Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Teverson

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

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern [V]]

My Lords, it seems to be my privilege always to follow my fellow Scot. I do not think that the data being relied on is being referred to as theoretical. What is theoretical is the MSY itself, which is basically a modelling of the future from the data of the past. Strictly speaking it is theoretical, because it is in the nature of a prophecy about how matters will proceed.

As for the second amendment, by “reproduction” it means the full process that reconstitutes the stock from time to time—the process going on continually to bring the stock up. The Members who tabled it are not thinking particularly of one aspect but of all aspects and, in my view, the definition can be understood. It may well be that—and I have the greatest respect for the ICES—there are other possible definitions, but I do not think that this one is based on theoretical data. It is based on real data, but it is a theoretical calculation.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I very much support this amendment. I want to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on his work in this area. He was a member of my EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, when he really went through this issue of the drawbacks of MSY. I am very grateful for all his work on that, and I wish to show my support for this amendment.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Teverson

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

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for setting a precedent for us. Parliament is built around precedent and now we have it, which is most useful, and I am most grateful to him, and to the Minister for having changed policy in such a fundamental way on this Bill. I can give the Minister another opportunity to do so, because if any amendment is totally, screamingly obvious, it is this one.

The Bill reads:

“In this Act ‘fisheries management plan’ means a document, prepared and published under this Act, that sets out policies designed to restore one or more stocks of sea fish to, or maintain them at, sustainable levels.”


I am sure the Government do not mean it, but if one sentence of this Bill lacked ambition, this would be it. Surely we are not trying just to get back to where we were—that is, to “restore”—or merely to a “sustainable” level. That level of ambition is about as neutral as it can get. My amendment would not change the intention of the Bill but would have it say

“manage one or more stocks of sea fish to maintain them at, or above, sustainable levels”.

There is no reason why we should not aim, or potentially have as an aim—I shall not say that it has to be the aim; it could still be to “restore” and to get to sustainable levels—to get to above sustainable levels. As the Bill is written, it seems that we are not allowed to go beyond sustainable levels; it prohibits it. It is a straightforward amendment. Let us be more ambitious and allow ourselves to go beyond sustainability. We want, as a result of the Bill, to see success over years— it will take a number of years or a number of stocks—in going well beyond sustainable levels so that, in five or 10 years, we have a much greater harvest that allows a much bigger fishing fleet, a bigger catch and more prosperous coastal communities. I beg to move.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 14, 15 and 54. Amendment 14 would require the management plan to explain how it gives effect to the fisheries objectives. That is an important way of ensuring that the authorities responsible take account of all the fisheries objectives, notwithstanding that one has now been promoted to be the first; it is not of course the last, and therefore all the others have to be taken into account as well. It is a very good discipline in managing that kind of responsibility to have to show how you have done it, so that you can show the working, as it were—if you are mathematician, it is important that not only the result but the working be exhibited. That is what Amendment 14 does. By requiring illustration, it would enable us to make sure that the system that we are setting up will work.

Amendment 15 would ensure that the Secretary of State secured consultative advice regarding the design and implementation of the fisheries management plans and the viability and make-up of a group to do that. In the spirit of getting everyone together, a consultative group should be able to assist in working out the detail called for by the previous amendment.

Amendment 54 would build on the duties of the Secretary of State in relation to economic matters. It would ask him within a reasonable time—I have stipulated six months; I am not particularly insistent on that because he has a lot to do before the end of the year—to set out in some detail what he hopes to achieve in the way of economic benefits. All the amendments help to implement the underlying spirit of the proposals already made.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Teverson

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 19 is trying to deal with the same matter, but it attempts to use the activities of fishing fleets to bring

“social, economic and employment benefits to the United Kingdom or any part”.

In other words, it is intended that the activities of fishing boats should not merely benefit the fisheries, but also the rest of the United Kingdom, and in particular produce social, economic and employment benefits. One can see that this is a bit wider than the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, but it is just a question of what precisely this “national benefit objective” is aiming at.

I think it does not aim at benefiting the fishing industry itself, but at benefiting others through the activities of the fishing industry. Paragraph (b) of my proposed new subsection, which contains a reference to fish and aqua- culture activities, manages to achieve the same sort of thing. In other words, in both cases the activities of the boats and the management of the fleets are supposed to bring these general social, economic and employment benefits to the United Kingdom and parts of it.

The issues in this amendment were brought to my attention by the national authority, or corporation, of the fishing fleets of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish people are somewhat separately represented, and it is not altogether surprising that their attitude is that the Bill is pretty good and perhaps the best thing to do is to leave it alone. It may be that they have ideas about the present situation, and the way in which the Bill is constructed is, from their point of view, very acceptable.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 78, which is in a similar vein around national benefit. It is quite clear, certainly in the south-west, that if all the fishing vessels with British flags actually landed their catch—or a major proportion of it—in their home port, the number of landings in the UK and the viability of those ports would be hugely increased. Of course, we have here the issue of what used to be called “quota hoppers”, around which everything has gone staggeringly quiet during the Brexit negotiations and the formulation of the Bill.

As we know, a little under half of the English—not Scottish—quota is effectively owned by Dutch, Spanish or Icelandic interests. Grimsby, which I think used to be the world’s or Europe’s largest fishing port, now has a very important fish processing industry, but hardly any activity in terms of landings. Most of the quota there is effectively owned by Dutch vessels that land in Holland.

So, we have a question: how do we change that? The Bill does nothing to change this area. In a way, it suits the fishing industry establishment to keep things as they are, because those are the members. Whether vessels are English or foreign-owned, those are the members of the fishing organisations. That is why, in Amendment 78, I have used the scientifically calculated number of 75%, which came out at the end of my spreadsheet, to suggest what proportion of fish should be landed by English-flagged—or British-flagged, depending on how we want to define the devolution thing—vessels. It is a probing amendment, but only in the sense that something needs to be done in this area. Very few other EU member states have allowed the foreign ownership of quota in the way that we have. We decided to do that. We are where we are, but we need to make sure there is a national benefit; I assume that is why this objective is here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I wonder whether this question of landing obligations will need to be resolved in the fisheries negotiations during the coming “passage of arms” with the EU. I believe that there is a good deal of voluntary landing in our ports by foreign fishing vessels at the moment, and one of the reasons for that is the efficiency of the transfer from these ports to the European market. They are able to get their fish stocks to the European market from some ports very quickly—in a way that, if they had to take them back to Spain or southern France, would take much longer and probably be less efficiently organised. I do not know whether it needs compulsion, but compulsion would need to be authorised as part of the future negotiations.

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps I may intervene on the noble and learned Lord. We should not forget that we are talking about British boats in British waters—it is not about foreign vessels. Sorry, I will sound like Michael Gove or the Prime Minister, but this has nothing to do with the European Union or the Commission: it is purely a British decision, apart from foreign vessels and where they have to land. That is why we have raised the issue.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I can see that, if it is restricted to British vessels, it is perfectly within the powers of this Parliament, but I am not at all clear that it would be right to impose that kind of obligation on British vessels without attempting to encourage foreign vessels to do the same. As I mentioned at Second Reading, something like this is already happening, and in pretty small ports—though they have a large amount of traffic, usually overnight, when refrigerated vehicles go straight to Europe and arrive quickly at their markets, which are pretty hungry for the result.