Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Lansley

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

[Lord Lansley]

Happily, I think we are in agreement about this. There are two tiers of allocation: the determination of fishing opportunities between the national fisheries authorities and the process by which each national fisheries authority is to do its own task.

That brings me back to the point I was not able to make in a previous group for Amendment 100. However, listening to the bulk of that debate none the less persuaded me that I may, in any case, have directed my amendment at the wrong place and that Clause 25 is where it really matters. This is the point at which if we move away from historic catch levels, for example, things such as the extent to which we do—we may or may not do so, I do not know—immediately become of relevance to the British fishing boats as they are affected by it. For them, that must be the point at which they are consulted. As far as I can tell, Clause 25 and Article 17 which it amends do not say anything about any process of consultation for those affected by the allocation of fishing opportunities. It would be a good idea if they did. None the less, the purport of Amendment 100 is still an argument in relation to Clause 25. I am making the point now, but we may to return to it at a later stage.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for tabling his amendments, which address the issue of enabling new entrants to come into the sector, giving priority to the under-10 fleet. That is an issue which we will cover in our own amendments in the next group.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Worthington, explore the criteria used to allocate new fishing opportunities. They stress the importance of using transparent criteria and the economic and social contributions that the new allocations will make to local communities. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, goes one step further and identifies the need for incentives to fishers to use selective fishing gear and techniques which will reduce environmental and habitat damage. I am very grateful to her for her considerable efforts in rewriting Clause 25, which clearly is flawed and inadequate in its current form. We all feel that she has done a sterling job in having a go at that, although as this process goes on we are all discovering that it is not as easy as it first appears.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his efforts to add his list of improvements that could be made in that clause. In that melting pot, we have enormous agreement for all the arguments being put. These are important principles; we spoke about many of them at Second Reading. We must just find the right place for them in the Bill. We are still struggling with what the Bill’s final architecture should look like.

All noble Lords who have spoken are keen for this Bill to create a fairer distribution of quotas. That is what is needed if we are truly to regenerate our coastal communities. It follows from the debate that we had earlier in this Bill about the principle that our fishing stocks are the property of the nation rather than a select few individuals. The point has been echoed today. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that we should recognise that the current system of quota allocation is broken; I agree. Half the English quota is held by companies based overseas, the small-scale fleet holds only 6% of the quota, and the five largest quota-holders control more than a third of the UK fishing quota. We can all see what is wrong with that. These disparities did not happen overnight. They have historic roots which may not easily be dismantled, but this should not stop us from aspiring to deliver a more fundamental change; we could use the Bill as a vehicle for it.

A number of noble Lords are, like me, still unclear about the extent to which the new licensing regime will enable action to be taken on the ownership of the existing UK quotas. In his letter of 25 February, the Minister makes it clear that the Government do not intend to alter the allocation methodology for existing quota, but as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, what does this mean in practice? For example, will we ever be in a position to challenge the overseas ownership of some of our quotas, even if they are not seen to operate in the national interest? Can we reset the dial on who owns what? Is this something that could be covered in the trade negotiations? It would be helpful if the Minister could clarify some of this.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, was anxious to be clear on the sequencing and the processes for landing many of these issues. We are all trying to find the sequencing and the processes. I know that we are just talking of principles at this level so I will not go into enormous detail, but he felt that it was set out in Clause 23 but now we are discovering that it is not Clause 23. We are chasing the holy grail and will carry on doing so. Clearly the new quota allocations provide an opportunity for change. We can and should use this Bill to lay down a more equitable system for distributing them in the future.

We remain concerned about how quota auctions could work in the future. In his letter, the Minister says that it is not intended for an auction scheme to be used to sell fishing opportunities exclusively based on price. I hope that they would not be based on price; this would perpetuate the discredited schemes that we have already, and there would be no real benefits from leaving the common fisheries policy.

We have amendments in a later group about the need to boost the small-scale fleet. Our aim would be to redistribute the new quotas proportionately in favour of the under-10-metre fleet, the backbone of our coastal communities and ports. We will set out the arguments when we come to that group. In the meantime, we support the general principle of broadening quota ownership and rewarding those vessel owners who demonstrate good practice and a commitment to our sustainability objectives. We therefore support these amendments.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Lansley

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, we have five amendments in this group: Amendments 20, 21, 77, 80 and 84. First, a number of noble Lords have sought to amend and clarify the definition of “national benefit” in different ways. The fact that different Peers have tried to do that shows that this is open to a huge range of interpretations. It is a rather vague, catch-all phrase so it is right that we should probe it; it needs further clarification. It is also important that we return to our earlier discussion. If the phrase is too vague, it could be used to override some of the other important objectives that could be subsumed under it. So it is important that we understand exactly what it means, and that it holds its place proportionately with all the other objectives; it is clearly better defined by that.

