Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Wilcox

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, I have been sitting here and listening for a long time. I have worked with these people and know their stories really well. We are also very passionate. We do not expect the English to get upset and worried—to love their boats, to want to bring in their youngsters, teach them properly and bring them forward.

I tried to look back and see what things stuck out for me. A lobster hatchery that I put together down in Cornwall is going jolly well—we enjoy it. In those days, people were able to take money from the European Community to train children to go to university and learn. At the same time, they would come over and take what they liked: when you came to another place, you were supposed to bring your police with you and not have any cheating. You were supposed to be watching it. However, when you talk to the Spanish and the rest of them, who had a hell of a job to get themselves enough fish, they just took it—they left the police back at home. I grew up like that.

We will find it very difficult to pull our people away from saying, “It’s all right now. Everything’s fine. We don’t need to worry”. We do need to. This is what we have heard from this marvellous lady here. I did not know her before, but she is terrific. What these two Ministers have done with patience over hours and hours is something that you do not see at sea.

I remember the first time that you could look down and see all the fish coming, because of the technology that showed it to us—watching us taking loads ourselves and pulling through. We just had to lose it. We had so much that we did not know what to do with it.

At the end of the day, what we do best is fish and chips. We love it down in the West Country. We love to sell it. The frightening thing is realising that our water goes right up to France. We have this huge amount of water around us, this great big place. We also have a place where we can eat the food we love. Hands up—who knows what we eat more of? What is it? Can no noble Lords say what they love to eat? Are you not going to be able to say, “of Britain, of England”? What do we eat? It is beef. We do not eat fish; we eat beef.

I will finish in just a moment. I do not think that it is a problem, or what we are doing is wrong. I think we are recognising, hearing and seeing the great excitement that is coming to us. We have not yet spoken about training up the youngsters to bring them in, get them keen, and get the mechanisms through. I would like to congratulate the Front Bench. I hope that we do not hang around much longer. It has been a long time and I have enjoyed it.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on her work on the lobster hatchery in Cornwall, which really is something quite special and has been very successful.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Wilcox

Thursday 28th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, Amendment 94 is quite straightforward: it seeks to insert a new paragraph in proposed new Section 4A(1) which allows for the adjudicator to consider,

“information provided by a trade association”.

Trade associations are important and should be involved in the structure of the Bill, and the amendment would involve them in this part of the work delineated by the Bill. It is as straightforward as that.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have raised the important issue of what any restrictions on the sources of information under Clause 15(10) should involve. The Government hope and believe that third parties such as trade associations will provide information to the adjudicator in a responsible and helpful way and that this clause will never need to be activated. Nevertheless, it is important that we give proper scrutiny to the details of how the clause can be activated and what it should include.

The clause as drafted provides the most suitable way to restrict information. The sources that would still be allowed to provide information are those identified as most suitable by the Government following their consideration of pre-legislative scrutiny by the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee. These have been carefully considered as sources that could provide useful information without the risk of the adjudicator being deluged with complex but essentially weak complaints.

My noble friend Lord Eccles suggested that retailers should be included in the list of sources of information. Clearly retailers will have relevant information about whether a breach has occurred and this will be central to investigations. However, the place for this to be heard is in investigations, where the adjudicator can seek relevant information without revealing details of complaints. The decision to start an investigation is based on complaints or other information giving reasonable grounds to suspect that the code has been breached, not on an attempt to weigh all the arguments.

My noble friends Lord Razzall and Lord Teverson suggest that trade associations should be added to the list. However, trade associations are the primary group that this power to limit the sources of information is intended to address. The power has been introduced in the light of concerns that trade associations might raise complex but unjustified complaints. This could put a strain on the adjudicator’s time and resources, as well as unnecessary burdens on the retailers.

The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Grantchester, suggest that the Secretary of State should be able to specify sources through guidance. However, such an extension would be a more serious matter than is suited for guidance, which the adjudicator must “take account of” but which is not strictly binding.

Clause 15(10) has been deliberately written to restrict the sources of information to those that are most likely to have information regarding a breach of the code. This will ensure that trade associations and other third parties have a clear incentive to act responsibly. It would be invidious to put the Secretary of State in a position where he or she had to pick which third parties or classes of third party were responsible and which were not, and such an amendment could lead to the very lobbying and campaigning that we hope to avoid.

Finally, the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Grantchester, have also proposed an amendment to Clause 23 that is relevant here. It would mean that Clause 15(10) required an affirmative resolution. Throughout the Bill we have striven to ensure that a suitable level of parliamentary scrutiny is provided for any orders.

The Government believe that the negative procedure is suitable here as the content of the order is very clearly defined in the Bill, and because an order can be made only as the result of a triennial review involving widespread consultation. The Delegated Powers Committee considered this order specifically and confirmed that it was satisfied with our reasons for this being a negative procedure.

