Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

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

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the arguments made by the proponents of the amendment and I understand the desire to promote environmental quality as the highest priority, since sustainability itself affects the amount of fish available to catch. But I am not convinced that we should downgrade all the other noble objectives in Clause 1, which would be the case if sustainability was classed as the prime objective.

The Government have constructed the Bill with a number of important objectives that contribute to environmental protection, including objectives covering science, the precautionary principle, the ecosystem and climate change. However, the Bill also allows policymakers and fisheries managers to balance actions across these objectives to achieve sustainable outcomes that protect the environment and still ensure that we have a viable and thriving fishing industry. Sustainable development recognises the needs of society alongside the environment and thus points to a balanced approach. If we place environmental sustainability as the prime objective, we will prevent fisheries managers taking balanced decisions by always favouring the environment over social, scientific, national and economic matters.

I am not being facetious, but as a Star Trek fan I am aware of the Prime Directive—not to interfere—but I do not know how the “prime” objective would be implemented, and nor has the mover of the amendment sought to define it. I looked up some meanings and synonyms of the word “prime” and got the following: “main”, “chief”, “key”, “central”, “principal”, “foremost”, “first”, “most important”, “paramount”, “major”, “dominant”, “supreme”, “overriding”, “cardinal”, “pre-eminent” and “ultimate”. If that is how our courts would define “prime”, I am concerned if that is how it would be interpreted in the Bill.

Of course the sustainability objective is essential, but so are the precautionary, scientific, bycatch, ecosystem, equal access, national benefit and climate change objectives. The lawyers and no doubt my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern will correct me if I am wrong, but the wording of the clause means that all of these must be complied with, so all of these other objectives must still satisfy the test of being sustainable. It is not an either/or list. Thus, if the Government are making rules under the national benefit objective, the bycatch objective, or any other objective, these rules must still satisfy the test of being sustainable. Setting one objective above the others would create confusion and undermine the basic construct of the Government’s future fisheries legislation.

Managing trade-offs is complex and not easily amenable to simple rules, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, just warned us. I believe that the current drafting of the fisheries objectives strikes the best balance between requiring Ministers to respect the science and be precautionary, and also to consider the impact on our fishing communities before acting.

We all recognise the need to protect our precious marine environment, but we must find a way to do so that supports our equally precious coastal communities. I urge the House to consider the potential costs to those communities if we constrain the Government’s ability to make balanced decisions—a balance that appears to be central to this Bill’s ambition to support both the environment and the people living and working in fishing communities.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, I fully support Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others. It would make it clear that fish and aquaculture activities must not compromise environmental sustainability. The Government have said that they will continue to strive for the ambitions of the relevant directives in this regard, but many are concerned that these could be weakened. That is why it is important to set this out clearly in the Bill with the amendment.

If the Minister will not accept the amendment today, will he set out how the Government will ensure that the important principles in directives such as the European marine strategy framework, the bathing water directive and the water framework directive will be taken forward and not compromised, as my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, highlighted in her speech? If they are compromised, what mechanism will there be to ensure that they are properly enforced, since we will have no access to the Court of Justice of the European Union? What mechanism is proposed by the Government?

Proposed new subsection (b) would put commitments in the Bill on economic, social and employment benefits and not overexploiting marine stocks. Again, it is important that this is clearly in the Bill because the devil will be in the detail and we must have clarity that the principles are set out without any dispute. The details will be issues such as licensing powers, catch limits and other restrictions on fishing.

As my noble friend Lord Hain set out in the previous debate, the reality of today’s British fishing industry is how much of the catch is in fact exported to the European Union and beyond, and how much of the fish we eat—cod, haddock, langoustine, salmon—is in fact imported into the UK. That has not been made clear in the debate, in the media and elsewhere over many years, much to the detriment of the debate, to the reality of the situation, and to the British fishing industry and the UK at large. The Government should aim to get this right by accepting the amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is probably my naivety, but it seems to me that Amendment 2 is one of those amendments that really should not cause the Government too much of a problem. It just subtly tells them that their first attempt at outlining a sustainability objective is good, but not quite right or strong enough. It needs to emphasise more the importance of both a short-term and a long-term healthy marine environment, full of marine life and with a healthy variety of fish stocks. More importantly, as others have said, the amendment insists that the sustainability objective must be the prime objective. That fact makes it better than the Government’s first attempt.

It is probably platitudinous to say that if you have too many objectives or priorities, you have no priorities or real objectives at all. You cannot be all things to all men. I, along with the promoters of this amendment, believe that the preservation of our fisheries and marine environment for our grandchildren should always trump even the suspicion of overexploitation today. So I hope that the Government will accept that proposed new subsection (2) is better and more explicit than theirs. In that light, I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

My Amendment 20, would, in effect, put Amendment 2 into practical application. The problem, as I am sure everyone is aware, lies in the opt-out sections of Clause 7, notably Clause 7(7)(d), and Clause 10(2). If you are allowed to opt out or alter the fisheries statement or a fisheries management plan for socioeconomic reasons, there is a danger—maybe only a small one, but it is there—that the fisheries authority will support today’s fisheries at the expense of tomorrow’s fishers. So it is important to make it clear that the sustainability objective trumps all, which is what both these amendments seek to achieve.

