Shark Fins Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is always fascinating to follow my noble friend Lord Hannan; as he said, we have been friends for 30 years since we met on the slopes of Mount Sinai. Of course, he had to bring Brexit into it: a failed project—so sad—even though I supported it.

When I first saw this Bill on our Order Paper, I got quite excited because I am constantly fighting the forces of growth and blindness to our climate crisis. I thought, “What a really good Bill”, because this is clearly something that no one can argue against. Then I found that no one is arguing against it. In fact, even the Government support it. What is the point, really, in my saying anything? But I will say something anyway because, for me, the whole issue of shark-fins encapsulates the human problem that we have in our relationship to our planet. There is an attitude among a vast majority of people—particularly in this House—that the planet is there for us: it is there for us to rape and pillage, to use as and when we need. As a Green, I can see that simply is not true. The majority of people think that this whole world is at our disposal—animal, vegetable, mineral—and I argue that it is our lifeline. It is our home, and we ought to be looking after it better. Humans have been around, more or less in the form that we are at the moment, for about 100,000 years. In evolutionary terms, that is like being tiny little toddlers, and our behaviour is often like toddlers; we are greedy, we grab and we do not follow common sense. We certainly do not seem to understand that earth is our support system.

Listening to the debate on the Budget last week was profoundly upsetting. There was a constant mantra that growth is good, growth is prosperity and growth is well-being. There was no understanding that you cannot carry on with growth when you have a finite planet: our resources will run out. Why should we—in a very advanced country—grab more than our share? After that debate, I also thought that it is ridiculous, and I cannot keep banging on about climate change when nobody is listening. I then saw that they were serving octopus in the restaurant and thought, “There is something I can do: I can stop them serving octopus”. They are an incredibly intelligent species and not necessarily something we need to eat. Even that is proving very difficult. There is also the possibility that we eat shark, which is a fish that often has other terms, like flake or white fish.

This Bill is clearly a brilliant Bill which is going to pass. I am slightly concerned that there is still a small gap about shark-fins that can come in if they are sustainably sourced. That is a slight problem because how are we going to know they are truly sustainable? In the meantime, it is an excellent Bill and I support it 100%.