Sea Fisheries (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2024

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and for his time, and that of his officials, in providing a briefing on this statutory instrument.

When reading through the Explanatory Memorandum and the SI itself, I was confused about what exactly was expected of both commercial fisheries and recreational fishers. I am delighted that Atlantic tuna stocks have increased to such an extent that the UK is now in a position to be allocated quota for the fishing of tuna to begin once again.

Of the quota currently allocated to the UK as a whole by the international commission, as the Minister has said, 39 tonnes is for commercial fisheries, 16 tonnes is for recreational fishers and 10 tonnes is for research purposes. Commercial fisheries will apply for a licence and recreational fishers for a permit. Whatever is caught has be measured, weighed and recorded. The commercial fisheries will get to land their catch and send it to be sold and the recreational fishers will have to throw their catch back, live if at all possible, under the CHART programme and ICCAT requirements. I understand that, for a recreational fisher, the skill of the man or woman against the guile of the fish is a great part of the experience, but it seems to me that not to be able to land your catch at all, even though you have a permit, is likely to discourage rather than encourage applying for a permit in the first place.

My only concern with this SI is the enforcement of the quota against the fish caught and landed. The restrictions are strict on how this should happen. It will be easy for enforcement authorities to see who has a commercial licence, and thus be alerted to a commercial vessel fishing for bluefin tuna without a licence and so take action. On the recreational front, I think this will be more difficult: the fisher with a permit is likely to be indistinguishable at sea from the fisher with no permit. The fisher with no permit may also be fishing for other fish and hiding their tuna catch among that fish, and certainly not throwing the tuna back.

Extensive consultation took place on this SI and the previous one we debated in February. I have read this and understand that the consultation was positive, for the greater part, and welcomed the introduction of the quota and the way in which it was to be monitored. However, I would be grateful if the Minister could say how the bluefin tuna fish quotas are to be policed. Are there sufficient personnel to carry out effective monitoring of this new fishing quota, and will this be carried out by the MMO?

I understand that the main concentration of UK bluefin tuna is around Scarborough, Scotland and Ireland, and obviously around Wales as well if the Welsh are considering applying for a quota. This should help with the policing. However, it is likely that some fishers and charter boats will try their luck outside these areas. How are the other areas to be policed?

The Minister indicated that once the quota limit has been reached, fishing for bluefin tuna will cease for that year. Since the monitoring of what is caught and landed appears to be very tight, it should be easy to ascertain when the quota limit has been reached, but this will not take account of any illegal fishing that has taken place. Can the Minister give reassurances on this matter?

I am delighted that tuna stocks have recovered to such an extent that the UK is now eligible for quota allocation. However, it will be essential for the catch to be strictly monitored against the quota in order to prevent overfishing in the future. I have to say that I am very concerned by the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about the banning of fishing for pollock. I look forward to the Minister’s response to his questions.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his thorough introduction to this SI. He talked about bluefin tuna or, as they are known in the SI, BFT, which means I can think of them only as the “Big Friendly Tuna”. They were pushed to the brink of extinction because of overfishing, so it is really welcome that the fish have returned to UK waters over the past decade and that populations are recovering in other areas such as the Mediterranean, as noble Lords have referred to.

I want to look at just a few bits. Paragraph 7.10 of the Explanatory Memorandum outlines that

“Defra intends to open a BFT CRRF”—

I have not decided what else CRRF could be, but there are a lot of acronyms in the Explanatory Memorandum. The maximum scale of the CRRF is to do with the availability of the quota. We heard in the Minister’s introduction and in noble Lords’ comments about the implications of that quota in the long term, not just as it is set now.

I was also interested to see in paragraph 10.3 that there was a fairly thorough consultation between July and September 2023. Paragraph 10.3 outlines a number of ways in which the scheme has been revised following the consultation. One of the things I wanted to pick up on, and I will come back to, is the reasons why the introduction of permit charges was delayed.

One of the responses to this announcement was from the leader of the Blue Marine Foundation, Charles Clover—I am sure the Minister knows this. Charles Clover said he is anxious that

“we are just starting off a cycle of commercial fishing far too early in its recovery which we cannot control. We are creating a new commercial interest in fishing bluefin which will need close scrutiny. Realistically, the survival of the bluefin now will be about setting quotas strictly within scientific advice”.

Clearly, we all want this to work. Can the Minister say something regarding Charles Clover’s concerns? On the face of it, the quota that has been brought in by Defra looks absolutely fine, and we support the SI, but, having looked at the Blue Marine Foundation’s comments, I ask the Minister: how will the quota be kept under review? Will Defra be prepared to make significant changes if the data suggests that any changes are needed? How would that come into play?