Experience in Scotland, which has a similar opt-out provision in the Marine (Scotland) Act, has shown that, where an opt-out exists, environmental considerations can get pushed to one side for socioeconomic reasons. As I reported in Committee, six years after—

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak in support of the new clause proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch.

On Monday, I highlighted the need to regenerate our coastal communities, particularly our coastal fishing communities. I have some knowledge from Northern Ireland and from the County Down fishing ports. Two of the three ports are currently involved in regeneration plans and are awaiting communication from the Northern Ireland Executive about further funding provision to take those forward. Clearly, this amendment would strengthen that economic link, which is vital because much fish is caught there, as per the quota requirements. However, if this were permitted, it would ensure that those coastal communities would be revitalised, because there are jobs not only in the catching sector but in the processing sector, which is very much the lifeblood of those communities, which have been subjected to various fishing village initiatives over the last 25 years.

I have a little query. If I take the County Down fishing ports—I know that the Northern Ireland department is one of the authorities that would be consulted—and the pelagic trawlers, at present they cannot land any of their catches in those harbours, and in some cases they are not landing them in other UK ports, the Channel Islands, Guernsey or the Isle of Man, but in Norway and the Republic of Ireland. That is because the port depth does not enable the larger pelagic trawlers to do that. I am sure that that issue exists in other ports in the UK which require a revitalisation process in terms of new and improved infrastructure.

Might the Minister have a quiet word with his opposite number in the Northern Ireland Executive to, shall we say, chivvy along those proposals for regeneration to ensure that the fishing commitment, the landing obligation and—if this is permitted today—the national landing requirement can be activated and implemented? Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, this is simply consultation at this stage. While this is a strong aspirational clause, I hope that it would be capable of implementation and enforcement.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. She set out clearly in her speech the reasoning for the amendment, and I hope it will be supported by the Minister and the whole House.

It is frustrating that the debate on fishing, fisheries policy, the number of British and foreign-owned vessels and the fish landed has been so distorted in the media. It is a matter of much regret that the debate we have had in the UK over many years is not about the reality of the situation. As we know, our demand for fish such as cod and haddock in many cases far exceeds what we could catch in our own waters and much is imported, while much of the fish we catch in our waters is exported.

My noble friend set out the timeframe and made it very clear that this is a consultation that in itself should not cause the Government any particular problems. It is reasonable to ensure that every nation is consulted, along with the interested parties in the fishing industry. The consultation sets out the landing requirement of 65%, which I think is a reasonable figure.

My noble friend set out the case for how many of our coastal communities are very deprived. I know Grimsby very well—in a previous life I worked up in north Lincolnshire—and it is an area that suffers from poor health and poor job prospects and can be very depressed. Not only is fish landed there, but there is a huge food processing industry in the town. Grimsby would certainly benefit tremendously from my noble friend’s proposal here. It is very important that we should look at that.

It is also important that we recognise that when people in these communities voted to leave the European Union, they were voting also for a dividend. They hoped there would be better job prospects in their communities, more fish would be landed and people would prosper more. If we find that this is not the case in the years ahead, I think they will feel very betrayed. They will have voted for something and not seen the dividend from it. So I hope that if the Minister does not accept my noble friend’s amendment, he will carefully set out the reasons why and will make it clear what will be the dividend for these communities in years to come. We all know that they are depressed and have many challenges. If the explanation is not to my noble friend’s satisfaction, I hope that she will test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I noted that in the earlier version of this Fisheries Bill, which came out over 18 months ago now, there was a clause early on that tried to define a UK fishing boat as one with at least one UK shareholder holding more than 5%. That seemed quite a low bar to me, but the thinking behind it was probably based on the 1970s attempt by the UK to apply an ownership limit to foreign investment in UK fishing boats of 75%. For the record, the UK lost its case in the courts because ownership caps at that time could apply only to EU ownership, not British ownership.

Nowadays, of course, the widespread and sometimes complicated international ownership of all businesses—in this case boats—creates far too tangled a web to unweave through legislation, which is probably why the words I referred to in the earlier version of the Bill were dropped. Anyway, maybe it does not matter who is investing money in our fisheries and boats, as long as they are creating the jobs in the UK. As others have said, we all know that for every one job on a boat, whoever owns it, there are 10 jobs on land in the processing, handling, transporting, marketing, selling, et cetera, of the fish.

So it was very sensible of the Government to drop the reference to the percentage of UK shareholding in a boat, but sadly they did not follow through with any sort of landing requirement. It seems that they understood the issue but, having realised that their solution would not work, failed to see that a landing requirement would achieve almost the same end but by a slightly different means.

This is an important amendment. Such a landing requirement could make a huge difference to coastal communities—and, believe me, they need this boost. Of the 25 local authorities with the highest rates of insolvency, 16 are coastal—and that was before Covid-19 came along to make matters worse.

I hope that the Government will accept this enabling amendment, or agree to bring in a similar amendment of their own. I accept that such a commitment might be dependent on Brexit negotiations, but I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some comfort in his reply and indicate that such a requirement is very much at the forefront of the Government’s mind.