Royal Navy at who is currently qualified to conduct warranted fisheries business and who has recently been qualified. There has to be a cut-off, because obviously you will time out. There is a cadre of people still within the Royal Navy who could, should the need arise, be deployable to carry a warrant and conduct the inspection capability.

[George Eustice]

Q Secondly, in terms of managing access, additional access is sometimes granted in fisheries agreements. We do this in Scotland now; for instance, we allow the Faroes to catch 30% of their mackerel in UK waters. Could you explain how that process works? How does Marine Scotland enforce that process of managing conditional access?

Phil Haslam: Basically, if you allow access to your waters you have to control who is coming in and who goes out. There is quite a sophisticated way of checking in and checking out: a vessel has to declare its catch on entering and its catch on exit. Indeed, the point of exit and point of entry is conditioned as well, so you can establish gates at sea where people have to actively come through, so you can understand who is in your waters at any given time. I know that within Scottish waters quite a dynamic mechanism has to be in place to manage the inflow and outflow of vessels.

[Mr Carmichael]

Q You have a tremendous range of experience. To what extent do you think that non-compliance can be driven in the mismatch between quota and stocks? Let me give you an idea of my thinking. Some 20 years ago I used to make modest sums of money in Banff sheriff court defending constituents of Mr Duguid who had caught their monkfish one side of the 4 degree line when all the quota was on the other, which led to misreporting. That was just a classic mismatch between where the quota was and where the stock was. To what extent do you think that that sort of mismatch drives non-compliance?

Phil Haslam: It provides an opportunity for non-compliance, provided you are minded to do that. I would not want to perceive something adversarial, with the regulator running around trying to catch fishermen out. The way this works best is that the rules work for the industry. We, as an enabling regulator, support them in the pursuit but within the bounds of the regulation. As I understand it, that is what we are working towards—that is rather more of a strategic partnership.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We now move on to our sixth witness, from the Blue Marine Foundation. Would you please introduce yourself and your organisation?

Dr Appleby: I am Dr Tom Appleby. I am a non-practising solicitor but I have been in property law for about 20 years. I am also an associate professor of the University of the West of England, and I have been operating in this sphere—ports, marine conservation and fisheries—for about 15 years.

[George Eustice]

Q May I ask for your general impressions of the Bill? Does it do the things that you would expect a domestic fisheries policy to do, or are there other elements that you would like to see included?

Dr Appleby: First off, it has been drafted in short order to deal with the situation that we have. By and large, and given the constraints that the drafters had—you can see that it is drafted in different forms and it does not sit together very well; it is not very beautiful—it does what it says on the tin, but it could be improved. I was looking at some other legislation. The Australian Fisheries Management Act 1991 has 168 sections, the MACA—the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009—has 325, but this has 43. You can see that more could have gone in here, but there were time constraints on the people who drafted it, and I think that they produced what they could in the timescale.

[George Eustice]

Q Are you happy that clause 1 broadly brings across the marine environment objectives from European legislation?

Dr Appleby: It does. Clause 1 leads you into the devolution minefield. One thing it has to try to deal with in drafting is repatriating legislation on the one hand, and then delegating it around the four nations of the UK on the other. It tries to do that. Given the constraints on the drafters, there are fisheries plans to bring these objectives in.

There are potentially some bits missing. We do not have marine planning in there, which we could possibly put in. Quota could possibly go in there. There could be a method of dealing with quota at that stage, on how, if and when quota comes back, what happens with climate change and fishing opportunities. That could be put into the plans as well.

However, I recognise that the drafters sat there not only having to operate from the UK perspective but also having to take the devolved Administrations with them, which inevitably is slow. The clause could be improved if we had a little more time.

[George Eustice]

Q We obviously have to look at marine planning in the context of the retained EU law coming across and that we have other bits of legislation. Some of those things are already provided for.

The second point I want to raise is on the fixed quota allocation—the FQA units—which has been the basis of quota allocation inside the UK, attached to individual vessels, as you know. We have been explicit in the White Paper, and we take the powers in the Bill to make a break from that, and to say that any additional fishing opportunities that come as we depart from relative stability could be allocated on a different basis. What is your view of the FQA units system?

Dr Appleby: What has happened is that the UK fishery has essentially been, for want of a better word, squatted. We gave it out free to two people, who then sold it and it became propertised. The UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations case held that unused FQA became a property right.

The White Paper talks about quota being a public asset, so we have to make a decision on whether the UK fishery—particularly if we are getting more back; it will be very expensively brought—starts off as a public asset. That means unwinding the FQA system. You can potentially do that under existing powers, or you can do it under some things in the Bill. When you actually look at the auction, I think you have probably constrained yourself a bit too much. If you auction off quota, you are looking at people who have the cash to buy the quota in the first place. A royalty, for instance, is the sort of thing that you would charge—I think we would call it turnover rent in the property sector. That would be a way of charging people and then not having to come up with the cash. Even in the Bill, it only says “may” use an auction. Without constraining yourself, you could expand your powers on what we do with repatriated quota and, indeed, what we do with FQA generally.

We went through some debate when first drafting our amendments. We thought that we needed to put a stop to FQA, but a legal argument will come back the other way that says quota is a property right. We thought, “Well, if you give eight years’ notice, that’s probably sufficient to deal with any compensation that would arise,” but even then, I did not feel comfortable putting that in the Bill, because you reify the situation as soon as you do that. We put it in to start with, then we took it back out again on the basis that there needs to be a proper conversation about what we do with quota. Given the time restraints, we will not be able to do that in the Bill, even with the best will in the world. We can reserve the powers in the Bill to ensure that whatever we decide to do with FQA in the long run is settled, and that we can do some interesting things with it. I think that balance is there if you pull back just slightly on the prescriptive language about what you do with it.

[George Eustice]

Q Do you think a legal power is needed to do that? They passed legislation in the Faroes that effectively put people on notice, and said that after 10 years they would depart from an FQA system. Our view is that the Government could state that intention, at which point the clock would start ticking without the need to have a provision on the face of the Bill.

Dr Appleby: We reallocated quota last time—unused quota—without compensation or additional legislation, so I think we could do that. I think you have to be careful when you do that, because a lot of people borrow money by using their quota as collateral. One the one hand, there are some very rich people sitting on quota—the quota barons we read about—but on the other hand, there are people who use quota to support their running a business. You would need to think about what you will do, but I think you can do that under the current legislation.

