Plans to Improve the Natural Environment and Animal Welfare

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I note, first, that I am a board member of the Marine Management Organisation.

Normally in these debates I have to remind people that there is a marine environment and that it is as important as the land environment, but the noble Earl has already stressed the marine environment. Perhaps because of David Attenborough and his current series, we are all rather more aware of marine than we were in the past.

I will make a couple of points in that area. The first is about our future management of stocks. Although certain parts of the industry may be quite strong in their bravado about the quantity of fish resources in European waters that are within in the UK EEZ, none of the precious stocks takes any notice of political boundaries and—to state the obvious—they circulate. Their spawning grounds are often in other areas of the North Sea or western waters. It is really important for the Government to make absolutely clear that, in our future relationships if Brexit happens, our decisions are not only science-based but that we continue to make decisions about fisheries, quotas or the technical methods in liaison with other European states—whether Norway and the Faroes outside the European Union or our current European partners. That is essential. There is no room for competitive removal of stocks from within our waters in future years.

The other area that knows no boundaries is plastics. I will not go into that any further because other noble Lords have mentioned it, but I welcome the Government’s intention to stop one-use plastics, which will be of huge benefit not just to marine life but to our terrestrial environment and ecology as well.

However, I want to bring to the House’s attention, although it may not be needed, one bit of really good news that has happened recently. It is the decision by the international community, particularly in the far north of the planet, to declare the Arctic Ocean as a non-fishing zone until scientific evidence—which I doubt will ever justify it—can be considered to decide what happens. This is a major step forward. I was privileged to chair the Arctic Committee of this House a couple of years ago and it was one of our key recommendations. I will be interested to hear from the Minister whether we will be a signatory to that agreement or how we will help it to be implemented, because it is a very positive step. It is the one time perhaps that the world has decided to do something before the problem arises rather than afterwards.

I welcome very much the Secretary of State’s intention to replace the current methods of enforcing environmental law at European and national level such as the Commission and the European Court of Justice. The Energy and Environment Sub-Committee that I chair today received a letter from the Secretary of State going through that. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, we do not know yet what those powers will be; I understand that this is going out for consultation in the new year. We must make no mistake that the real power of the Commission and the European Court of Justice, particularly the Commission, is the power of infraction. Ministers are concerned that they are not found to have failed to implement or go against European or national laws, and are concerned about the fines enforced. The power of any organisation to fine will determine whether it cuts the mustard or not. It is unlikely that the organisation will have those imperatives but that is what is needed. It would be wrong if we did not implement our own laws that have been agreed and passed by Parliament.

No one has yet mentioned clean air although I am sure that other noble Lords will do, but we have been extremely laggardly in terms of applying our own legislation. It has a direct effect on people’s health and on us as we go about our business in the capital and other cities. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about the progress of addressing that breach as it returns to British courts.

On animal welfare, again I welcome the various pronouncements made by the Secretary of State, but I regret that the amendment tabled in the House of Commons to recognise the sentience of animals was rejected and I do not agree that our current legislation covers this point broadly enough. It is something that we will have to consider when the withdrawal Bill arrives in this House. But the real problem I have on the animal welfare side is much as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has said. I am sure that the Minister will encourage us not to have any fears in this area, but if the Secretary of State for International Trade or Ministers in DExEU were talking to us, I suspect that we might be given a different message. If we seek to make trade deals, particularly with South America, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which have already contested some of our agreements in the WTO over tariff-rate quotas, we will find it very difficult indeed to maintain our animal welfare standards. They are not recognised by the WTO as valid barriers and ways to exclude trade, so we will find it difficult to reconcile the different views that exist around the Cabinet table. Until those views at Cabinet level are reconciled, I do not think we can take it for granted that the Defra view, which I applaud in many ways, will be the one that finally holds sway.

I was going to talk about EU vets. Again, I welcome the introduction of video cameras in abattoirs and it will be a great step forward when that happens. However, we need the 95% of our meat hygiene vets who are European Union citizens to believe that they are welcome in this country and can continue to give us the benefit of their knowledge, resources and scientific skill.

Brexit: Farm Support

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, what I can say is that we definitely think that public money should reward environmentally responsible land use. That is the reform that we think is important. We wish to continue to support the agricultural sector, but if public money is to be used it should be to ensure, with 70% of the land in this country farmed, that our farmland is playing its part in enhancing the environment.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to animal welfare in future expenditure, but when we have free trade agreements with countries such as the United States, Argentina and New Zealand, which have much lower levels of animal welfare, will not the agricultural clauses that are bound to be in those FTAs fundamentally undermine British farmers and British animal welfare?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the Secretary of State has been very clear that we will not in any way allow animals to come in that are produced to a lower standard using compromised welfare standards as compared with our own very high-quality produce, which is our great British brand. Let us be clear: we do not propose to permit any product to come in that has lower animal welfare standards. We are not going to compromise on that.

Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That this House takes note of the Reports from the European Union Committee, Brexit: agriculture (20th Report, Session 2016–17, HL Paper 169) and Brexit: farm animal welfare (5th Report, HL Paper 15).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the common agricultural policy has probably not been one of the most popular policies of the European Union over the past 40 years in the United Kingdom. Successful as it was in its original years in ensuring food security for the European continent after many years of warfare and trial, when we joined in the 1970s it was perhaps seen as the main reason for the large budget contribution that the United Kingdom made to the European Union. I remember all too well in the 1980s the structural problems, with the milk powder mountains and wine lakes. More recently, we have had schemes such as set-aside that were not particularly successful, the issue of the green pound and all the other bits of Eurocrat jargon that surround the CAP.

