Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

My Lords, in addition to the amendment standing in my own name, I support my noble friend Lord Leicester in his amendment. I would add to it the requirement of the offshore wind industry to provide adequate funding to research and understand the cumulative impact of all these offshore wind developments on migratory birds and fish. By way of comparison, what we now understand with aquaculture is that one farm on its own makes no material difference to the wider environment. The problem is that the cumulative impact of all these developments is devastating.

Most regrettably, the aquaculture industry has no obligation to pay towards monitoring this impact on the environment or on wild salmon and other species, with the burden of proof left to the NGO and charitable sector to fund the science that demonstrates the terrible impact that aquaculture is having. Let us not repeat this disastrous situation again with offshore renewables. It should be a cost of business and a licence requirement for the offshore wind industry to fund independent, ongoing research into the impacts of individual and cumulative sites on migratory birds and fish, with the results of this work directly influencing future developments.

On the amendment standing in my name, I declare my interests as set out in the register and draw attention to my roles as a trustee of the Kyle of Sutherland District Salmon Fisheries Board, as the past chairman of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and as the proprietor of two salmon rivers in Scotland.

I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, who spoke so passionately about the issues of aquaculture. During a recent Question for Short Debate tabled by my noble friend on the parlous state of the UK’s salmon stock, many noble Lords raised serious questions about the impact that aquaculture, and in particular open-cage salmon farming, was having on salmon stocks and the wider environment. This is becoming a worrying theme. We have all seen the harrowing pictures of malformed and diseased farmed salmon held in very questionable conditions by bad operators in this industry.

What is much harder to see is the impact that the cumulative size of this industry is having on our wild salmon and the wider environment. However, any objective review of the science leads to the conclusion that there are a number of serious negative impacts from this industry. The three most serious are: first, the catastrophic impact of elevated sea lice numbers caused by a direct result of intensive open-cage salmon farming on juvenile wild salmon survival; secondly, the impact of intensive salmon farming on animal husbandry standards for fish kept in open-net cages in such density and the subsequent cross-contamination of numerous diseases from farmed to wild fish; and, thirdly, the impact of genetic introgression from genetically modified farmed salmon escapees interbreeding with wild salmon populations, rendering them unfit to survive the rigours of the natural world. These are serious issues that are having a profound long-term negative impact on the natural environment and on wild salmon stocks specifically.

Why is this relevant to the Crown Estate Bill? In simple terms, salmon farmers are there only because they get a licence from the Crown Estate. Without a Crown Estate licence, they would have no right to be there, and the cumulative impact of the industry, and the bad operators among them, would not be causing the levels of environmental damage and animal suffering that they are. Given the nature of this monopoly, it is surely right that the Crown Estate commissioners are enabled through the Bill to hold to account those to whom they have granted a licence, and that they themselves are held accountable for the outcomes that they enable. Without these amendments, the Crown Estate commissioners are unable to fulfil their duty of care to others with whom they share the coastal space to ensure that they are not adversely impacted. They are unable to prevent the negative animal welfare issues from continuing; unable to ensure that there is no detrimental impact on other species that live in this precious ecosystem; and unable to ensure that the wider environment is not damaged by the bad operators to whom they have granted a licence to operate.

These amendments seek to give the public and the environment a practical and sensible level of protection against malpractice and environmental damage, by giving those who enable these fish farm operators—namely, the Crown Estate—the tools to manage the cumulative impact and to remove the bad operators. They will also give the Government the power to hold the Crown Estate commissioners to account to ensure that they do this. We have all seen the devastating impact that can occur if we fail to hold those in a monopolistic position to account in areas such as sewage discharge, so let us not repeat the same mistakes here.

As it stands, the Crown Estate has no ability to influence or remove bad operators in the aquaculture industry to whom it has issued a licence. Crucially, the Government have no ability to hold the Crown Estate commissioners to account for any negative outcomes arising from the issuing of these licences. It is simply not right that the organisation that is in the sole position to enable an entire industry—and, incidentally, to make tens of millions of pounds from issuing these licences—can have no influence over, or responsibility for, any negative outcomes from its actions.

The simple measure of requiring the Crown Estate commissioners to report annually on the impact of aquaculture on the environment and animal welfare standards—and enabling and compelling them to remove licences from those operators that fall short of the required standards—must surely be a desirable and fair outcome for everyone. It would significantly reduce any negative impact on the environment and help to improve animal welfare standards. These amendments have substantial cross-party support, and I hope that the Government will accept them as improving the Crown Estate Bill.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to this group of amendments. I was not sure which one most suited the comments I wished to make, but I think it is probably Amendment 37F in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester.