What has happened here is that it has been beefed up. We have put some more suggestions forward. There are two things that you could do. You could vest the fishery so that it actually becomes public property. We have done a heck a lot of research at UWE on who owns it, and we reckon it was set up by some sort of implied Crown trust that goes back to the middle ages. One of my PhD students is working on this at the moment.

It would be easier just to state in the Bill that it is a public asset and put it in some sort of trust, and then you would get the kind of things that you would normally expect when disposing of a public asset to the commercial sector. That is the way I would approach it. I appreciate that we did not start there; we started with an open-access resource, which we have tried to deal with through legislation. We are in a transition.

[Luke Pollard]

Q You mention fisheries management and how that is missing from the Bill. In particular, fisheries management and how that fits with marine plans in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 seems to be omitted. Can you just expand on what you think the Bill is missing in fisheries management?

Dr Appleby: I am not sure. In common with previous speakers, I liked the idea of a scientific adviser, which would be a lovely thing to have. Its constitution is probably the same size as the Act, so you can imagine the bunfight about who sits on the advisory panel, whether it is peer reviewed and whether it is devolved. That is a huge conversation to have, and it needs to be had in public. That is something I would like to see. If we had more time, I would like to see that go in the Bill.

There is a mirror piece of legislation, which is the Environmental Principles and Governance Bill. Does that apply to fishing or not? When we leave the EU, we will lose the right to infraction proceedings against recalcitrant UK—all parts of the UK. Should Scotland do something, it is the UK that gets infracted. We will lose that, and we have not quite been able to replace that kind of thing.

Those are just two examples: a good, robust, scientific, forward-looking body that looks at how to make the most of our resources, and some sort of regulatory regime to punish the hindmost, if you want to be quite so curt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

Q I have one separate question. Do you take an environmental view of what the potential benefits might be of preserving certain fisheries or stocks for recreational fishing, as has happened elsewhere?

Dr Appleby: You are looking at a public resource, so how do we make the best of that public resource? Some of that is going to be to the commercial sector and some of it is undoubtedly going to be to the recreational sector. The whole thing is so political because we are trying to carve up this public resource through regulation. Undoubtedly, the recreational sector is an important part of this conversation, too. Historically, although it has recently been included in the common fisheries policy, it has come to the table late.

[George Eustice]

Q I want to come back to this point about some of the environmental criteria and potentially having a hard nib point for MSY, for instance, as a statutory target.

One unique thing about fisheries is that, in or out of the EU, they are subject to annual international fisheries negotiations. Norway, for instance, follows MSY but also follows lots of other scientific metrics that it thinks are superior to those that we use. In such a situation, do you think it is important to keep that flexibility, so that you can actually land an agreement with Norway, the Faroes, Iceland and the EU, or is it preferable to make it unlawful for the UK to reach such an agreement and just have everyone go off on their own and unilaterally set a tax?

Dr Appleby: That is an interesting question; theoretically, we cannot fish beyond MSY, because that is all we have. Under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, our rights extend to MSY and that is it. You cannot have an agreement on what you do not have.

However, the question is: what is MSY? It comes down to the definition. The Norwegians would probably argue that, by taking a basket of different theories, we achieve MSY, because one stock can be plotted on a graph and another cannot. I am not a fisheries scientist—you would have to ask them—but it seems that you are essentially looking at something like a repairing obligation on a lease. How far can you go with this and do it in a sensible way?

The difficulty with going into, say, MSY or BMSY or all those things, which I have never completely got my head around, is that you define a particular scientific methodology in your Bill. I think that could come back to haunt the draftsman if stock does not behave in a certain way or if you want some sort of flexibility. Again, it is interesting that, coming from a conservation point of view with my Blue hat on, I am not uncomfortable with just leaving it at MSY.

[The Chair]

I have Alistair Carmichael and then Mike Hill, unless anybody else wishes to contribute.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We now move to our final session of the day, which I remind colleagues must finish at 4 pm. The final witness is Aaron Brown of Fishing for Leave. Could you please introduce yourself as the witness?

Aaron Brown: I am Aaron Brown of Fishing for Leave; thank you to hon. Members for having me along today.

[George Eustice]

Q Thank you very much for joining us. I know you have long been an advocate of an effort-based regime, rather than a quota-based regime or potentially a hybrid model. You will be aware that the White Paper sets out a commitment to pilot that, particularly with the inshore mixed fisheries. Could you just set out what your thoughts are in that respect and why you think an effort-based regime would be better than a quota-based regime?

Aaron Brown: To start with, overall we were very happy with the White Paper. The Bill is somewhat disappointing, because a lot of what was good and gave a lot of hope to people has disappeared, and an effort pilot was one such thing. We have been staunch advocates of that, because over 30 years with increasing regulatory burden we have tried to go up a cul-de-sac and it has not worked. We have had black fish and discards, and now we are on to choke species.

We sat back and said, to use a phrase the Minister likes to coin himself, “What are the first principles of management?”, and that is the ecosystem. You have to work with mother nature. Currently, all the problems, many of which Members have discussed today—whether that is enforcement, science or shares of resources—all stem from the current quota system. What we said is that the only way to manage a dynamic mixed fishery, where you catch a mix of species that fluctuate up and down and it is difficult to determine exact, quantitative, arbitrary figures such as quotas, is to say to vessels, “What is a sustainable level of time that vessels need to catch a sustainable amount of fish from an ecosystem? If in the North sea you can take 200,000 tonnes of biomass, combined, from that ecosystem, how long does it take your fleet collectively to do that?”

That allows vessels to land all catches. It means you see exactly what the fluctuations and dynamism in the marine environment are, which generates accurate science, and you are flowing along with the environment rather than what we are trying to do just now, which is to impose arbitrary theoretical targets and then try to hit them. That has been proved not to work.

Just to finish, before Mr Aldous asks a question, we quickly concluded that effort control alone does not work, and that is what we brought to the Department as a solution that answers most questions. Blunt time at sea, especially in a blunt measurement such as days at sea, does not work. What we have developed is a system where you adopt FQAs, so there is no contention about people losing their investment in that, and turn them into percentages that people should be aiming to catch. It is not an arbitrary weight that you are aiming for; what you are aiming for is a percentage-based mix of what is deemed to be sustainable. If you catch outside that percentage, what happens is that you lose time in compensation.

Therefore, as a vessel is losing time for catching the wrong fish that he is able to land for that time penalty, his effort burden on the environment is coming back. Since the fish that has been landed has almost been time for the crime, scientists know that is a true representation of what is going on. I have worked on this for over two years; we have not asked for it to be dropped out of the sky, as some of the amendments to the Bill seem to be—for an enabling Bill, there are some clauses that seem to be a shopping list for DEFRA. What we are asking for is a trial, because we truly believe that for a unique system anywhere in the world, we have a system here that could get us away from poor science, solve the problem of FQAs and who owns them, and get us towards a far more sustainable fisheries management system.