At the moment, under the most recent form of funding, the new system for landowners means that the more land you own, the more subsidy you get, so the barley barons get most of the cash, our food prices are higher than the world average, small farms are still going out of business and rural biodiversity is still declining. We can look at the common agricultural policy and say that it has not been an overwhelming success for the United Kingdom—and perhaps not for Europe. It still takes 36% of the European budget, although that has hugely declined from more than half the budget over the life cycle of the common agricultural policy.

You could say that if there is one area where Brexit has to work, it must be agriculture. Indeed, we heard much evidence of the various opportunities from our withdrawal under Brexit to move away from the common agricultural policy. The first is cheap food. At the moment, it is true to say that, with external tariffs for food, farmers are relatively protected, and some of our witnesses suggested that if we moved away from the common agricultural policy post Brexit, food prices could reduce by 7% or 10%.

We have an excellent opportunity to save taxpayers’ money. At the moment, under the CAP, our farmers and landowners receive €28 billion per annum in subsidy. It accounts for 40% to 60% of farm income. We could stop that, as the New Zealanders did in the 1980s, take it back into the Treasury and use that money elsewhere.

We could get rid of some of the rules. We found it a little difficult to find too many rules that the agricultural industry wanted to get rid of immediately, but the three-crop rule was one of them and there are others, perhaps more contentious ones such as on pesticides, that could be removed. In terms of animal welfare, we could move the gauge up or down. We could take more opportunities to drive our own welfare standards within agriculture.

Of course, we do not have to give all those funds back to our own taxpayers; we could use them perhaps more intelligently in terms of environmental management, rural development, integrated policies and making sure that agriculture is not an isolated area of policy but that it ties in well with climate change and broader environmental policy.

The United Kingdom is a big food importer. Our trade balance with the European Union is some €18 billion per annum. That surely gives us some leverage to attract free trade agreements from other countries across the world that want access to that market. Clearly, we have access to most of those elsewhere already so that would not change greatly. That is a list of important positives from disengaging from the CAP as part of the Brexit process. We heard a lot of that from many our witnesses.

Of course, there are challenges as well, which are significant. First, regarding trade, some 80% of our exports of agricultural produce go to the European Union. If we add in the food sector and those countries where the EU has free trade agreements from which we benefit, the number goes up to 97%. Part of that is around perishability. It is much easier to export products to geographically close areas and, obviously, it is part of the single market. Indeed, at the moment the EU external tariff is 54% on dairy products and some 22% on cereals. That gives an idea of the sort of level of tariff barriers there could be.

Of course, there will be non-tariff barriers as well. We as a committee are not saying in any way that we would not be able to reach a trade agreement, but if we did not, clearly some of those non-tariff barriers would be even greater. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, will tell us about phytosanitary conditions and all of those other non-tariff issues.

We would hope to trade at least on World Trade Organization terms, but I hope there will be much better opportunities with the EU in a future agreement. However, already we have issues with the WTO over tariff rate quotas. This is already a key area. The Government have been successful in finding agreement with the European Union over the splitting of these quotas, but immediately that has caused a reaction in the United States, New Zealand and Brazil objecting to that solution and opening up that whole area of future tariff rate quotas with both the EU and the UK. It gives a taste of future meddling and perhaps vexatious intervention that some of these issues will create.

People are one big area the industry is concerned about and that is why being able to retain current EU staff and workers in this country, and in this sector in particular, is important. It is well known, and has been said many times, that 90% of our vets in abattoirs, an important part of our animal welfare programme, are non-UK EU nationals. In both food processing and agriculture, we require a large number of workers from the EU. Yes, we could replace them from other parts of the world, but that obviously will depend on our migration policy. Already we have difficulty in attracting and retaining people. An issue that came over very strongly is that agricultural workers in particular are skilled workers. The way in which they are able to harvest is very skilled but not in terms of a Home Office definition. It is an area where automation cannot substitute in the medium or short term. People are a key factor.

The committee welcomes the Government’s response on funding, which is guaranteed at current cash levels up to the next election. In reality, after that—this is not something that we should blame the Government for—the public and taxpayers will find it difficult under continued austerity to justify the amount of money that goes to this sector. So there will be a real issue around selling that deal. Of course, that may be around being able to guarantee better environmental management of all the public services that farming provides.

There is an issue around devolution. One of the things that the CAP provides is a common framework for agricultural policy not just for all member states but within the United Kingdom. Yet, importantly, agriculture is devolved. How do you make sure that there is a continued single market within the United Kingdom? Will we have four different regimes? Indeed, policy stability is one area that I had not thought of but it came through from some of our witnesses. The CAP might be difficult to change, but at least it meant the future could be planned to a large degree. Will that remain? In Ireland, there is an issue not so much of devolution but of cross-border trade and supply chains, so there are particular challenges.

Our report on welfare received a great deal of media attention on, for example, beef hormones and chlorinated chicken, which is not really a welfare issue, but under international pressure for other trade deals will those welfare standards be challenged? Our witnesses, particularly from this sector, were very keen that welfare standards should not decline post Brexit.

