Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Mawson Excerpts

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

[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.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long. I am encouraged by this debate. Last year I sat on the committee on regenerating coastal and seaside towns. We looked in a lot of detail at what is happening to our seaside towns—at the poverty and great difficulty they are experiencing. I am certainly not an expert on what the quotas should or should not be, but this kind of discussion is a source of encouragement, and is putting its finger on the issues and on the opportunities that may come to these towns if we push these ideas. It feels as though there is movement on getting to grips with the positive opportunities that may now result from the time we are in. I thank the Committee for this helpful discussion.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I wonder whether this question of landing obligations will need to be resolved in the fisheries negotiations during the coming “passage of arms” with the EU. I believe that there is a good deal of voluntary landing in our ports by foreign fishing vessels at the moment, and one of the reasons for that is the efficiency of the transfer from these ports to the European market. They are able to get their fish stocks to the European market from some ports very quickly—in a way that, if they had to take them back to Spain or southern France, would take much longer and probably be less efficiently organised. I do not know whether it needs compulsion, but compulsion would need to be authorised as part of the future negotiations.