I think we are all still struggling with those objectives. We identified at the beginning of the debate that eight—or however many there are—is too many, and asked how we rank them and so on. The vaguer they are, the more difficult any of that ranking will be. The phrase “national benefit” is so vague; we need to do a bit more work on the phrase itself but also on how to interpret and define it. We need to bottom out that discussion; maybe the Minister can help us a bit more with that.

Our Amendment 20 has a simple intent: it seeks to ensure that foreign vessels fishing in our waters should have the same obligation to respect the national benefit—however we define it—as required of the UK fleet. This should be the basis on which licences are granted. We believe it is a straightforward and uncontroversial amendment; we hope that noble Lords will agree.

Amendments 21, 77, 80 and 84 raise a very different issue—some of these amendments have been grouped rather oddly, but I shall address them as they have been set out—which is the concept of a national landing obligation. We believe this is vital to ensuring the long-term health of our coastal fishing fleets and communities. This is spelled out in detail in Amendment 84, where we specify that all licensed boats should be subject to the national landing requirement to land a percentage of their boat’s catch at a port in the UK. Our proposal is that the percentage of the catch should be set at 70%, rather than the noble Lord’s 75%, unless the Secretary of State determines otherwise and sets out his reasons, but we could discuss trading that figure.

This is an important principle and we set out our argument for it at Second Reading: a requirement to land at UK ports could herald the renaissance of our coastal communities, which is long overdue. While the numbers vary according to the type of fisher, we know that for every job created at sea many more are created on land as a result of the need for landing, processing and onward transportation, for example. It is estimated that about 10 times as many jobs are created on land as at sea, and currently many of those jobs are going to other EU ports. Meanwhile coastal communities currently have higher rates of unemployment and lower wages. They have the additional challenges of a drain of young people, social isolation and poor health. A policy based on a national landing requirement would provide more local jobs for local people and would save fishers having to travel hundreds of miles in search of a fair price for their catch because then, we hope, the market would come to them rather than them having to chase the markets overseas.

If we were to introduce a minimum landing requirement for fish caught in our waters, that would provide a level of certainty for the sector that historically has been lacking. That in turn would, we hope, facilitate investment and innovation, which could help with other matters such as decarbonisation and, as I say, would bring local regeneration based on good environmental principles. I hope noble Lords will see the sense of this argument and support the amendments.

Amendment 78, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which he has just eloquently described, also deals with the requirement to land a proportion in UK ports. He has an exception for landing in distant-water fisheries, which I think we accept; you can take the principle that we are suggesting only so far, so there is merit in that. That is also an issue that we have covered in our Amendment 90. We need more clarification on it but I think we are all fishing in the same water around those principles.

We also welcome the tabling of Amendment 18 by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. It would bring other forms of fishing, such as recreational fishing, into the scope of the national benefit objective. Again, this underlines the fact that the phrase is very vague and therefore you could tack all sorts of things on to it. However, we support the principle. We have other amendments that spell out in more detail the importance of recreational fishing. Perhaps it could be better sited elsewhere but it is an important principle and we are happy to find the appropriate place to put that wording for the future. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, if my noble friend will forgive me, I want to interject for a short moment, not about the definition of the national benefit objective but on the second part of this group of amendments, relating to a landing requirement. It struck me as a useful debate to have in Committee. For a start, it allows us to expose the question of whether Ministers want to be in the position to impose any kind of landing requirement under any circumstances.

Personally, I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, say that setting a landing requirement for foreign boats in UK waters would simply lead to the imposition of the same requirement on British boats in other waters, and I am not sure that is where we want to end up. I am glad that both speakers from Labour and the Liberal Democrats have endorsed the view that this should apply only to fishing in our exclusive economic zone; it would need not to apply, or to be able to be exempted, for distant-waters fishing. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for saying that to set 70% or 75% in primary legislation would make no sense whatever. Putting that to one side—and saying that therefore the amendments do not work—it raises a very interesting question: does the Bill, under any circumstances, allow fishing authorities in the United Kingdom to set any kind of landing requirement? I do not know the answer; I cannot find it anywhere. I wonder whether it is thought potentially never to be necessary under any circumstances. It seems to me that there is a potential mischief involved in the ownership and use of quota, which could be remedied either through the allocation of quotas or through a landing requirement. I am not sure that Ministers have told us whether under any circumstances they would use the former and never the latter. That is an interesting question.