We implore hon. Members to put in a legislative requirement that a trial across the fleet, not just inshore, is enacted to give us an alternate solution. If it fails, it fails, and if it is proved right, we have lost nothing but gained a lot.

[George Eustice]

Q Just to clarify, there is a different purpose behind a White Paper, which sets out your policy and what you seek to do with the powers, and a Bill that establishes the legal powers you need to deliver your policy. We would not need a specific clause to say, “You must run a trial,” in order to be able to run a trial; the legal powers to run a trial are in the existing clauses of the Bill.

Coming back to the principle, the difficulty with fisheries is that, while you have said effort does not work, nothing quite works on fisheries. That is why it becomes a circular argument. You seem to be arguing for a return to catch composition rules, which themselves became slightly discredited so that people tried to move away from them. The challenge is that an effort regime works best in a mixed fishery where it is harder to segregate out the fish, but a tonnage system works best in, say, the pelagic.

Aaron Brown: Absolutely. We would say for pelagic species, where you are catching an individual bulk species and vessels can reasonably accurately target that, although at times you do get it wrong, a quota system is fine. The problem is that dynamic mixed fishery—the white fish; we include nephrops in that mixed fishery. What we are saying is catch compositions but not arbitrary limits, which, again, is a problem. It has flexibility.

To avoid a race to fish, to avoid giving people a blunt dollop of time and their going off and targeting the highest value species because the economic incentive is there, what you are effectively doing under this system is a buffer scheme, if you like. It is a trading scheme. “Okay, I’ve caught the wrong fish. It’s worth money”. Then, rather than discard it into the sea unrecorded and keep on fishing and killing more of that species while trying to find one you can keep, what you are moving towards is trading overall ceiling of effort for that wrong fish. So it is a compensation scheme, effectively, in which you get the financial benefit of that fish and your men get their pay—we will come on to that with the system that DEFRA proposes for discards—but, overall, your ceiling in the year comes down to meet you.

That would solve the bass problem. You could put in a zero catch composition for bass. Any catches would have a time penalty. Boats could be tied up on the Monday but they would have that bass landed, and the financial benefit of it. It would work for spurdogs. We really believe there is a system here that merits a good look, and proper scrutiny and trial. As we say, we lose nothing if it fails and we gain everything if it succeeds.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Do you think that fish should be a public asset and that that should be defined in the Bill?

Aaron Brown: I think that absolutely, yes. I think there has always been that case. I was very pleased to hear Dr Tom Appleby state that, and many of the other non-governmental organisations have said it, about the idea of privatisation. Even with the FQA system, it says in the paperwork that people get through, that it should not be bartered, sold or bought. It just happens to be that the industry has gone and done it.

Fish always has been a public resource. Various judicial hearings have defined that as well. Indeed, it probably stretches all the way back into Magna Carta, right back through our constitution. At the end of the day, we as fishermen, as the members of the public who catch, are only custodians of what is the nation’s; we look after it and husband it well for current generations and future ones. We would very much like to see a clause put in towards that.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

6. What plans he has to implement an independent farming policy after the UK leaves the EU.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

The Government’s Agriculture Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, is the first major piece of legislation affecting agriculture since 1947. It provides certainty for farmers through a seven-year transition period and lays the foundations of a new farming policy based on public goods and fairness in the supply chain. At their request, it also includes provisions for Wales and Northern Ireland. This critical piece of legislation will enable us to seize the opportunities to help our farming, horticulture and forestry sectors become more profitable and sustainable.

[John Lamont]

Many farmers in my constituency are very concerned at the decision of the SNP Scottish Government to opt out of key parts of the Bill. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the fact that the Scottish Government have not presented alternative proposals, so many farmers may not be sure whether there will be a legislative framework to ensure support for farming after we leave the European Union?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. As he knows, agriculture is devolved. At the request of the Welsh Government there is a schedule containing provisions for Wales, and at the request of the Northern Ireland Administration there is a schedule containing provisions for Northern Ireland. Scotland has yet to decide what it wishes to do. We have maintained an open offer to insert provisions in the Bill at later stages should the Scottish Government wish us to do so. Alternatively, they can legislate through their own Parliament, but they will need some legislation in order to be able to pay their farmers in 2020.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Can the Minister confirm that under a clean, global, free trade Brexit the United Kingdom will be able to protect farmers with tariffs just like every other country, and to provide more help for smaller farmers? Can we have more optimism from the Government, and less “Project Fear” with gumboots on?

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend knows, I have always been very optimistic about the opportunities presented by Brexit. It is important to note that in a no-deal Brexit, the UK would be free to set its own trade policy unilaterally. The options open to us would be to create autonomous tariff rate quotas, tariff rate suspensions or lower-band tariffs on certain goods if we wished to do so, but we would have an independent trade policy in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Has the Minister had any discussions with the Prime Minister about her withdrawal agreement’s implications for the transport and sale of livestock from Northern Ireland to the rest of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Mr Speaker]

That was not altogether adjacent to an inquiry about an independent farming policy. The hon. Gentleman might more usefully have shoehorned his inquiry into Question 2. Because he is a very public-spirited fellow, I will let him off on this occasion, but he should not repeat his offence.

[George Eustice]

The withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on a future economic partnership set out the Prime Minister’s and the Government’s approach to trying to deal with issues relating to the Northern Ireland border, and I am sure that we have many days of discussion on those matters to look forward to.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend assure me that we will not be replacing one set of bureaucrats with another set of bureaucrats? How can we ensure that the right sort of assistance goes to the less favoured areas that are so important to our countryside?

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, but I can tell him that the Bill has important provisions that will enable us to strike down and improve some retained EU law, particularly in relation to the burden of administration. We are absolutely clear that we want a totally different culture in how we regulate farmers in the future. The Bill also enables us to target support at farmers who are delivering public goods, including those in severely disadvantaged areas.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for International Trade on maintaining environmental and animal welfare standards in future trade agreements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to ensure that agricultural products produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than UK products will not be included in any future trade agreements.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Our current high standards, including on import requirements, will apply when we leave the EU. Some of them, such as the ban on the use of growth-promoting hormones, are already in domestic legislation. Others, such as the ban on chlorine washing of poultry, will be brought on to our statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Countries seeking access to our markets in future will have to abide by our standards.