At the heart of all three amendments is a question about the relationship between, on the one hand, the economic activity that we wish to undertake, quite properly, and, on the other, the environmental and natural consequences that may take place. It is about the right balance between what we seek to do economically and what we seek to protect environmentally. I will speak to that general point.

Taking my lead from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I should declare my interests. I too am an angler, although I do not get to spend nearly enough time on the river, and I also happen to own the river, which is rather nice. I am chairman of the Caithness District Salmon Fishery Board, which is currently very involved with Crown Estate Scotland on various issues. I may also be—I hope—the beneficiary of a number of renewable projects. I have every sort of interest that you could possibly have; I think that they are broadly covered by my register, but I thought that I had better spell them out.

As I said, the heart of the three amendments is about seeking to ensure that, when we set out to undertake an economic activity of any kind—and this is absolutely what happens on land—we make a proper and full assessment of what the impact is likely to be on the environment that we are putting that economic activity into. That includes the flora, fauna, fungi and everything else that you might find there.

I want to give one quick example; it is in Scotland but I think it is relevant. We on the north coast have four rivers which are all in very good health. On the Thurso we electrofish every year and for some years now we have known that you cannot get any more juveniles into the river, it is in that good order. So, at a time when most of Scotland has salmon stocks that are endangered, as the noble Lord pointed out in introducing his amendment, we have the one bit of Scotland that actually is in good order and producing good salmon—and long may that last.

The west of Shetland wind farm, which is going to go ahead in the not-too-distant future, and which I support as a piece of offshore energy, may have a problem for us in the fishing world, and that is that we do not know where our smolts go. When the salmon grow in the river, they come to a point where they smoltify and they take to the sea and off they go. They are then called “smolts” or “post-smolts” and we do not actually know where they go. There has been smolt tagging and tracking in the Moray Firth which discovered that the fish that come out of various rivers in the deep south around Inverness and places like that have a tendency not to do what you would expect, which is to scoot up the coast and head past Orkney. For reasons known only to them, they leg it across to Aberdeenshire, which I always thought showed a bit of a lack of taste. The point about that is they do not go through the Beatrice wind farm and that piece of knowledge is vital in being able to look at what you may need to do to mitigate.

Similar studies on the west coast show that Irish and west coast fish tend to go due north, as you would expect, and straight off to Iceland. We just do not know where our smolts are going, so we made contact with Crown Estate Scotland, which I have to say has been incredibly helpful on this, and the chairman put me in touch with various people. As a result, I believe that there will be a smolt-tracking project which will allow us to know where our smolts are going and we will therefore know whether we have a problem, so we can look at what can be done to mitigate it if we have.

That comes back to the point I was making that, without information, you cannot make a decision on the appropriate thing to do. Crown Estate Scotland on this occasion has been extremely helpful, as I said. It wishes to make sure that it does the least harm, which is wonderful, but it seems to me correct that, in forming any legislation, it is appropriate, as we do with the nuclear industry and a whole range of other things, to state what it is that people have to provide by way of information in terms of an economic impact assessment and what they will do to mitigate the inevitable downsides that occur when you have developments of these kinds.

So I am not sure whether I am supporting anybody in particular—noble Lords will have to make up their own minds on that—but I am supporting the principle that we need knowledge and information about what may happen so that we can then make an informed choice on what mitigation is required and how much damage we are prepared to accept for the value brought by the economic activity.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Viscount for giving way and I am much heartened to hear that his rivers and fish are doing very well. I just wonder what his reaction would be if someone decided they wanted to put a fish farm in the track of his migrating smolts when he knows where they are.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

I suspect I would be pretty horrified, given all the information that I know about it, but I have long tried to stick to a principle in your Lordships’ House to speak about what I really know about and avoid the things I do not know too much about, so I hope the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not go down that road.

To come back to my central point on the need to get information, it is about the right duty that we should ask the Crown Estate to have and then the process it should follow to deliver it. So my request to the Minister would be to look at the obvious strength of feeling on all of these points and perhaps the Government should look at what their view would be as to the right process and the right way to put it into the Bill and come back with an amendment that would achieve that and would suit the Government.