Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 269 standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Wigley.

Brexit has returned significant powers to the UK Government to negotiate and agree international trade agreements with other nations. As a reserved power, it is the responsibility of the UK Government to represent the interests of the agriculture sectors throughout the UK, including those within the political boundaries of devolved Administrations.

To ensure that agriculture businesses in Wales have access to equal opportunities in relation to trade as counterparts in England, it is reasonable to assume that any devolved Administration, responsible as they are for their own agriculture policy, support and monitoring, would share any information necessary with the UK Government in relation to trade. Enabling, where reasonable, the sharing of information to support trade policy and enable the free flow of tradable commodities within and beyond the UK should surely be considered a common-sense matter.

Large areas of rural Wales are heavily dependent on the agriculture sector as their primary economic industry. The symbiosis of agriculture and trade should be a priority; these policy areas must work together to ease the short-term economic shock and longer-term adaptation to new markets that will arise from the UK’s new trading arrangements. It is not an area where political wrangling should overrule what is most beneficial to the people and livelihoods of those affected on the ground.

As food has become a global commodity, the UK does not have the land area to compete on a volume basis with larger developing nations where agricultural production is increasing year on year. However, due in no small part to the structure of the CAP, the agriculture sector in the UK, and Wales in particular, produces agricultural outputs at a commodity scale where the amount of land available would indicate that a focus on higher-quality outputs rather than quantity would be more beneficial.

Generally within the UK, but more specifically in Wales, where legislation such as the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Environment (Wales) Act (2016) are steering the nation to deliver against sustainability goals, there is a growing and marketable evidence base around the value of the sustainable production of food products. This provides significant potential for agriculture producers in Wales not only to promote our current high standards for animal health and welfare but to move into the added value, niche world of “sustainable brand values”, with the potential that this brings to extend into new international markets. Such standards and brand values would demonstrate that a foodstuff grown in Wales was produced with all due consideration for its impact against every aspect of sustainable food production and the sustainable management of natural resources. Businesses in Wales are already starting to look at the potential such a USP could deliver.

To deliver a trade policy that complements Welsh farmers and food businesses, it is essential that the UK Government not only adheres to our existing high standards when negotiating trade deals involving agricultural produce but opens wider avenues for those within the UK whose ambition reaches beyond our current understanding of food standards, to open new and exciting markets. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will indicate the Government’s acceptance of the substance of this amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and I endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, on his Amendments 264 and 265, which I was delighted to sign. I endorse his sentiments and hope my noble friend will look favourably on his amendments, particularly Amendment 264, in much the same vein as I support my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s Amendment 257. I think it is essential there should be proper consultation with the relevant interested parties before regulations are adopted, as I will set out. For the same reason, I support Amendment 265, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I am sure my noble friend will agree that this is a genuine oversight and I hope she will look favourably at approving these or similar provisions before the Bill leaves the House. I also associate myself with Amendment 269, which is incredibly similar to the provisions in my Amendment 256, which was supported by other noble Lords: I would like to see the same apply in Wales as in England and other parts of the United Kingdom.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hain and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

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

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I speaking to Amendment 1, I will speak also to Amendments 4 to 6. What concerns me about all these is that if the UK and the EU fail to reach a deal by the end of the year, they will be bound by international law; namely, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—UNCLOS—which requires co-operation and efforts to agree rules on access to waters, as well as setting catch limits and standards on conservation and management of marine resources.

In the bizarre world of Brexit, the fishing sector—which represents a fraction of 1% of the UK economy—may be the issue that determines whether the current trade negotiations with the EU succeed or fail. Escape from the common fisheries policy was touted by the Brexiteers during the campaign as a great prize to be won, but this sector is heavily dependent on easy access to EU markets, whereas British consumers prefer to eat fish imported from Europe.

I suggest that the future of UK fishing should be determined not by this vacuous Bill or by Amendments 1, 4, 5 and 6, but by a sensible and detailed negotiation with the EU in the current trade talks. At present, regrettably, there is little sign of this happening, and there is now a danger that this issue will prove to be the rock on which a potential deal founders.