I hope that these answers to the amendments have been helpful. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 114, which is very straightforward. Under Clause 19(5), the Secretary of State must make an order to allow the adjudicator to differentiate. My noble friend Lord Razzall and I believe that the adjudicator should have this direct ability. Again, we have this indirect method of making decisions through the Secretary of State. I am sure that the Secretary of State has far more important things to do than decide the specific division of the levy among the small population of large retailers. If we are to have a serious adjudicator, we should give that person the authority to undertake that task. If we feel that the adjudicator’s decisions are wrong, I am sure that other provisions in the Bill will ensure that that is communicated to him or her.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, many noble Lords have given close consideration to how the levy to fund the adjudicator should be raised. The noble Lords, Lord Borrie, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Grantchester, proposed similar amendments, respectively suggesting that the Bill should specify that the adjudicator “must” or “shall”, rather than “may”, levy funds from the retailers. I agree with the principle that the adjudicator should raise its funds from the retailers. This is intended as the adjudicator’s primary funding source. Other forms of income, such as payment for the cost of individual investigations or loans and grants from the Secretary of State, are intended to be secondary.

However, simply specifying that raising funds is obligatory would not have a clear outcome unless the Bill specified when the adjudicator must do so. The current drafting is intended to allow the adjudicator to levy funds whenever he or she deems it necessary, not to impose a schedule of when he or she may or must raise funds. I believe that we agree on the principle that the adjudicator should be funded by the retailers, but I also believe that the current drafting gives the adjudicator greater flexibility and is preferable.

The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, proposed a further amendment removing the need for the Secretary of State to give consent before a levy is raised. I am sympathetic to the principles of avoiding unnecessary hurdles and the need for independence for the adjudicator. However, this amendment would give the adjudicator a completely free hand to raise funds from the retailers without the oversight of Ministers. The Secretary of State needs only to give consent and may not direct the adjudicator to raise any levy, but some accountability is necessary.

The noble Lords, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Grantchester, proposed that the levy should initially be divided according to the large retailers’ turnover. That possibility was considered during pre-legislative scrutiny, but the Government believe that it would be unfair to assume that a retailer’s size correlates with how much it breaches the code or with how much of the adjudicator’s resource it is likely to demand. The principle of fairly sharing the cost of the adjudicator is better served by the ability to vary the payments of retailers based on the estimated expense and time of dealing with them in the light of experience.

I turn to Amendment 110A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising. This would require an order to be made before a levy is imposed, and would mean that consultation must take place before imposing the levy and before any subsequent increase in the levy. I believe that unnecessary bureaucracy should be avoided wherever possible. The Government’s intention to fund this body via a levy has been clearly set out in previous consultations and policy documents; the mechanism for a levy and how it is to be imposed can be read from the Bill. I therefore see no need to require the imposition of an order, or for a further round of consultation, before imposing the levy, particularly when the levy is subject to the approval of the Secretary of State and not simply at the adjudicator’s discretion.

On my noble friend’s question about limiting the amount of the levy, a limit on how much can be raised could tie the hands of the adjudicator, particularly if there was a costly appeal for which funds were needed. The fact that the Secretary of State must approve each levy is an assurance that it will not be misused.

This brings me to Amendment 114, tabled by my noble friends Lord Razzall and Lord Teverson. This would remove the requirement for the Secretary of State to make an order before the adjudicator can vary the way the levy is made. Given the principles of avoiding bureaucracy that I have just set out, I am willing to look again at whether an order is necessary before a levy can be varied in the proportionate way set out in the latter part of subsection (5). The fact that individual levies would still need to be approved by the Secretary of State could provide an adequate safeguard, and I will happily discuss this issue further with my noble friends Lord Razzall and Lord Teverson before the next stage of the Bill. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, will also be happy to discuss this issue, as I believe that her amendment shares the same objective of avoiding bureaucratic delay. However, the Government feel that varying the levy should be a matter for the independent adjudicator and that the role of the Secretary of State should be simply to give consent.

Export Controls

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Wilcox

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

I am afraid that, at the moment, all I know is that the company referred to is exporting quite legitimately, as far as we know. We do not know of any re-exporting involving that company, but certainly we are considering most actively the extent to which export controls should apply to surveillance equipment, particularly in relation to Syria and Iran.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I think that most of us would agree with trying to stop arms exports that can be used for internal repression in countries that do not benefit from democracy. However, can the Minister explain which body, in this new technological world, actually decides which items can be used for internal repression and which cannot? This is surely a difficult area. How do the Government cope with that, and how do they decide on which side of the border a particular product lies?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend is quite right: this is very complicated. We live in a technological age that moves at enormously fast speed. We also do not wish to cause suffering to the innocent people of another country by restricting goods unless we absolutely have to and feel that it is right to do so. That is what we are doing at the moment. I wondered whether anybody would ask me where they could find out what is restricted and what is not. It is always very helpful to have this information. Trade data are available online at www.uktradeinfo.com if anybody would like to look that up. Information on export restrictions is available on the BIS website. It is the ministry of business that deals with this, which is why I am answering the Question.

Financial Reporting Council: Annual Reports and Accounts

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Wilcox

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, that is a very good point and I shall take it away with me.

[Lord Teverson]

Will my noble friend remind us where the Government are in terms of carbon emissions reporting in company reports, which is required under the Climate Change Act? Is that about to happen, and what organisations will be involved?

[Baroness Wilcox]

That is a little wide of the Question and I do not have the information with me. As I said, we are having a wide-ranging discussion ourselves and will report back at the end of March. I have no doubt that there will be a reference to it there.