[Neil Parish]

Ministers are naturally keen to raise welfare standards in this country, and to reduce the use of antibiotics and produce greater and better food than we already have, but if we are undermined by imports, that will put farmers out of business and reduce global animal welfare. Will Ministers therefore accept the amendment that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has tabled to ensure that imports are not allowed into this country if they do not meet our standards of production?

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, we had a good discussion on these matters in the Bill Committee, and I look forward to discussing his amendment on Report. Our view is that the types of measure that he has outlined would probably not be right, because it is sometimes possible to recognise equivalence, and our standards do not have to be identical in drafting regulations. However, there are a number of other approaches that some countries take, including scrutiny and oversight roles for Parliaments as trade deals are discussed.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I very much support the amendment from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and I have also tabled new clause 1 on the same topic. It is estimated that by 2050, antibiotic resistance could cause up to 10 million deaths a year, and we know that 80% of the antibiotics sold in the US are sold for animal use. We heard from the chief veterinary officer yesterday at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee about what we are doing to reduce antibiotics use here. Will the Minister resist it in US imports too?

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Here in the UK, we have made huge progress in reducing the use of antibiotics. Poultry in particular has seen a 50% reduction in the use of antibiotics. US agriculture remains quite backward and some years behind in these matters, but we continue to work together to try to raise its game and approach.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s good will on this issue is recognised, as is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s, but I re-emphasise the seriousness with which we on the Agriculture Bill Committee dealt with this issue. We cannot rely on good will. We need certainty for our food producers across the country on the face of a Bill—it could be the Trade Bill or the Agriculture Bill—that standards will be maintained and that they will not be priced out of the market.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend made his case powerfully in Committee. He will recall that, as a result, I undertook to give this issue further consideration and have further discussion with colleagues in government in time for Report.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

The discussion in the Agriculture Bill Committee was very good, but unfortunately the Government chose not to accept our amendments, so I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and the whole of the Select Committee on tabling theirs. I hope the Minister will confirm today that he will accept that amendment.

[George Eustice]

As I have explained, I do not believe that that particular amendment is the right way to approach the issue, nor is the Agriculture Bill the right place for such an amendment, as this is a trade issue. Nevertheless, I gave an undertaking to have conversations and discussions with other Departments in time for Report.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to deliver equitable funding schemes for farmers throughout the UK.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Once we leave the common agricultural policy, we will be able to create fairer funding for farmers, with greater freedoms across the four Administrations. On 16 October, the Government announced a review of the intra-UK allocation of domestic farm support funding between 2020 and the end of the Parliament. The review will consider a range of factors that reflect the unique circumstances of each part of the United Kingdom.

[Alex Burghart]

I very much welcome the news that we will have fairer funding across all four parts of the UK after we leave the EU. Will the Minister reassure me that this fairer funding will take account of each country’s individual circumstances, particularly the environment, their agriculture and their socioeconomic needs?

[George Eustice]

I can confirm to my hon. Friend that the review will indeed will consider all those issues—the environment, agriculture and socioeconomic circumstances of each part of the UK. We have a manifesto commitment to keep the agricultural budget the same until 2022 and a commitment to put in place a new funded scheme thereafter.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Government Front-Bench team stop blaming Europe for everything in farming and recognise that it is modern industrial methods of agriculture that are responsible for denuding our country of wildlife and for species going into extinction? That is the problem. We need a funding system that is equitable but deals with that problem.

[George Eustice]

It is Government policy to support a more sustainable approach to agriculture. The common agricultural policy has failed to do that. The new policy that we have set out in the Agriculture Bill will deliver a fairer, more sustainable and more profitable agriculture for the future.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

Since it was established in the Agriculture Bill Committee that further primary legislation is required for direct payments to be made to Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, what steps is my hon. Friend taking to ensure that Scotland is in the UK Agriculture Bill and that it conforms with the needs of the National Farmers Union Scotland and my constituents?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. As I said earlier, there is an open offer from the Government to add a schedule for Scotland at a later stage of the Bill’s progress, should Scotland wish us to. This area is devolved to Scotland. The Scottish Government have the power to act in this space and they need to make up their mind and decide what they want to do.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

How can the Minister talk about ethical funding when Westminster has stolen £160 million of convergence uplift meant for Scottish farmers? What are the Government doing to replace that up to 2020, and what is going to happen beyond 2020?

[George Eustice]

As the hon. Gentleman will no doubt be aware, the average receipt for Scottish farmers tends to be higher than in other parts of the UK, because Scottish farmers have larger holdings in more disadvantaged areas. We are having this review precisely to address the importance of fair funding in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T3. What is my hon. Friend’s assessment of the implications of the Migration Advisory Committee’s report on immigration for the agricultural and food processing industries in the United Kingdom?

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

The Government obviously did not agree with every element of the Migration Advisory Committee report. The food industry is the most important manufacturing industry in this country and horticulture is one of our most productive agricultural sectors. It is important that we ensure that these crucial industries have the labour requirements that they need in future.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Illegal waste sites such as the Twyford factory in Stoke-on-Trent pose a huge risk to our environment. Despite the £10 million that was in the Budget, that site is not eligible for that help because it remains in private ownership. Court action has ordered a clearance. The local authority and the fire service want it cleared. Will the Minister meet me and those interested parties so that we can find a way forward so the site can be cleared once and for all?

Agriculture and Fisheries Council

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Written Statements

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

The Agriculture and Fisheries Council took place in Brussels on 19 November. The UK was represented by Lord Gardiner of Kimble, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Rural Affairs and Biosecurity, and Lords Minister.

The main focus of the Council for fisheries was a Council regulation for fixing the fishing opportunities for certain deep-sea fish stocks for 2019 and 2020, for which a political agreement was sought. The UK was content with the Commission proposal and intervened to stress the importance of setting fishing opportunities in line with scientific advice. Following a series of trilateral meetings between member states, the Commission and the presidency, a unanimous political agreement was reached.

The primary focus for agriculture was a policy debate on the post-2020 CAP reform package, including two legislative proposals: the first on financing, management and monitoring of the CAP, the second on common market organisation (CMO) of agricultural products. On the first legislative proposal, member states welcomed the shift to a performance-based approach, but voiced concern about the burden monitoring and reporting would place on them. On the second item, most member states were content to maintain the status quo, while some member states suggested that new tools should be applied.

An exchange of views was held on the current challenges in the field of plant protection. Member states agreed with the presidency on the challenges posed by climate change and international trade in preventing the introduction and spread of damaging pests. The UK intervened, pointing out the UK’s long term plans and emphasising support for a precautionary approach on imports.