As everybody in this debate will be aware, the UK fishing industry, including processing, is heavily concentrated in coastal communities of the nations and regions, which rightly deserve protection in view of their high levels of deprivation and low levels of income and education. However, these communities are heavily reliant on easy access to EU markets. About two-thirds of fish caught by British fishers is sold to the EU in frictionless overnight trade. Most Welsh fishing boats specialise in shellfish, with 90% of their catch currently exported to the EU; I am speaking from my home in Wales at the moment. Meanwhile, UK consumers prefer fish imported from Europe, so our fish processing industry is also heavily reliant on imports from the EU.

After years of one-sided propaganda about “our fish” and claims in the tabloids that a single British fishing industry will benefit from reclaiming the proportion of fish caught by EU boats in UK waters—probably around 60% by weight and 40% by value—a more complex picture now emerges, as this catch is mostly fish for which there is little demand in the UK. There are also large British boats that depend on EU-agreed quotas for their access to Norwegian waters.

In April 2019 the biggest whitefish trawler in the UK fleet sailed up the Thames to highlight the threats facing the fishing industry if Brexit negotiations end in no deal. This is because in that event there would be no automatic access for British boats to these key waters. The jobs of hundreds of fishermen and many hundreds more in fish processing in north-east England will be at risk unless a deal is reached whereby UK vessels are able to continue in such waters that have long been open to UK fleets.

Unsurprisingly, protecting their own vulnerable coastal communities, and ensuring that fishing rights that have existed for hundreds of years do not die, is also a priority for a number of coastal EU member states, such as Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and France. This became evident earlier this month when EU Fisheries Ministers were reported to have rejected Michel Barnier’s proposals for compromise and instructed him to hold firm to his red lines. Just as the Conservatives may be wary of being seen as having betrayed Scottish fishers—as they are worried about the Scottish Parliament elections next year—President Macron of France, for example, will have in mind that he faces an election in 2022.

Incredibly, our dogmatist Government—I acquit the Minister of this charge, because I think he is doing an honest job—seem willing even to sacrifice the chance of a beneficial deal for the UK financial services industry to save UK waters for the British fishing industry. The financial services sector accounted for 7% of UK GDP in 2018, employing an estimated 2 million people. In any event, the UK fishing industry is likely to suffer, rather than prosper, if there are EU-UK cod wars, as, among other things, there will be a danger to sustainability of stocks through overfishing. It would therefore be a spectacular own goal if the UK refused a deal relating to finance as the price of not reaching an agreement on fishing.

What might constitute a reasonable deal? Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, outside the common fisheries policy the UK is still legally obliged to consider the historical fishing rights of its neighbours, which suggests that some continued access to UK waters for fishers across the channel would be a reasonable expectation. As a quid pro quo, and irrespective of Brexit, as a result of fish migration there is probably a case for review of some UK quotas for mackerel, herring, cod and hake, but that does not need to be at a scale that destroys the livelihoods of hundreds of EU fishers.

However, a no-deal Brexit would destroy the significant parts of the UK industry that are dependent on frictionless overnight trade in fish, impact fish processing—which depends on access to EU imports—and cause loss of access to waters off non-EU states for large UK boats that currently benefit from EU access. I am really not sure how Amendments 1, 4, 5 and 6 help deal with that predicament.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I was very interested to hear the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, gave for bringing a slightly amended version of this amendment back on Report. While I am sympathetic to what I think he is trying to achieve, I have great difficulty in finding this amendment appropriate. I fear it looks at the issue from a particularly English perspective, and I hazard a guess that the Scots may take a different view. I was fortunate to receive briefings from both the Scottish fisheries organisation and the Law Society of Scotland, and we must appreciate that the fisheries opportunities in Scotland are immensely important. They represent 58% of the value and 64% of the tonnage of all fish landed by UK vessels, so I am struggling to understand.

I see that we have changed the wording from “marine stocks” to “fish”, probably in recognition of the fact that, in Scotland, there are many other uses of the exclusive economic zone. But the argument remains: the citizens of the four nations, and in particular those of Scotland, would argue that they have a right to a lion’s share of the fish.

Proposed new subsection (2) goes on to talk about quotas. I have tabled an amendment to Clause 48, which we will come to much later, when I will develop my argument on quotas more fully. I wait with great interest to hear what my noble friend the Minister has to say on this matter, but I am not entirely convinced that the law as it currently stands does not encompass what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is trying to achieve. If noble Lords will forgive the pun, I believe that this amendment will, if anything, rather muddy the waters and not take the arguments any further forward.