Lastly, in terms of the challenges of which there are many more for those who have read the full report, there is Defra itself. We have said many times in our environmental and fisheries reports that the workload on Defra is huge. Apart from being sympathetic to the Minister on the Front Bench, we again ask whether there are sufficient resources for Defra to deliver legal certainty and all those policies in that huge area over the period.

If I may start to conclude my remarks, there is a real dilemma in this area. Two approaches can be taken in terms of benefits and potential positives about Brexit and the negatives. Will we become a low-tariff, competitive New Zealand-style economy, open to free trade, open to those opportunities to bring down food prices and move on those deals where high-quality food and welfare standards will be difficult to enforce, given the sort of negotiations we will have with countries such as Australia, Argentina, Brazil and particularly the United States? Or will we continue to be a country, outside Europe, that demands high welfare standards and high-quality food and that looks to protect our hill farmers? It is absolutely clear that all our livestock farming cannot compete with the economies of scale, and particularly the lower welfare standards, in the large economies of the United States, Australia and New Zealand, perhaps, but also Argentina and Brazil. They can be characterised as the Liam Fox version and the Michael Gove view of Brexit—interesting but the Government will have to resolve that dilemma.

Will the Minister be able to include agriculture more successfully in his 25-year environmental plan? What is going to happen about tariff rate quotas? How does he see the whole WTO negotiations? How can we have a farming Bill when at present we do not know what the end destination is? Will the Minister reconfirm our commitment to high animal welfare standards? How does he see the transition?

Some 71% of land in the UK is devoted to agriculture, which employs 800,000 throughout the food supply chain and is 7% of the economy, worth £100 billion of value added. It is a vital part of our economy and our future. This raises as many challenges as it does opportunities. I beg to move.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time of six minutes. There is another debate after this, and I am sure those noble Lords would be most grateful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, the hour is late and another debate is due to take place. I thank all noble Lords for their passionate contributions, including that of the Minister. One thing I want to do, in particular on behalf of the members of my sub-committee, is thank our clerk at the time, Celia Stenderup-Petersen. She was an excellent clerk for our committee, but ironically and largely because of Brexit, she has since left her post and now has a job with the Danish foreign office. We wish her well. I also thank Jennifer Mills, our policy analyst, and our special advisers, Professor Fiona Smith on the agriculture report and Caroline Spence on the welfare report. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Cunningham of Felling and Lord Trees, who have left the committee.

I finish by pointing out that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said something that is absolutely right: we are at a fork where the Government must make a decision. I was also very impressed by the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden. In the end, he was the only speaker to describe the Government’s official response—I do not include the Minister’s response to the debate in this—as “woolly”, which is an appropriate adjective for the subject. Until the issue of the fork is resolved, that is inevitably the Government’s position. However, I thank the Minister for providing clarity on a number of issues from Defra’s side, and I hope we are given the same clarity, perhaps in a different way, from the Department for International Trade, so that in future we have a congruence of both departments.

Motion agreed.

Agriculture: Foreign Workers

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is one of the things we will want to look at as we leave the European Union.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, this is not about just seasonal workers or unskilled workers. As the Minister will know, some 80% of vets in our abattoirs, who enable them to operate with the right welfare standards, are EU citizens. How are we going to retain those skilled and much-required people who are currently keeping our food processing industry moving?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord because I was at the BVA and RCVS reception yesterday, where I know a number of noble Lords were also in attendance. This is an important issue and an element of the negotiations that we want to deal with as promptly as possible. Yes, we do rely on and warmly welcome the support we have from EU national vets, who are hugely important to us.

Brexit: Environment and Climate Change

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: environment and climate change (12th Report, HL Paper 109).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, as Members depart or come in and Ministers shuffle their seats, I shall note that I am a board member of the Marine Management Organisation, which has responsibility for the marine environment that might be covered to some degree in this debate.

It is important for us to remember that all the reports from the European Union Committee are looking at not just the challenges but the opportunities of Brexit, the pluses and the minuses, the good things that can happen and the things that we have to beware of and look out for. In this report, there is probably more that we have to look out for than benefits. Some of the benefits on the environmental side are probably better described in the fisheries report that the House has already debated and in the report on the common agricultural policy, for which my committee has finished taking evidence but which has yet to be published. Both those areas have important environmental aspects. There are a number of positives and opportunities in those areas, and in this report as well.

I will concentrate on some of the areas where we have to be careful. As recognised in the Conservative Party manifesto, looking 25 years or even further ahead, the environment is key in our quality of life as a country and as a continent. Opinion polls suggest that the environment is an area on which British citizens think that Europe has an important role. It did not figure greatly in the referendum campaign, but citizens have generally understood and believed that working together as nations is important in protecting and enhancing the environment for the future.

Those on the side of leaving the European Union were right that European legislation on the environment dwarfs UK legislation in all sorts of ways. The estimate is that something like 80% of all our environmental regulations emanate from Europe. We have a strong base of environmental legislation that springs from European regulations and directives and European Court of Justice decisions. That creates a great challenge. When we wrote to Defra about a number of issues, part of the evidence it gave was that something like 1,100 instruments have to be translated into United Kingdom law. Over the next two years, the Minister is going to be very busy in effecting that.

