Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

I am conscious that I am going to run out of time but, in short, I hope that the Government will accept this amendment. It would enable the commissioners south of the border and in Northern Ireland to be able to deliver and avoid the problems and mistakes made by the commissioners in Scotland, and to play their part in moving us away from open-cage salmon farming. It is a chance to take responsibility for protecting the seabed and the wild fish for future generations—something for the Crown to be proud of. I beg to move.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Forsyth and have signed Amendment 37. We have now got to the stage of the debate where this amendment has been grouped with Amendments 37F and 37G from my noble friends Lord Leicester and Lord Douglas-Miller.

This is a really interesting debate, because much of what this involves is in Scotland. Of course, there are aspects of this which are devolved. It might be tempting for the Minister to say that it is nothing to do with him, but I think that would be unwise and unhelpful. I hope that the Minister is not tempted to do that, because Clause 3(1) states:

“This Act extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.


It would be helpful to know what discussions, if any, have taken place between the Minister’s department and Scotland Office Ministers about the kinds of issues that have been raised so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I say “eloquently” but I mean vividly as well and, in some cases, very movingly, too.

I am not one of those who has always been implacably opposed to salmon farms around Scotland. What I very much oppose is what my noble friend described and has described in his amendment as lowering “environmental impact” and lowering “animal welfare standards”. It must be in all our interests to ensure that these salmon farms, which provide so much economic activity in relatively marginal areas, should also be run in such a way that we can all be proud of what they are doing.

I look forward particularly to the speech on aquaculture that my noble friend Lord Douglas-Miller will make in a few moments, and that of my noble friend Lord Leicester on offshore energy installations and generation. In the meantime, I do not know whether the Minister will be able to accept my noble friend’s amendment—it would be great if he could—but what I suspect is more likely, and what I would like him to do, is to give a very positive encouragement to this amendment so that perhaps at a later stage the Government might come forward with their own amendment to put right what is clearly a wrong.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I was unable to speak at Second Reading, but I am supportive of the Bill’s objective to enable the Crown Estate to continue to fulfil its core duty of maintaining and enhancing its value.

Amendment 37, as introduced so powerfully by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and to which I have added my name, is a massive improvement to the Bill. I also agree with what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said in his impressive speech. I suspect that the main purpose of the Bill in the minds of its drafters was to ensure that the Crown Estate should continue to focus on activities which align with wider national needs, including energy security and sustainable economic growth, as the Explanatory Notes make clear. Indeed, the Bill specifically mentions its role as an enabler of offshore wind power generation.

Offshore wind power generation has a part to play in our energy mix, but it may receive too much emphasis as most offshore wind projects produce electricity too far away from where it is needed, and the costs of transmission and storage are often opaque. I would like to see more emphasis on small and so-called advanced nuclear reactors, which can be sited adjacent to data centres and industrial clusters where the energy is actually needed.

It would appear that the Government have introduced this legislation with only one major objective: to encourage and enable the Crown Estate to build more offshore wind farms. This is also evidenced by the announcement of the partnership with Great British Energy. I look forward to learning more about how GBE will operate; there are still relatively few details available. However, it is important in legislating to increase commercial activity in the seabed around our shores that restrictions must be placed on the development of salmon farms in England and Wales, especially given the damaging effects on nature and the environment resulting from salmon farms operated in coastal waters and sea lochs in Scotland. I declare an interest in that I fish in England on the River Tamar, as well as on the Rivers Laggan and Sorn on the Scottish island of Islay. We do not want to see the depleted populations of salmon migrating to English and Welsh rivers exposed to the additional threats posed by salmon farms.

Just over a month ago, my noble friend Lord Forsyth asked in Grand Committee what steps the Government were taking to protect wild salmon populations. I confess to having been underwhelmed by the reply to the debate given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, especially on two points: the need to monitor more strictly the harmful activities of some salmon farms, and the quite ridiculous restrictions placed on river-keepers’ ability to control stocks of predators such as cormorants. She noted that some predators are themselves protected so we had to be

“careful about how and when such predators can be managed”.—[Official Report, 12/9/24; cols. GC 170-171.]

I think that the noble Baroness is unaware that the cormorant population has increased from some 2,000 in the 1980s to over 62,000 today. Each bird requires over a pound of fish a day; why are they still protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981? Why does the EU still protect them under the birds directive? Does the Minister know how many gamekeepers are employed by the Crown Estate and how many cormorants they are licensed to shoot each year?

In replying to the debate last month, the noble Baroness the Minister said that the Government recognised the need for higher standards to be maintained in fish farms. The problems of excessive sea lice escaping fish possessing a very different genetic make-up and a very different DNA construct compared with indigenous fish were raised by several noble Lords in that debate, and spoken to especially powerfully by my noble friend Lord Forsyth just now. What discussions has the Minister had with the Crown Estate about fish farms and about moving to more sustainable methods of farming salmon, especially land-based farms, which are completely isolated from the endangered wild salmon population? As my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Strathclyde have already said, this amendment would very much improve the Bill.

It is fortunate that, until now, English river systems have been, I believe, free of open-net fish farms, but I worry that the encouragement, implicit in the Bill, for the Crown Estate to increase commercial activity might change that—and I believe that this amendment is therefore absolutely necessary. I hope that the Minister will accept it.