The commission also informed the Council about the present market situation which has been characterised by general stability. On the continuing issue in the sugar market, the Commission announced that it will be convening a high level group to propose action. A number of member states voiced specific concerns over pig meat.

The Council held another exchange of views on Task Force Rural Africa (TFRA) which included a presentation of the findings from the body’s forthcoming report by the Commission and the chair of the Commission’s Task Force Rural Africa. Some member states suggested areas for partnership with a particular focus on delivering UN sustainable development goals.

One item was discussed under any other business:

The Commission informed member states about the implementation of the European maritime and fisheries fund, pointing out the low uptake of funding by member states.

[HCWS1119]

Fisheries Bill

George Eustice Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

We have had a good debate with many lively exchanges, particularly during the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the DEFRA officials who have worked incredibly hard to get the Bill to this point, to our officials in the Marine Management Organisation, who have done considerable planning on enforcement, and to CEFAS, our science agency, which is truly the best in the world in fisheries science.

The Secretary of State was generous in giving way in his opening speech, and indeed the debate drifted some distance from the contents of the Bill. I will not be giving way, however, as I want to use the short time available to address as many points as possible.

I welcome the fact that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) supports the Bill. She made some specific points about reallocating quota. We have been clear in our White Paper that we want to move to a different method of allocating quota to the UK fleet. We have also set out proposals in the White Paper to allocate new quota on a different methodology so that it does not simply follow FQA—fixed quota allocation—unit allocations. In the longer term, we could obviously change the allocation keys on the existing FQAs, but the legal advice based on case law is that that would have to be done gradually over a period of time.

It is also important to note that some of the figures bandied about in terms of who owns what quota can be misleading, as there is a huge difference between the small inshore vessels, which are limited largely to the 0 to 12 mile zone, and the pelagic fleet, which has huge vessels with huge capital investment, and for which mackerel is by far the largest stock.

The hon. Lady made some points about sustainability and the discard ban set out in clause 1. She suggested that that is weaker than we have now, but I can tell her that the wording we use in clause 1 is largely borrowed directly from the EU regulation. We envisage that the joint fisheries statement that flows from that—it is a legal requirement and details of it are set out in schedule 1 to the Bill—will define how we will deliver those sustainability objectives. So the basis of clause 1 is borrowed from the existing EU requirements on sustainability.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) raised the issue of enforcement capacity. We are doing work at the moment with Border Force, some of whose staff have been retrained to do fisheries duties. We also have additional vessels from the Royal Navy that are being tested at the moment, and we are in discussion with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency about aerial surveillance. So we are planning on having a significant increase in our enforcement capacity. My hon. Friend also mentioned the danger of the science being out of date. It is always a challenge with the science, but we do put observers on fisheries vessels, and our scientific models attempt to predict the future by looking at particular trends.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) mentioned the clause in the Bill that covers the selling of quota rights and said that the tendering and auction processes should be devolved. They are devolved, and the clause is absolutely explicit that it applies only to England. The licensing of foreign vessels is devolved, but we have said that, with the consent of the Scottish Government and others, the Marine Management Organisation might issue a single licence for the whole UK. Clearly, agreements that are made internationally would be a matter for the UK Government. The hon. Lady also suggested that Norway, being outside the European Union, was a victim of fax democracy and had no control over its fisheries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Norway is a serious player and an independent coastal state that controls access to its waters. It conducts its own negotiations on coastal states matters, unlike us; we are currently represented by the European Union.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) gave a passionate speech and raised the importance of allowing selective gear types. This is why we have a power in the Bill to enable us to change technical specifications expeditiously. He has long been an advocate of an effort-based approach. As I have said many times, there are some advantages to an effort-based regime, particularly with mixed fisheries and with the inshore fleet, but there are downsides, too. Generally speaking, a quota system makes the most sense for the pelagic fleet, while an effort-based regime could make more sense for a small inshore fleet. We have set out a proposal in our White Paper for further pilot schemes in this area, particularly for the inshore fleet, but it is not an area that we should rush. My right hon. Friend also asked for reassurance on the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, and I can confirm that UNCLOS will be the new legal baseline once we leave the European Union.

The hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and others raised the issue of tariff-free access for our trade, and of course we are going to be seeking that free trade agreement as part of our future economic partnership, but I would point out that we have a trade surplus in fisheries. We export about £1.3 billion but import £1.1 billion. Largely, the fish species that we export, particularly shellfish, tend to have lower tariffs, while the processed products, which we export far less of, are the ones that tend to have the higher tariffs. I have to say that the message from the processors we have spoken to is, “Don’t sell out the catching sector on our account.” I would really welcome such spirit and courage from other sectors of the economy.

My hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) and for St Ives (Derek Thomas) mentioned the unfairness of existing relative stability shares as the allocation key, and we agree. We set out clearly in the White Paper our view that we should move to zonal attachment—that is, where the fish reside—as a fairer and more scientific basis for allocation. We are clear that that is the approach we will take.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) raised the issue of bluefin tuna. This is a complex issue and it is not specifically covered by the common fisheries policy—it is covered by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which is a regional fisheries management organisation—but this is certainly something that we can consider.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) has more fishing in his constituency than any other Member in this House. He correctly identified the importance of maintaining access for leverage in negotiations. He also mentioned the issue of lobster and brown crab, which would be covered by the western waters regime but would largely be a matter for the Scottish Government.

In conclusion, the Bill is essential, whether we have a deal or no deal. It gives us the legal powers to control access, set quota and manage fisheries sustainability, and I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Fisheries Bill (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Fisheries Bill:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Wednesday 19 December.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Amanda Milling.)

Question agreed to.

Fisheries Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Fisheries Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

(1) any expenditure incurred by the Marine Management Organisation in connection with the licensing of foreign fishing boats;

(2) any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State in giving, or in connection with giving, financial assistance to any person for purposes relating to—

(a) the improvement of the marine and aquatic environment;

(b) commercial aquaculture or commercial fish activities; or

(c) the promotion or development of recreational fishing;

(3) any other expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State or the Marine Management Organisation.—(Amanda Milling.)

Question agreed to.

Fisheries Bill (Ways and Means)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Fisheries Bill, it is expedient to authorise the charging of fees, or other charges, under or by virtue of:

(a) the Act,

(b) the Fisheries Act 1981, or

(c) the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009.—(Amanda Milling.)

Question agreed to.

Agriculture Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Ben Lake]

I might be tempted later.