The committee welcomed unreservedly the Government’s objective of making sure that environmental standards do not go down in the process of Brexit, but there are huge challenges ahead in achieving that. Just think of the breadth of the area that we are talking about. It covers climate change, energy efficiency, standards for chemicals, biodiversity, migrating species, biosecurity, clean seas, the atmosphere, wastewater and the circular economy—the list goes on. I shall not go any further but that gives noble Lords an idea of the huge spectrum of issues that are vital to our future which we are talking about.

I shall highlight and headline some of the key issues. A number of them were not ones that I or the committee expected to be at the top of the list when we started this report. The first issue I shall go into, on which I could speak for many minutes but shall not, is the great repeal Bill. We welcome the Government’s undertaking that they will transfer the current legislation into UK domestic law. One of the questions is what it includes. Findings and case law from the European Court of Justice have been particularly important in environmental legislation. I will be interested to hear from the Minister whether that case law will also be incorporated into how UK courts look at European environmental legislation post Brexit.

There are 1,100 instruments that need to be translated. One of the areas that particularly concerned us is that the Secretary of State said that one-third of environmental legislation is going to be quite difficult to bring into UK law. I welcome her candid openness about this. We pursued that further and asked her and her officials what that one-third is. We had a very flaky reply, which suggested to us that not only is that roughly one-third going to be difficult but we do not yet know what it is going to be. As in other areas, there is concern about how much will be in primary legislation or in secondary legislation, but I will leave that debate for other reports.

One of the strongest points that was made to the committee was that the key issue is not regulations or laws but implementation and enforcement. We can have lots of laws and lots of good intentions, but we have to have adequate enforcement. One of the key areas of success in environmental legislation in protecting and improving our environment has been that we have strong enforcement mechanisms. I am sure other members of the committee will talk about this. The Commission as an overseer of implementation and the European Court of Justice as a strong enforcement mechanism behind that legislation have meant that not only have Governments of all stripes been careful to make sure that environmental legislation is implemented but so have citizens and other organisations. There have been a number of instances where the UK has not been that keen on implementing environmental laws—I think back couple of decades ago on wastewater and more recently on clean air—and the role of the ECJ and the Commission has been particularly important. I know from experience that the threat of infraction by the Commission is a strong motivator for senior officials of departments and Ministers and Secretaries of State to make sure that European environmental law is implemented, as it is not only a reputational issue for the nation but a financial one. Infraction means fines, which can be considerable, and departments do not wish to lose their budgets because they have not performed. It was the very strong opinion of our witnesses that enforcement in the UK as it is at the moment would not be sufficient. There is judicial review and other areas, but this is key and one that other members of the committee will wish to discuss.

The other area which I have not really thought about quite enough, which also applies to the agricultural reports that are due to come out, is that of certainty. One thing relevant to the environment and indeed to agriculture is the acronym MAFF. We always think of MAFF as being the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but in this instance I am talking about the multiannual financial framework from Europe, which lasts for seven years and gives a degree of financial certainty to programmes that cannot be changed year on year, or in domestic terms, Budget to Budget. It is also quite difficult to change legislation and update laws throughout Europe. That can be negative, but it does provide certainty and time horizons in which investment can take place. In the environmental area, that is important for flood defences, clean energy and all sorts of other areas where investment takes a long time. The challenge is going from a seven-year financial framework—legislatively perhaps sometimes even longer—to a framework where we have annual Budgets, and laws that can change maybe year to year but certainly Parliament to Parliament. So we have that greater uncertainty.

There is even more uncertainty in financial areas and investment when it comes to the role of the European Investment Bank. This might seem not that important for the environment, but the figures show that something like €37 billion has been invested since 2000 in the environmental sector, particularly in energy. That is a huge sum. Since we have been a member of the European Union, particularly through the wastewater directive, some €12 billion has been invested in the water industry in the UK by the EIB. Yet we were unable to pinpoint where this sort of core foundation investment was going to come from in the future. Outside the EU, we are still entitled to European Investment Bank expenditure or investment, but it will be on a much lower scale than we have at the moment. So there are challenges there.

I will very quickly go through the other key areas. The first is trade and industry. We had a number of witnesses who I suspect we expected to say, “Great, let’s be buccaneering: let’s go ahead and deregulate and be successful without European red tape”. I am being perfectly objective in saying that that was not the case at all. Concerns were expressed that we should be able to enter the single market easily and that therefore our product standards needed to be the same, in terms of energy efficiency and similar areas. There was particular concern around chemicals, where there has been huge investment by companies that have had products approved by European agencies. There was a great fear of having to go through another process if we have a bespoke UK system, which would not only be expensive but would not necessarily allow access through equivalence into European markets. On trade and industry, there was a concern that we should keep equivalence when it comes to standards.

I will leave the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to talk about climate change. I conclude by saying there are two other elephants in the room, one of which is devolution. Like agriculture and fisheries, the environment is a devolved area of policy-making. How do we bring all of this legislation back into the UK and then distribute it among the nations and various parliamentary assemblies of the UK, while keeping some semblance of common ground within? That of course will also be the responsibility of Defra; given all the responsibilities that the noble Lord will have over the next two years, we are deeply concerned about Defra’s capacity and influence with the Brexit departments to make sure all this can be achieved. There is a huge and extremely challenging agenda here. It is regrettable in a way that we do not yet have Defra’s 25-year environmental plan, which we look forward to. We would also like to see this great repeal Bill and everything that needs to be done within that context. I would be interested to hear from the Minister when that will be produced.

