Asked by: Lord Browne of Belmont (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the government of Iceland regarding access to Icelandic fishing waters for UK fishers following the end of the transition period.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Defra officials engage regularly with their Icelandic counterparts across a wide variety of policy issues. Recent discussions have focused on enhancing bilateral fisheries cooperation with Iceland through the UK-Iceland Joint Vision for 2030, as well as other fisheries management matters within the North-East Atlantic. The UK’s relationship with Iceland is likely to evolve further as the UK goes forward as an independent coastal State.
Asked by: Lord Browne of Belmont (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to ensure good terms for UK fishermen at the end of the EU withdrawal transition period.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
At the end of the transition period, the UK will be an independent coastal state with rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to control and manage the resources in our waters.
On 27 February 2020, the Government published the UK’s approach to the future relationship with the EU. The Government is ready to consider an agreement on fisheries that reflects the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state at the end of 2020. However, any such framework agreement should set out the scope and process for annual negotiations on access to the parties’ exclusive economic zones and fishing opportunities. Fishing opportunities should be negotiated annually based on the best available science for shared stocks provided by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas. The UK will not accept the Common Fisheries Policy’s ‘relative stability’ mechanism for sharing fishing quotas, which is outdated and based on historical fishing activity from the 1970s. Future fishing opportunities should be based on the principle of zonal attachment, which better reflects where the fish live.
Negotiations with the EU commenced on 2 March. The Government is committed to securing good terms for fishers in the whole of the UK.
Asked by: Lord Browne of Belmont (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Combatting the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a priority for the UK Government and the UK plays a leading role globally. We are investing over £36 million from 2014 to 2021 on action to counter IWT, including work to reduce demand, strengthen enforcement, ensure effective legal frameworks and develop sustainable livelihoods.
The UK initiated and supported a series of international conferences, starting with the first conference in London in 2014, to drive the fight to eliminate IWT and in October last year brought together global leaders at the latest and most ambitious of these. The conference brought a new focus and determination to tackle IWT as a serious organised crime, to build coalitions and to close markets for illegally traded wildlife products. Sixty-five countries, including the UK, have reaffirmed their commitment to counter the illegal trade and have declared what further action they will be taking. Full details of all the commitments made at the conference have been published in the 2018 London IWT conference declaration.
New UK pledges made at the conference which complement our existing initiatives in this area include the following commitments:
an additional £6 million for the UK’s IWT Challenge Fund;
£900,000 of new funding to develop a British military counter-poaching taskforce;
£2.1 million for public-private partnerships in Indonesia, to secure and extend critical habitats for species including the Sumatran tiger and Asian elephant;
£50,000 to support a new WILDLABS Tech Hub, which has since partnered with the Open Data Institute to reduce the level of illegal trade of wildlife by sharing data to develop innovative technologies;
up to £40,000 to create education packs for children in multiple languages which will teach them about key conservation and IWT issues, in partnership with Tale2Tail, a citizen ivory action group, and the WWF;
to establish a new global consortium made up of specialists in demand reduction and behaviour change, to make sure that our future work on IWT is as binding and effective as possible.
At home we have passed tough new legislation to close our domestic ivory market. The Ivory Act 2018 effects a total ban on commercial dealing in elephant ivory that could directly or indirectly fuel poaching, with five narrow exemptions. When the ban comes into force it will be the toughest in Europe and one of the toughest in the world, with some of the strongest enforcement provisions.