Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the Minister to this House and look forward to working with him.

When I started contemplating this debate, one phrase kept popping into my mind: “There are plenty more fish in the sea.” It is usually used, of course, by people who have perhaps heard a bit too much from their friends about their broken hearts and wish to reassure them. I tried to look up the first use of this phrase, but it seems to have been lost in the mists of time. As the noble Viscount has just outlined, that is because things have changed very much over centuries. The tenor of this metaphor in the age of online dating may be more true than it has ever been, but the vehicle for the metaphor no longer bears the weight that it carries.

There is a lot of focus on the state of nature on land. We have recently seen reports from NGOs, and people can see for themselves what is known as “insectageddon”: the fact that, when we drive along the highway at night, we no longer see insects spattered over our windscreens. The loss of, say, our cod is much less visible and much less talked about. We owe a real debt to the commentator George Monbiot, who has drawn attention to this and written about the fact that it goes back a very long way—further even than the noble Viscount went. Paleolithic fishers were catching giant beasts that medieval fishers could not imagine, and what medieval fishers saw modern fishers cannot imagine even in their dreams. We have shifting baseline syndrome and we should never forget that.

Before I get to the main points of this debate, I will say one more thing directly to the Minister: although not specifically our topic today, it is clear from this background that we need to see many more marine reserves and many more genuine no-take zones protecting our fish stocks.

On the specific point of today’s debate, I record my debt to the Greens/EFA parliamentary group fisheries adviser Björn Stockhausen, who very much informed what I am about to say. The Green parties of the United Kingdom will continue to be part of the European Green Party, with which we will continue to work very closely. Similarly, our fish stocks will continue to be European after Brexit. Fish do not carry passports. If they tucked them under their fin on one side, they would be able to swim only in circles. They do not stop at borders. We will have to continue to work very closely with our European neighbours.

Several noble Lords have referred, as I did yesterday, to the fact that the discard ban is not simply an EU rule. This is the people’s rule, fought for and won by people. It is up to the Government to enforce this rule to continue to reflect the will of the people after Brexit—and up to your Lordships’ House to scrutinise what the Government are doing about that, as these two reports do.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who said that not much attention is being paid to this by NGOs. We should pay tribute to the excellent ClientEarth, which put out a report last October highlighting how France, Denmark and Spain are, like us, failing to enforce this ban. I ask the Minister to ensure that, in ongoing talks and negotiations, we focus on doing the right thing ourselves so that we can push for others to do the right thing as well; this needs to be part of the negotiations.

A number of noble Lords have referred to the challenges of being a fisher. They need to be properly paid; we need to look at issues that also apply to our farmers and growers about the payment pressures put on them by supermarkets and multinational companies. We know that much of our stock, our catch, is sold into European markets. What kind of access will our fishers have to those markets?

In light of the food strategy for England that will come forward quite soon, we also need to think about more sustainable, closer-to-home consumption of some of our catch. I ask the Minister to ensure that his work is closely integrated with the work of the food strategy, in this area and others.

I come to a couple of specific points on these reports. Paragraph 49 of the EU Committee’s report refers to how

“Using different types of equipment could enable some fishers to fish more selectively.”


What do the Government plan to do to help and support fishers to do that?

The report also extensively covers the issue of remote electronic monitoring. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has already covered that point extensively so I will merely say that I want to ask the questions that she has already asked.

Paragraph 57 refers to a system of

“real time notifications that is useful to, and trusted by, fishers.”

We need to change systems and indeed, as other noble Lords have said, cultures so that we can reduce the choke risks for fishers. What plans do the Government have to support that happening?

Finally, there is a small area that I want to address—small in both senses of the term. Paragraph 71 refers to vessels under 10 metres not having the same ability to mitigate choke risks. What are the Government planning to do to support and help those vessels under 10 metres in particular? Those vessels, which often work locally in inshore waters and are a part of strong local economies, make a different kind of contribution and, I would say, a very positive one, unlike the giant vessels taking huge volumes from our seas and oceans. What are the Government planning to do to ensure that we have strong support for those crucial small vessels?