The environment is one area where Brexit does not mean Brexit. We are inevitably tied to the European environment through our seas, our atmosphere, our migrating species and many other aspects. It is imperative that we continue to be strongly involved with our European neighbours. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how he would pursue, for the benefit of all our peoples, that co-operation into the future. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. I will be as brief as I can. I will not be long. The right reverend Prelate referred to this as an onion. The more the committee looked at this, the bigger and more complex the challenge was. I say to the Minister: the report is not meant to be pessimistic. It is supposed to help find a way through to the other side, and to show what a challenge that is. We are very concerned that the Government have the resources to do it. The Minister’s reassurances tell us that they do.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for adding an element of opposition to the debate. Yes, we are leaders and that is one of the things we say. As the Minister said, Britain has been a leader on climate change. In fact, our concern is that the rest of Europe might backslide without us being there, to our prejudice. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for time-sharing with me in looking after the climate change side.

I will just say something about the institutional side. The point here is that Lords committees get evidence from as wide a range of people as possible, who are not nutters and do not have a single agenda. The biggest message that came through was about how the ECJ and the Commission do not have a role at the moment. We may not like that but that is the message that was given to the committee. Just as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, however good the wish of the present Government—I believe completely in their environment side—that is not necessarily true of future Governments. It would be great if somehow we could solve this institutional thing with the present Government to make sure that future Governments also have to pursue that agenda properly.

I thank everybody for their contributions. I particularly thank Celia Stenderup-Petersen, our clerk; Jennifer Mills, our policy analyst; and David Baldock, our special adviser. We have had an hors d’oeuvre for the agricultural debate that we will have in due course. We look forward to that. Yes, agriculture is integrated but so are energy and transport in terms of the environment; I am sorry we could not do the whole thing.

Motion agreed.

Brexit: Fisheries (EUC Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2017 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: fisheries (8th Report, HL Paper 78).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, this is the first debate on a series of Brexit reports produced by the Sub-Committees of the European Union Committee. If you are here, you know that it is about fisheries, but I stress that these reports are about identifying the challenges and opportunities of Brexit: they are not about defining what the future detailed policies in these areas should be—we leave that to our more boring colleagues at the other end of the building to sort out. We are at the front end of this, and this report therefore does not go into detail about management regimes or any other such thing.

Fisheries is different from the other subjects in a number of ways. Perhaps I could go through some of them. First, the great reform Bill will be important to regulation of fisheries, but it will in no way be sufficient. Why is that? Because the moment we leave the European Union, the EEZ will become our exclusive economic zone, exactly as it says on the tin. There will be no automatic right for us to fish in other people’s EEZs; nor will there be any automatic right for other nation states to fish in ours. We will be excluded immediately, if we have not renegotiated access, from agreements with Iceland, Norway and the Faroes, which are particularly important to our Scottish fleets. Fisheries is also all tied up with the maritime environment—the sea and the oceans—which is shared with all our neighbouring littoral states. Fish and other forms of sea life do not tend to know boundaries, so we will not have exclusive control over our stocks of biomass, even though we may have control over the EEZ boundary itself.

Importantly, in comparison with many of the other industries that are talked about in terms of Brexit—financial services and the motor industry—the fisheries industry accounts for a full 0.5% of UK GDP. You might think that that does not necessarily give us a lot of leverage in this area, but it provides the livelihood of 12,000 fishers in this country and jobs for 14,000 people in the fish processing industry. It is particularly important for coastal communities across the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland and the south-west of England—elsewhere as well, but it is concentrated in those areas.

One issue with fisheries is the curse of the commons, in that if there is no regulation, whether international or national, people are incentivised to go out to catch whatever they can while they can, before the person in the next port or in the next nation state manages to catch those fish first. Immediate individual welfare challenges long-term community welfare. That is why, wherever we live on the globe, fisheries management is an important and difficult issue. When we talk about the number of fish caught in particular EEZs or nations, we must remember that life cycles will change from area to area. For instance, it is pointed out that sole tend to spawn mostly outside the British EEZ, even though most stocks are caught within it. So we have complex systems that makes this area difficult.

When we launched this report and issued a press release, many people assumed, given my stance on the referendum, that the report would look upon fisheries as simply challenges and threats. In fact, fisheries is one area where there are perhaps good opportunities for rebalancing the UK’s position. Much of that will depend on negotiations, and I will return to that later.

One thing is certain: as we say very strongly in the report, we must have a management system. Indeed, we probably agree with the Minister on this. In many ways, I praise the appearance of the Minister, George Eustice, before the Committee. Frankly, my experience of other Ministers—I am referring, of course, not to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, but to other Ministers from the Commons—is that they have often avoided questions or not gone into much detail. George Eustice did quite the opposite. He was well in control of his subject and gave a good indication of where the Government might go on these issues.

One area on which we agreed with him entirely is that we continue to need management systems. Almost certainly, they will be based on quotas. That is not the only way things can be done; it is the way our coastal neighbours, including non-EU states such as Norway and Iceland, operate, so it would be very difficult and probably counterproductive to come out of that system, certainly in the short term. We agree with the NFFO that it would be possible to change the regulations to make them far more specific to the needs of the UK national fleet. Changes to technical regulations could happen, and the committee hopes the Government will address that in the right way: not deregulation but different regulations to make sure they reflect the needs of the fleet.

