Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. She set out clearly in her speech the reasoning for the amendment, and I hope it will be supported by the Minister and the whole House.

It is frustrating that the debate on fishing, fisheries policy, the number of British and foreign-owned vessels and the fish landed has been so distorted in the media. It is a matter of much regret that the debate we have had in the UK over many years is not about the reality of the situation. As we know, our demand for fish such as cod and haddock in many cases far exceeds what we could catch in our own waters and much is imported, while much of the fish we catch in our waters is exported.

My noble friend set out the timeframe and made it very clear that this is a consultation that in itself should not cause the Government any particular problems. It is reasonable to ensure that every nation is consulted, along with the interested parties in the fishing industry. The consultation sets out the landing requirement of 65%, which I think is a reasonable figure.

My noble friend set out the case for how many of our coastal communities are very deprived. I know Grimsby very well—in a previous life I worked up in north Lincolnshire—and it is an area that suffers from poor health and poor job prospects and can be very depressed. Not only is fish landed there, but there is a huge food processing industry in the town. Grimsby would certainly benefit tremendously from my noble friend’s proposal here. It is very important that we should look at that.

It is also important that we recognise that when people in these communities voted to leave the European Union, they were voting also for a dividend. They hoped there would be better job prospects in their communities, more fish would be landed and people would prosper more. If we find that this is not the case in the years ahead, I think they will feel very betrayed. They will have voted for something and not seen the dividend from it. So I hope that if the Minister does not accept my noble friend’s amendment, he will carefully set out the reasons why and will make it clear what will be the dividend for these communities in years to come. We all know that they are depressed and have many challenges. If the explanation is not to my noble friend’s satisfaction, I hope that she will test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I noted that in the earlier version of this Fisheries Bill, which came out over 18 months ago now, there was a clause early on that tried to define a UK fishing boat as one with at least one UK shareholder holding more than 5%. That seemed quite a low bar to me, but the thinking behind it was probably based on the 1970s attempt by the UK to apply an ownership limit to foreign investment in UK fishing boats of 75%. For the record, the UK lost its case in the courts because ownership caps at that time could apply only to EU ownership, not British ownership.

Nowadays, of course, the widespread and sometimes complicated international ownership of all businesses—in this case boats—creates far too tangled a web to unweave through legislation, which is probably why the words I referred to in the earlier version of the Bill were dropped. Anyway, maybe it does not matter who is investing money in our fisheries and boats, as long as they are creating the jobs in the UK. As others have said, we all know that for every one job on a boat, whoever owns it, there are 10 jobs on land in the processing, handling, transporting, marketing, selling, et cetera, of the fish.

So it was very sensible of the Government to drop the reference to the percentage of UK shareholding in a boat, but sadly they did not follow through with any sort of landing requirement. It seems that they understood the issue but, having realised that their solution would not work, failed to see that a landing requirement would achieve almost the same end but by a slightly different means.

This is an important amendment. Such a landing requirement could make a huge difference to coastal communities—and, believe me, they need this boost. Of the 25 local authorities with the highest rates of insolvency, 16 are coastal—and that was before Covid-19 came along to make matters worse.

I hope that the Government will accept this enabling amendment, or agree to bring in a similar amendment of their own. I accept that such a commitment might be dependent on Brexit negotiations, but I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some comfort in his reply and indicate that such a requirement is very much at the forefront of the Government’s mind.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, I fully support Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others. It would make it clear that fish and aquaculture activities must not compromise environmental sustainability. The Government have said that they will continue to strive for the ambitions of the relevant directives in this regard, but many are concerned that these could be weakened. That is why it is important to set this out clearly in the Bill with the amendment.

If the Minister will not accept the amendment today, will he set out how the Government will ensure that the important principles in directives such as the European marine strategy framework, the bathing water directive and the water framework directive will be taken forward and not compromised, as my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, highlighted in her speech? If they are compromised, what mechanism will there be to ensure that they are properly enforced, since we will have no access to the Court of Justice of the European Union? What mechanism is proposed by the Government?

Proposed new subsection (b) would put commitments in the Bill on economic, social and employment benefits and not overexploiting marine stocks. Again, it is important that this is clearly in the Bill because the devil will be in the detail and we must have clarity that the principles are set out without any dispute. The details will be issues such as licensing powers, catch limits and other restrictions on fishing.

As my noble friend Lord Hain set out in the previous debate, the reality of today’s British fishing industry is how much of the catch is in fact exported to the European Union and beyond, and how much of the fish we eat—cod, haddock, langoustine, salmon—is in fact imported into the UK. That has not been made clear in the debate, in the media and elsewhere over many years, much to the detriment of the debate, to the reality of the situation, and to the British fishing industry and the UK at large. The Government should aim to get this right by accepting the amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is probably my naivety, but it seems to me that Amendment 2 is one of those amendments that really should not cause the Government too much of a problem. It just subtly tells them that their first attempt at outlining a sustainability objective is good, but not quite right or strong enough. It needs to emphasise more the importance of both a short-term and a long-term healthy marine environment, full of marine life and with a healthy variety of fish stocks. More importantly, as others have said, the amendment insists that the sustainability objective must be the prime objective. That fact makes it better than the Government’s first attempt.

It is probably platitudinous to say that if you have too many objectives or priorities, you have no priorities or real objectives at all. You cannot be all things to all men. I, along with the promoters of this amendment, believe that the preservation of our fisheries and marine environment for our grandchildren should always trump even the suspicion of overexploitation today. So I hope that the Government will accept that proposed new subsection (2) is better and more explicit than theirs. In that light, I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

My Amendment 20, would, in effect, put Amendment 2 into practical application. The problem, as I am sure everyone is aware, lies in the opt-out sections of Clause 7, notably Clause 7(7)(d), and Clause 10(2). If you are allowed to opt out or alter the fisheries statement or a fisheries management plan for socioeconomic reasons, there is a danger—maybe only a small one, but it is there—that the fisheries authority will support today’s fisheries at the expense of tomorrow’s fishers. So it is important to make it clear that the sustainability objective trumps all, which is what both these amendments seek to achieve.

Experience in Scotland, which has a similar opt-out provision in the Marine (Scotland) Act, has shown that, where an opt-out exists, environmental considerations can get pushed to one side for socioeconomic reasons. As I reported in Committee, six years after—