On that point, I want to look at what my noble friend Lord Berkeley said about pollock. Again, this is about the accuracy of quotas, when this is reviewed, how it is implemented and the impacts on the fishing industry. It is often very small boats that rely on this for their living.

To come back to the postponement of the introduction of permits, the Explanatory Memorandum says that

“the introduction of charges for permits has been postponed, to allow time for further work to confirm the scope and scale of such charges, as well as how any charging income would be used”.

Questions were asked about the delay in charging for permits when this SI was debated in the other place. The Minister responded that permits would ensure that

“the whole industry will be conducted responsibly, with the best welfare in mind”,—[Official Report, Commons, Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee, 24/4/24; col. 8.]

which obviously we support, but it would be useful to have a bit more information as to the timescales for this, what is likely to happen and what it is likely to look like when it comes in. What does “further work” mean? What kind of work is being carried out? It would be useful to know. Having said that, we are supportive of this. It is good for the industry and for coastal communities, and it is great that we have tuna back.

I hope the Minister will forgive me, because I know this is not what the SI is about, but I want briefly to raise concerns about the salmon farming industry, following a story I read in the media this morning. Official figures from the Scottish Government suggest that farmed salmon mortality hit record levels last year, with over 17 million deaths. There has been increased incidence of mass mortality events in farms elsewhere in the world. We know that these mass die-offs are believed to include sea lice infestations and environmental stressors, such as poor oxygen levels in water, with overpopulation of pens exacerbating the problems.

I was concerned about Defra’s decision to allow Salmon Scotland’s application to change the protected name wording on the front packaging from “Scottish farmed salmon” to “Scottish salmon”, as I think that is pretty misleading. That change is also not supported by Animal Equality UK and WildFish, which say that, as well as being misleading, it breaches assimilated EU Regulation 1151/2012—the Minister may want to write that down—on quality schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs. I am aware that this is outside the scope and subject of this SI, and I apologise to the Minister for being a little cheeky, but I know that he has a particular interest in and knowledge of this area, so I would be grateful if he could look into this.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their interest in this matter and in other fishery-related issues.

I start by commenting on the issues in Scotland, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I am highly sympathetic to this issue because, in a previous life, I chaired the Atlantic Salmon Trust, which deals with wild salmon and interacts with the aquaculture industry on a daily, permanent basis. There are some serious challenges in this space. I have a personal view and then there is a Defra view. I should probably stick to the Defra view for the moment—unless your Lordships can coax the other one out of me later.

The level of mortality of farmed salmon, in my view and Defra’s, is completely unacceptable. As your Lordships know, salmon farming is an issue devolved to the Scottish Government. The only jurisdictional reach that Defra has into aquaculture is through its work on antimicrobial resistance and the use of antibiotics, which is UK-wide. It is no coincidence that salmon farming is one of the least successful industries at reducing its antibiotic use. It is an area of serious concern and those concerns are being raised. I accept the noble Baroness’s comments on the name change. I can see from noble Lords’ body language that those are collective comments and, as your Lordships’ can probably see, I am minded to share those views. I will take that back to the department to quiz officials further. It is a completely unacceptable state of affairs.

I turn my attention to some of the questions that were raised on bluefin tuna. The issue that sits behind many of them is the sustainability of this particular fishery. We have been in a bad place in the past, but there were no rules, regulations and oversight then. My personal assessment of the situation is that ICCAT has a very firm handle on the conservation status of Atlantic bluefin tuna.

As I said in opening, the issue for me personally is that we get 0.16% of the overall quota. My maths is not brilliant but, if we get 60 tonnes in round terms, and the percentage is then only 0.16%, there are many hundreds of thousands of tonnes being allocated elsewhere. This is an Atlantic fish; it is only in the Atlantic. It seems inconceivable that the UK’s involvement, in its recreational or commercial fishery, would in any way impact on the population, when we are getting 0.16% of the quota that has been allocated by an international organisation that has the welfare of the bluefin tuna at stake. That satisfies my personal position on this, and I hope it goes some way to satisfy others as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the issue of the pollock fishery. In many respects that fishery, which is governed under ICES, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, seems to be sitting almost 50 years behind the bluefin tuna. I do not know quite how we got ourselves into a position where a fish species has been designated as below a certain conservation status, and therefore we cannot take a quota from it, but we are governed by ICES and restricted by its quota. This has been much debated in the other House. I do not think there is anything I can usefully add to that, other than that it is in no one’s interests that our fishery stocks are depleted to the state that we are in today, because that causes all the hardship, aggravation and financial stress and strain that we are seeing down on the south-west coast.