Our most important recommendation is probably that quotas and management be based as much as possible on scientific evidence, rather than on political decisions. In the past the CFP has been based too much on politics, rather than scientific evidence. Scientific evidence on fisheries, as on all marine areas, is not perfect, but we should remain a member of ICES, we should use that evidence and we should continue to move towards sustainable seas. I am sure the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, will talk about maximum sustainable yield and other issues, but basically, we must continue with scientific evidence.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market for the work the committee has previously done on regional fisheries policy. We feel very strongly that, because fish know no boundaries, we must try to keep regional co-ordination with EU and non-EU states, particularly in north-western waters and in the Celtic Sea with the Republic of Ireland and others. That must continue.

Turning to international agreements, we will have to have follow-on agreements with the EU, but if we wish to have an overall plan, control and management with nations that share our stocks, we need agreements with Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. They have agreements with the European Union, which are very important, for Norway in particular, and we have an agreement with them for the Scottish fleets. We will leave that, so we have to make sure that we negotiate those relationships as well. As I said, that means concluding an interim or a permanent agreement before we leave in April 2019, as it is reckoned to be. Indeed, in leaving the common fisheries policy through Brexit, we have what is rightly named a cliff edge—a sea cliff edge—if we do not sort out international agreements. That is particularly true outside international waters and in the area of the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, one of the regional organisations. Although we are a member of it, we have to become an active member, as we will not have the European Union working with us, although we very much led those negotiations at the time.

The committee was quite surprised to learn from our academic experts that there is no obligation on us internationally to continue to respect historic rights. However, when we change the quota allocations, which have been quite negative for parts of the United Kingdom, particularly in the Channel area, we have to make sure that we take historic rights into consideration to a certain degree, not least in trade, to which I am about to turn. Quota-hopping is more a matter of business ownership, rather than the common fisheries policy itself.

Trade is one of the last major areas of discussion. It is often said that we export 80% of the fish we catch, and some 60% of that goes to the European Union, and we import 80% of the fish we eat. That is more in value terms than in volume. So trade is incredibly important, and there are various tariffs on fish products. Some are set at zero, going up to about 25% for farmed salmon; that will probably present a great challenge to the Scottish industry. That is why Norway tends to inward invest in Scotland, to keep within the customs union. So we need to make sure that we maintain access to the single market and our broader international economies, which have trade agreements with the EU, as well as our ability to import to satisfy our own needs. In trying to readjust what is called relative stability—the amount of fish stocks that we catch in our own EEZ—making sure that we keep market access is equally important.

I have a couple of other important footnotes. Fisheries, like agriculture and environmental policy generally, is a devolved subject. The details of the management regimes will fall to the Scottish Government, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as to Defra. We think it important that some framework be maintained, but it is particularly important that the devolved nations be kept very close and involved in the Brexit fisheries negotiations. That is paramount, particularly as the Scottish industry is the largest in the United Kingdom.

In many ways, Defra has the greatest challenges in the changes arising from Brexit. Agricultural policy has to be redesigned and the fisheries policy dealt with through a number of international agreements. Then, there is the whole issue of the environment, given that some 80% of UK environmental legislation comes from Europe. So Defra must be well resourced and informed, and it must play an important part in the Brexit negotiations.

When I was an MEP, I was extremely critical of the common fisheries policy, which I felt did not succeed in its conservation aims; it was not particularly fair to the United Kingdom, and there were a number of other issues. The irony is that, through the great work the British Government have done over the last few years, we have regionalisation and the banning of discards, and European fish stocks are moving much closer to sustainability. Much of that work was done by the British lead on the CFP negotiations, and it showed that that change was possible. The committee thought it was important that, although there are many opportunities for further change to make the common fisheries policy work better for the United Kingdom, we should not throw away the advantages we have gained.

Lastly, despite the fact that the fisheries industry represents only a small amount of GDP—it is important to certain regional communities—for environmental, economic and cultural reasons it is vital that it not be used as a bargaining chip and then forgotten, compared with the United Kingdom’s other great industries. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

I apologise to the Committee that I forgot to declare my interest as a board member of the Marine Management Organisation. That must be recorded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for a very thoughtful reply and as I said, I also thank the Minister in the other place, George Eustice. In this area we have had more back from the Government in terms of intention, if not so much of evidence, than we have in many others. That is valuable and will help the industry to be more hopeful and confident about the way things might turn out.

Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, for again bringing to our attention the fact that this is the most dangerous industry in terms of lives lost and injuries sustained. I have known people who have suffered in this regard.

The common fisheries policy is one of the most technical policy areas, and I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate for getting underneath its skin. Believe me, it makes the common agricultural policy look easy, and there are not many things you can say that about. The Minister mentioned quotahopping—Defra may say, “That is not our problem, it is BEIS’s problem”—and historic rights, which are very much a constitutional area. Those issues will have to be resolved but that will be very hard to do, and we do not necessarily know what is happening about that.

I particularly thank the non-committee members who have contributed to the debate—the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Bloomfield. It is good to have a Welsh input, because I have to admit that we did not have a strong Welsh input on the committee. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. I absolutely agree about information technology and fisheries, but sometimes it is the other side which resists that in practice, not the bureaucrats. I say that from the heart. I of course thank our clerk, Celia Stenderup-Petersen, as has everybody else, who drew the report together excellently.