We need to look at how the four industries and Administrations will work following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, because the EU provided a sort of overarching framework within which we all knew the parameters and rules. Any new framework would have to be agreed by the four Administrations if they were to work effectively and smoothly. I am probing the Government to see what their thinking is on this matter. I may then bring it back for a vote on Report.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

The hon. Gentleman said that this is a probing amendment. He raises some important issues about how we co-ordinate policy around the UK. I will first explain why we do not agree with the approach taken in the new clause; secondly, I will outline some of the things we are doing.

First, we do not have a federal system in the UK. We have a devolved settlement. There is a good reason for that: federal systems tend to work best where there are a number of constituent parts all of roughly the same size. Our challenge in the UK is that England is so much bigger than the other parts of the UK; if we had some kind of qualified majority vote, England would end up dominating the decision making. Equally, if we had equal votes and effectively required unanimity, smaller parts of the UK would have a veto on what England did. That is why we have developed a devolution settlement where certain powers are clearly devolved and certain powers are clearly reserved. In the middle, where it makes sense to co-ordinate and work together, we have a good track record of putting together voluntary frameworks and memorandums of understanding.

The approach that we envisage taking is that there would be frameworks, in the form of memorandums of understanding or concordats, and that those would facilitate co-operation, collaboration and co-ordination so that we can work together on a number of key areas. As the hon. Gentleman highlighted, there are elements of the Bill that are devolved but on which we would probably want to work together, to co-ordinate the impacts. Notably, there needs to be some sort of administrative agreement in place to manage cross-border holdings. We have that already under the existing CAP so it would be relatively easy to roll something similar forward.

Perhaps most important is the use of powers in exceptional market conditions. Those intervention powers could have impacts on other parts of the UK, so having a memorandum of understanding about how we would use the powers is important. Other areas in which we believe that having an MOU would be important include approaches to data collection, contracts and market transparency, but also issues such as the changing of marketing standards.

We already have in the DEFRA family good examples of concordats working well. We have a number of them in relation to fisheries. Some of those have within them a dispute resolution mechanism. The Scottish Government have at times been in dispute with, for instance, the Isle of Man about scallop fishing—it is always scallops, for some reason—but a resolution process exists in the fisheries sphere to deal with that.

[Ben Lake]

Is the difference between a concordat and a memorandum of understanding the involvement of a dispute mechanism?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

Well, they are similar. Neither has to have a dispute resolution process. Some do and some do not. We have a number of concordats in the fisheries sphere. A concordat tends to be slightly more formal than an MOU, which is a looser agreement.

Let me turn to the points made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion. On subsection (1) of the new clause, we envisage concordats and MOUs pulling Ministers together in the way that I have described. On subsection (2)(d), as I said, we already have processes for managing cross-border cases. On subsection (3), we already have, as I said, the devolution settlement. On subsection (3)(b), about maintaining,

“as a minimum, equivalent flexibility for tailoring policies”

to that which we have in the EU, that is not saying very much—we do not have a lot of flexibility, to be honest, and we would like to give more.

One of my most memorable experiences in DEFRA has been being informed of a dispute that the Welsh Government were having with the EU about ear tags. In Wales, where there are hedges, ear tags can sometimes be pulled off by the brambles in a hedge, so animals used to have one small tag—a metal clip tag—and one larger tag that could be read, but the EU said that that was not good enough and the two tags had to be the same size, so that there were two dangling tags. The matter ended up going to court, and we had to get involved to support the Welsh Government in arguing their case. That is the kind of flexibility that we have in the EU—not very much. We would like to have far more.

My final point is this. Yesterday I was in Cardiff: the occasion was a joint ministerial meeting with the DEFRA Ministers. The meeting was hosted by Lesley Griffiths of the Welsh Government. Lesley put forward a proposal, which we agreed yesterday, that we should put that group of, in effect, the Agriculture and DEFRA Ministers on to a more formal footing, with clear terms of reference established, so that it could manage the EU exit process and possibly have a role thereafter, but also work up a memorandum of understanding about how we approach some of these issues together. Therefore, in addition to the Joint Ministerial Committee process, which itself is being reviewed to try to iron out some of the difficulties and make it more effective, we have a memorandum of understanding under development through the meeting that has been convened with the DEFRA Ministers. As I said, I was in Cardiff discussing that only yesterday.

[Chris Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for updating us. May I ask which organisation will take precedence?

[George Eustice]

Always, in a memorandum of understanding or concordat, we are in effect talking about issues that are devolved. They are issues that are technically devolved but on which we all recognise that there is sense in having common frameworks, so we voluntarily come back together for a concordat—to reach an agreement. We do that already in the veterinary sphere, for instance, in agriculture. There is a veterinary concordat whereby all parts of GB sign up to an Animal and Plant Health Agency surveillance programme, and it works very well, so we have demonstrated that we can do this. But ultimately these are areas of policy that are devolved and devolved provisions of the Bill.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I should indicate that those policy areas may technically be devolved because they are devolved. That is important.

In the notice given by the policy paper “Agricultural framework progress update: September 2018”, the Government talked about a period of 18 months to reach that concordat with the Scottish Government. Can the Minister give us any indication of a firmer timescale for that, given how long the discussions have been going on and—if I may infer—some of the challenges that he has perhaps skipped over in reaching agreement on these concordats or memorandums?

[George Eustice]

There is a lot of work to do. There are 92 different statutory instruments that we have had to put down in preparation for Brexit. Each of the devolved Administrations have had to do a large number of SIs themselves, and there has been an enormous amount of joint working at official level to share clauses and the legal drafting that our own parliamentary counsel has done, with the assistance of other devolved officials. We also now have 54 different Brexit projects, all of them about areas where we effectively have to either agree joint approaches or concordats, or agree that we will leave things fully devolved.

There is a large number of those projects. We discussed them yesterday. About one third of them are rated as being in the green box—everything has to be red, amber or green these days—recognising that there is already an agreement about how to proceed. On a number of others, more discussions are still needed, but that was highlighted yesterday. In the month ahead, there will be a lot of detailed working between officials.

I hope I have been able to reassure the hon. Member for Ceredigion that, through both the review of the JMC and putting the group that the Welsh Government proposed yesterday on a more formal footing, together with our plan for concordats and memorandums of understanding, we will address his concern, and that on that basis he will consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

We think there is considerable merit in this new clause, and we hope that the hon. Member for Ceredigion will think hard before he gives away too much to the Government. The reality is that there is a need for a framework; if we are not careful, we will effectively have four different systems of agriculture developing, and I do not think we are very careful. I have waxed lyrical already about the problems in Northern Ireland, which have become more acute after yesterday. The Democratic Unionist party has already told me that it is not necessarily going to follow this particular bit of legislation—at the moment, it is not even going to follow this Government, so watch this space.

