Shark Fins Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I am very grateful to her for introducing this Bill in such a measured and comprehensive way. She is quite right: it is about leadership. I do not think that the importation of shark-fins is a huge issue in this country numerically. It has been a while since the “maw and gulf” of the “ravin’d salt-sea shark” was regularly used in Scottish witches’ brews, and it is not a massive issue by tonnage. However, there is a question of moral leadership and example. We think of ourselves as a small island, but we are, in fact, at the heart of a huge archipelago of overseas territories. Looking at the waters controlled by those territories when put together in the Caribbean, the south Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, it is an area about the size of India. So, if anything, we are a maritime nation and an aquatic state. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to show a commensurate sense of responsibility when it comes to the stewardship of marine life.

I will make one point. We are enabled to pass Bills of this kind because we now have our own trade policy. I know it is a point that is unpopular in this Chamber, but it is worth saying that. As happened when we unilaterally lifted all our tariffs and restrictions on Ukrainian exports, this is an opportunity for us to show leadership in the hope that our friends and allies in the European Union will follow. I am conscious of speaking between our two excellent noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who are two outstanding contributors to your Lordships’ counsels—Jones the Strike and Jones the Green, as it were. I hope my dear friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—who is a proper 30-year standing friend, and whose homemade jam is a delight to my children—will take the opportunity to acknowledge that this is something we are able to do because we are now a fully sovereign country, which is something that happens so rarely. It is precisely issues of this kind that ought to be determined through our national mechanisms and procedures.