Finally, it seems to me there are two fundamental challenges. First, the fishing industry should not be forgotten about again. There was little forgiveness the first time that happened: if it happens a second time, there will be no forgiveness whatever. The second issue concerns a point made by our Norwegian witness. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, mentioned individual transferable quotas, which I have long advocated to a certain degree. Some time ago I visited New Zealand, which has some of the best regimes, as does Iceland. Both those countries operate that system. However, if you do not stratify those regimes, you have a total concentration of the industry. It always helps if you have your own continental shelf, as those two nations do. However, New Zealand probably has about four fishing companies with about six vessels each. It is a fantastically successful industry but with very few participants. I am not against that but, as our Norwegian colleague said, the Government need to decide what sort of policy they want. Do they want a policy like Norway’s, that looks after coastal communities, or one like Iceland’s, that looks for total efficiency and GDP? That decision will have to be made.

Motion agreed.

European Union: Environmental Policy

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there will be differing opinions on this. We have a very strong record on the carbon budgets, whatever one’s view. The issues of climate change are real, as my noble friend Lord Ridley said in the Times this morning. So it is very important that we take these matters seriously, and when we leave they will continue to be important for us.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, one of the key ways that we meet our European environmental standards is by investment from the European Investment Bank, which has already invested £50 billion in wastewater, clean technology for energy, flooding and waste. How are we going to replace that vital funding stream in two years’ time?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, it is right that the noble Lord mentioned flooding. That is why we have record sums of capital investment: £2.5 billion in flooding investment, as well as a record £1 billion investment in maintenance. That is an example of the UK Government investing strongly in our defences.

Agricultural Sector (EUC Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I should like to record what a privilege it is for me to take on the chairmanship of this committee and what a privilege it is to have followed my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, whose reputation, work and leadership on the committee were absolutely excellent.

This report is, in a way, the last of a series of “own initiative” reports, because at the moment we have a programme of Brexit reports which are taking up all our time. I hope that we are about to complete our report on fisheries, and that will be followed by reports on the environment, agriculture and energy security. I think that that will keep us busy for the next few months.

Without wanting it to sound as though too many congratulations are being expressed around the House, I was delighted to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, had become president of LEAF, an organisation for which I have huge regard, having seen some of its work in the past in Cornwall. I wish her well in that role.

Price volatility and natural disasters and events are part of agricultural life. As the noble Baroness mentioned, in the south-west, where I have my home, we are again experiencing a series of floods, which affect the agricultural community even more than many other sectors of society.

Intervention used to be one way in which the European Communities dealt with price volatility. My business career was in supply chain management and the freight industry. I remember operating a cold store in the 1980s. We had some space in it which our contracted customers were not using, so we thought that we would put in a pitch for a bit of European intervention storage. The great thing was that we got a fantastic revenue boost from that, but that was not all, because a full cold store is far cheaper to operate than a half-empty one, so we saved costs as well. I express a public thank-you to the 1980s European taxpayer for the great amount of money that we made out of that. That is why that system had to end as a regular feature. We all remember the wine lakes, the butter mountains and the intervention milk powder that occurred at that time.

However, as my noble friend Lady Scott said, at the moment there is some emergency intervention, which has been approved by the Government. The Minister, George Eustice, came back to the committee and referred to this report, and some of the intervention money will be used in some of the more creative intervention ways. Therefore, I think that the committee has already had a success in that area, and I welcome the Government’s response in that regard. I shall not talk at great length on this issue because, although it is important, it is not my report.

I particularly liked the move towards innovation in the report. I had not even thought about the financial instruments that could be used. They may be limited, but it is important that managers in the agricultural sector think in that way, as having those tools is very important.

Management in this area, as in any business, is absolutely crucial. One particularly important thing that I have certainly seen in Devon and Cornwall is not just management and management plans, which can be very dry, but the ability to understand and deliver marketing and to understand added value, as well as the ability to find niches in markets. It is important not to be an accepter of prices for commodities within agriculture but to produce products that are special and are of added value to consumers. That is one of the key areas where there is still much to be learned.

As my noble friend said, Brexit has come through since the report was published, and there will be huge challenges. I cannot believe that we will have regular area payments much beyond 2020. I cannot see British taxpayers putting up with that system as it is at the moment. It will just have to change—the pressures will be too great—and this report is even more important in that context. Regrettably, we may not be able to take advantage of the European Investment Bank. I hope that we will, although I cannot see that we will be a shareholder and have board membership of the EIB. However, I hope that there will still be ways in which we can exercise those funds.

We really do have a challenge as we move agriculture beyond the European Union, but I think it is one area where there are huge opportunities for improvement in the Brexit settlement. That will be the subject of a report of this committee, on which I look forward to the contribution from my fellow members in due course.

Brexit: Environmental and Climate Change Policy

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I would like to mention two main subjects, one of which is climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has already given us an excellent exposition of that subject, but I will add one or two other points. The other is the fisheries policy, and I declare my interest as a board member of the Marine Management Organisation. I will also say a little about Defra itself.

About a year ago I was pleased to host a dinner for the All-Party Group for Energy Studies, which does great work for the two Houses and provides a good interface between parliamentarians and industry. Our guest was the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd—now the Home Secretary. It was great to be next to her because she was still, rightly, celebrating the Paris agreement; this must have been at the very end of December or the beginning of January. She was talking about the great feeling of achievement not just for the UK but for Europe, and globally, because, despite all the difficulties and negative comments, and some of the problems in Copenhagen a few years earlier, the world had managed to come together and achieve a climate change agreement.