We must be very careful that there is some degree of co-ordination—dare I say it, a single market—within the United Kingdom, let alone a relationship with the Republic of Ireland, which is crucial for them but also important for us. We think the hon. Gentleman’s new clause deserves debate, and maybe more than debate. We must secure this agreement. It is interesting that the Fisheries Bill provides powers for Welsh Ministers, Northern Ireland Departments and Scottish Ministers in a more formal sense, yet this Agriculture Bill does not. Why not? I ask the Minister that—he can intervene, or sum up accordingly.

This is not just about farming. The new clause is strongly supported by Greener UK, which feels strongly that there is a real need for cross-border co-operation and collaboration to deliver on the environmental protection improvements that the Bill is all about. The Opposition advocated that during debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, because we feel strongly that there is a need to at least keep the four countries together in terms of the different provision. Unless that is done by consensus, it will have to be done by imposition; consensus is by far the better way.

The specific requirements set out in new clause 11 would provide those legislative safeguards. Otherwise, there is nothing in the Bill to make the issue something substantive—rather, it is just on a wing and a prayer: one of the criticisms we have advanced throughout this Committee. I hear what the Minister says about how the different conventions apply with regard to meetings with the other three countries. This is very much an England-only Bill, so of course the Government can say warm words and make gestures, but those will not necessarily be tied in by the Bill.

On the need for environmental collaboration, Greener UK’s view is that the new clause is important, because those environmental considerations do not respect national borders. Unless we do similar things—we will not do the same thing, but we might do similar things—agriculture will be not just devolved but different in each of the four countries, as I have said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Drew]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—of course they will. There is a real danger that something akin to turf wars will develop. This is not just hypothetical; it is about the need for common frameworks because of issues such as soil erosion and water management. We have to have cognisance of the fact that border areas need to take account of one another and of what is happening. Otherwise, we will end up with a race to the bottom, which we all want to avoid.

Another issue that has not been raised yet is the way that we will meet our international obligations post Brexit. As much as we have devolved Administrations, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith rightly says, we have signed up to many international conventions as the United Kingdom. We need some method. I hear what the Minister says about how regularly Ministers meet from the four Administrations—well, three; I do not know whether officials from Northern Ireland were there—

[George Eustice]

indicated assent.

[Dr Drew]

The Minister nods, so they were. Again, that is important because it will be a learning curve.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say we have international commitments, not the least of which, relevant to agriculture, is to the World Trade Organisation. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, that he decided not to vote with us on establishing the clauses that would enable us to deliver those commitments.

[Dr Drew]

It is not surprising. We are the Opposition and you are the Government. The Government are supposed to be moving the measure, which we scrutinise. There are ways in which we scrutinise it, which might involve some reflection.

[George Eustice]

And we did, but I suppose the point I am making is that there are elements of the Bill that enable us to deliver the UK’s international commitments.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether I wanted to intervene on fisheries, and he is right that there are two areas in the Fisheries Bill where provision is made for joint working, but the difference with that Bill, which we will have time to debate in the future, is that it is very much to do with international negotiations. That is why we have committed to having a joint fisheries statement. It is all about international environmental commitments that are UK-wide. Secondly, there is provision for joined-up thinking when it comes to joint licensing, which, again, relates to an international agreement. We see agriculture policy as slightly different. There needs to be more scope for the devolved Administrations to do what works for their own landscape.

[Dr Drew]

I thank the Minister for that, and it is a perfectly valid case to make. That would be fine if we did not have a common border with another country that is going to remain in the EU. I do not quite understand. Although the seas are different in the sense that, yes, of course, there is a question of international access across all our waters, we have the same issue, whether we call it the backstop or just the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. We have to face up to it and look at some commonality, which is best achieved by common frameworks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

I have been advised by the Chair not to respond, so I will resist, but there is nothing processy about our objection to the deal. The deal does not include that which we have told the Prime Minister we need in order to support it.

Our fourth test about preventing a race to the bottom is absolutely relevant to the new clause. Unless we have the new clause, or something like it that the Government have the opportunity to introduce—I have never seen a Minister stand up and say, “I accept your clause” to anybody across the way; I understand that they always want to bring back their own—we will see a race to the bottom. For about 18 months, we have set out the criteria by which we would assess a deal. Avoiding a race to the bottom is very important to us for the reasons we are discussing.

The withdrawal agreement and the political declaration mention non-regression measures. I have not got the agreement with me—this is the only time this week that I have not carried the damn thing around with me. Will non-regression measures apply to food standards, environmental protections and animal welfare? The agreement contains something about workers’ rights, but it would be helpful to know from the Minister whether non-regression measures will apply to the issues we are discussing.

Things look uncertain. We are not even sure whether the agreement published last week will be agreed by Parliament, or what steps the Government will take even if it is agreed. Which measures will apply to this industry, and what opportunities will there be to make this type of clause binding if we do not take the opportunity now? I am not certain that we will have the opportunity before the end of March next year. We have a duty to put this in place in some way, shape or form between now and then. If the Minister assures us that there will be an opportunity to do so, we will need to think about that, but for now, I think this is it. If the Government do not adopt these measures today, when will they do so? They are incredibly important, and there is clearly cross-party support for this kind of instrument. I think the Minister gets that. It would be useful to hear how he intends to proceed, how far he intends to go, and what form he thinks the protections need to be in.

[George Eustice]

The amendments all seek to achieve the same thing: to set out in statute a requirement that no trade deal can be done or put before Parliament unless its terms mean that no good can be imported that does not meet our standards.

Before talking about the approach that we intend to take on future trade deals, I want to say first and foremost that this is an incredibly important issue. As a number of hon. Members highlighted, the Secretary of State and I could not have been clearer that we will not water down our trade and animal welfare standards in pursuit of a trade deal. The Department for International Trade has now adopted that position unambiguously, despite what the hon. Member for Bristol East said. It is clear that we will not water down our food standards in pursuit of a trade deal.

I want to make a number of points. First, the EU regulations on chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-treated beef and other standards are coming across through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and will sit as retained EU law. It will be unlawful to do a trade deal allowing hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chicken into the UK unless Parliament decides to repeal the legislation that bans its sale in the UK.

Secondly, we are obviously working on our future trade agreement with the European Union. The approach outlined in the Chequers proposal, which remains the basis for the UK’s approach in the development of a future economic partnership, is that we will have a common rulebook on issues pertinent to the border, which will include sanitary and phytosanitary issues. It is likely that a Bill giving effect to the future economic partnership will give additional protections in this space.