I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and I could give a 90-point list of all the things that were wrong with that agreement, but we were pleased about the fact that it was a way forward, there were ways in which it would succeed, and the world had come together. What was really instructive about the conversation between the Secretary of State and me at that time was the fact that we agreed that Britain, within the European Union, had been a major driver behind the success of that agreement. Clearly America and China coming together before that was equally important, but Britain had played a major role, not just politically but technically, such as in the preparations made beforehand by the sherpas. We had led a lot of those negotiations and we had brought about compromise: we had done the right work with the other nations and groups in Paris. Through that work, through our expertise in this country, and through our Civil Service and the determination of Ministers—the Minister himself played a part, and I am sure he would agree with this—we had a major part in achieving that success.

Given that leadership in Europe, and the importance that we were seen to have in a global context on a matter fundamental to our future, my question is: where do we now go, post-Brexit, in terms of that national role? It is one of the classic areas where not only is this potentially damaging to us, to our reputation and to what we can do, but, more importantly, we are blunting our ability to guide the world forward to a sustainable future in which those agreements can succeed. I shall be very interested in the Minister’s comments on where, when we are not part of the European Union, we might stand. Do we group ourselves with, say, Japan—or with the developing nations, or with the G20? Where does the Minister see us playing our role? Once we have left, who will we be allied with and work with in the working groups before the meetings—the next of which will be in Marrakesh—and in the other conferences of the parties? Where will we stand, and how will we make sure that we can contribute in those areas? It is fundamentally important, from a global aspect, to understand where we might go.

To me, fisheries constitute one of the great ironies of the Brexit debate. When I was an MEP, in the 1990s and well beyond I was hugely critical of the common fisheries policy. Let us be clear: it was an area in which the Eurosceptics were absolutely right. They had hit the nail on the head. The precious stocks were going down. North Sea stocks were hugely challenged, the Baltic was equally bad, the Mediterranean was going nowhere and there were huge challenges in the Black Sea—which, admittedly, was not completely under EU control.

The irony is that this was one of the fundamental areas of contention within the European Union where we actually managed to get change. It was Britain that drove much of that change. Because of that, we now have, as the Minister will know, two major changes in fisheries policy. We have, at last, a recognition that regionalisation works, as my noble friend Lady Scott said: we can devolve out of Brussels and make decisions that are right for where the fish stocks are, and where they migrate and circulate. The second change concerns the tragedy and obscenity of discarding. Coming in gradually, but being effective as it does so—resisted by parts of the fishing industry, particularly in Scotland—is the landing obligation, whereby we stop discarding. We are not yet close to sustainable yields, but we are moving in the right direction and I congratulate the Government on having pursued this relentlessly and on the agreements that have been made.

We now have another challenge in that the marine environment is quite naturally not one where fish, crustaceans and other marine animals understand borders. We have areas where control by a single member state in the western waters of the North Sea is just not possible. How are we going to approach this? I was pleased to hear the Minister responsible for fisheries, George Eustice, say to our committee that the landing obligation would remain in place. I welcome that statement. However, are we going to follow the Norwegian model post-Brexit? It is a positive one in that Norway has a good track record in terms of conservation and management of stocks, but there are huge challenges here. I would be very concerned indeed if we go down the route that some are advocating, which is that of saying that our EEZ boundary is it. We will do whatever we want to do here, no one else shall cross it, and we shall take advantage of our own stocks. While I realise that relative stability was probably not the best solution for us in the past, and we may want to try to negotiate that, I would be very concerned if we do not recognise the fact that marine species move across all boundaries. If we do not have an agreement, stocks are likely to be fished out in French, Dutch or Norwegian waters before they reach our own. Lastly, other speakers including the noble Baroness, Lady Young, have mentioned the trade issue. We should never forget that we export 80% of our fish, so increasing our catch will be of no use if we cannot actually reach our markets.

Finally, I come back closer to home, to Defra. If there is one department facing the biggest challenges in terms of Brexit, it must be Defra. There has to be a new devolved agricultural policy and a new devolved fisheries policy as well as other areas such as the environment and all the legislation that is primarily European. Can the Government say that, for our own safety and success following Brexit, the budget for Defra will be sufficient to make sure that all of this can be delivered to our national advantage?

Rio+20 Conference

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I agree with the noble Lord that this is important. We wanted to impress on the conference that GDP was a rather inadequate measure of the resources of a country, and that we want to develop indicators of natural and social capital to complement GDP and agreement to incorporate these into national accounts. All nations at Rio+20 recognise the importance of a broader measure of progress to complement GDP in order to inform decision-making. Forestry is a key element of natural capital, and the UN Statistical Commission will take this work forward.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, corporate business is more and more important to the way the world develops. One of my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister’s targets was to get corporates to report much more on carbon emissions and wider environmental issues. I congratulate the Government on deciding to do that here in the UK, but what other nations are following our lead and how does the Minister see this developing in the future?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister was able to make this declaration on greenhouse gas reporting at Rio. I can report back that the UK was key in this particular area and that this particular development was widely welcomed. Indeed, the decision was cheered by the conference. At Rio, we talked to Aviva and Unilever—companies that have developed exactly this sort of approach to corporate responsibility—and hope that this model will be taken up by other companies.