This is an important matter for another reason. The United Kingdom has been on a rather different journey from the United States—in particular, over the past 30 years. In the UK, there has been a growth of consumer interest in food provenance. Consumers want more labelling so they can understand how their food was produced. They want higher standards, and they have sought to purchase locally where possible. We have seen a growth in farmers’ markets and a much stronger consumer interest in the quality of food.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Drew]

Will the Minister tell me what the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), was doing in Oklahoma, if not trying to talk about some trade deal? If he cannot pull it off in this country, let alone the US, what was he doing in Oklahoma?

[George Eustice]

I did not know that my right hon. Friend was in Oklahoma, but he is no longer the Secretary of State, and I have not had time to go to Oklahoma personally.

Smaller countries such as New Zealand and Australia have less parliamentary scrutiny—it is predominantly a prerogative for the Cabinet—but even Australia has a process whereby the final trade deal must be laid before Parliament for a period of 15 days. For us, this is an area led by the Department for International Trade. The hon. Member for Stroud said there were a number of amendments to the Trade Bill, which I know were debated. DIT has taken a position somewhere between the two. It envisages a 14-week consultation to run ahead of any new negotiation. There would then be a strategic trade advisory group, created to advise Ministers. As negotiations progressed there would be regular updates and statements with the International Trade Committee, so there would be a committee of MPs scrutinising the progress of negotiations. Finally, at the end of the negotiation, the terms of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 would kick in. That would require the Government to lay the trade deal and the treaty that established it before Parliament. There would then be a period of 21 days during which Parliament could pray against that trade Bill and vote to refuse its ratification.

If that happened, the Government would have to go away and think again about what to do. If that process continued a number of times, it would obviously be possible to bring a motion before Parliament that would effectively veto the treaty. There would be lots of scrutiny during the development of the trade deals and then a parliamentary right to veto at the end.

[Sandy Martin]

Does the Minister accept that most trade deals involve various sectors? There is something unique about the agriculture sector and, in particular, the agriculture sector that will be created if this Bill is enacted. Farmers will be supported to do things other than the production of the substance that is the subject of trade. When we have a trade arrangement on agricultural products, we have a very different scenario from that we would have with a trade deal on products from producers who are not being supported to do other things. It is the support to do other things that needs the special protection in trade deals to do with agriculture.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but it is broader than that. Agriculture is unique. There is a reason why most trade deals that fail founder over arguments around agriculture. Controversy around deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or any others, for that matter, always concern issues about food standards, food quality and animal welfare, and rightly so. The truth is that consumers care about those issues deeply and passionately. They are less interested in chapters on digital or financial services.

[Sandy Martin]

So does the Minister accept there is a very good reason for having a special trade clause in the Bill?

[George Eustice]

There is a very good reason for having the thorough process outlined by the Department for International Trade that I am describing to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Goodwill]

There has been much talk about trade deals in terms of what others might send us, but does the Minister not agree that trade is a two-way process? If, as he suggested, the Americans are becoming much more discerning in the quality of the products they buy, there are great opportunities to export products such as Wensleydale cheese or British beef to these new markets.

[George Eustice]

That is a very important point. We are working at the moment to try to get access for British beef to the United States because it is a premium product and their beef tends to be lower grade. There is also a good market for British dairy products, particularly our famous cheeses, in the United States where they largely have a standard cheddar that is not particularly good. There is a market for those. There are offensive opportunities in some of these trade deals, which we should always bear in mind.

[Jenny Chapman]

I would observe that not all American food is as dire as it might seem from our deliberations. There is a thriving organic, local food market in the United States.

I want to ask the Minister about process. Will there be an opportunity for Parliament at the mandate-setting stage to constrain the trade negotiations, so that it can be made clear to negotiators that Parliament will not accept anything that breaches the standards that we are trying to embed? The Minister seeks to do that agreement by agreement, but we are trying to put those constraints in the Bill.

[George Eustice]

The hard power, for want of a better term, that Parliament will have is the power to block ratification at the end of the process. As I outlined earlier, there will be a 14-week consultation process where anybody—consumer groups and whoever—can feed in.

As the negotiations progress, there will be regular scrutiny from the International Trade Committee, which will be a parliamentary Committee providing that scrutiny. Therefore, it will not be a mandate as such—in that sense, it is perhaps more akin to the Australian system—but it will have some of the features of the US system, in terms of parliamentary overview as the negotiations progress, but also the ability to block ratification at the end.

[Martin Whitfield]

Is not the danger with the procedure that the Minister is outlining that every time a trade Bill comes up with any country or group of countries, we will have a repetition of evidence and submissions from farmers, who will seek, rightly, to defend what we agree across the House about a bottom level. Removing that repetition would make life a lot more certain for farmers, in terms of how we are going forward in the agricultural community, but also, more importantly, it open ups space for other discussions that will be particular to an individual trade Bill, rather than something that I think we agree would apply to every trade discussion.

[George Eustice]

I think that that is right and it is why ultimately this area of policy is for the Department for International Trade, because it has to look at the whole trade piece. As the hon. Member for Ipswich pointed out, agriculture is unique and special, and that is why DEFRA has a special role in this—because there are complex issues in relation to tariff rate quotas, which a lot of people do not understand and which are very agriculture-specific, and lots of complex SPS issues. Agriculture is a unique and highly complex area of trade that we would need to get right.

In conclusion, a process has been set out; there is an ability for Parliament to block ratification and, if it so wanted, to make a resolution to strike down a treaty. However, in the light of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset, I will of course undertake to talk to Government colleagues to see whether anything could be refined in this process to reflect the agricultural context of trade agreements and to look at the role of scrutinising those agreements from a strictly agricultural perspective. I do not think that it would be within the scope of the Bill, but I hope that in Committee I can give some additional reassurance in this regard.

[Deidre Brock]

This has been a very good debate, with very good contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. I appreciate what the Minister has said about trying to refine this issue at some stage, when we go further into the Bill, but I am disappointed that he has not indicated that he will include a clause about trade in the Bill. We still come back to this question: where are the safeguards to prevent Ministers from signing up to trade deals that disadvantage UK food producers and potentially lower animal welfare, environmental protection and food standards? Farming, environmental, public health and food-producing organisations think that the strongest assurances are required in the Bill so, in the hope that the Minister and his colleagues will agree with me that it is important to make it clear now to all those organisations and to our constituents that their concerns are being taken seriously and listened to, I will push new clause 12 to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.