Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Teverson Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

17: Clause 1, page 2, line 24, leave out subsection (7)

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I suspect that this amendment will not take up a lot of the Committee’s time. I want to understand what the equal access objective is trying to do and what its implications are. The objective says that

“the location of the fishing boat’s home port, or … any other connection of the fishing boat, or any of its owners, to any place in the United Kingdom”

does not affect their rights. If I read that objective as a local fisher—perhaps in Mevagissey, the nearest port to me, or in a smaller fishery down further west, let alone those along the south coast—I would be concerned that any decision by government to allocate anything at all could be challenged by a larger fleet, or by someone from further round the coast, and could disrupt or exploit a well-managed local fishery. I understand entirely that the last thing we want to do is compartmentalise the United Kingdom in any way, and I think the system works fairly well as it is at the moment. This is the one area where perhaps I would like to keep the status quo, rather than introduce this objective.

My concern is that this makes local fisheries susceptible to challenge when it comes to fishing rights and their ability to look after particular stocks or to get Marine Society accreditation. This is a threat. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister why the Government want to do this and why I should not fear the consequences for the lesser fleets in the United Kingdom. There is also a slight risk that this might encourage further consolidation of the market. We already have market concentration and it concerns me that those are the fleets with the money, capacity and ability to buy or to trade fishing rights, so this is an area of susceptibility.

When I first got involved in fisheries in the 1990s, I used to talk regularly to fishing organisations down in the far south-west. Publicly, there was always a concern about the Spanish fleets. Whenever you put a microphone or camera in front of someone, they were the big threat. If you talked to them otherwise, it was the Scots who came down and took everything out of the water when they had nothing better to do north of the border. I am not for a minute saying that is the case today, but I have a real concern here and I would be very interested to hear from the Minister why I should not be so afraid. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might add a question to this. To understand what the equal access objective is about, one should look at Clause 17 of the Bill. If a Scottish fisheries authority were to grant a licence to a non-UK fishing boat under the new regime, that would be a licence to fish in Scottish waters. Both this current objective and, indeed, the related amendment on the determination of fishing opportunities say that, when a ship is licensed, or when fishing opportunities are allotted, this cannot be done to British boats on the basis of where they come from. If I understand correctly—I put this simply because I am sure the Minister will put us both right when we have presented our questions—the object of the equal access objective is to make sure that, when the administrations put forward their joint fisheries statement, they must do so on the basis that a British fishing boat can go anywhere in British fishing waters. That seems a desirable objective because otherwise we could well end up with not British fishing waters but entirely separate Scottish, Welsh or English fishing waters. I do not regard that as the objective we are seeking, so to that extent, I rather like keeping the equal access objective and I would not see it removed from the Bill.

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[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I will avail myself of receiving some information and let everyone in this debate know. Clearly, it is a devolved matter and therefore all three devolved Administrations and the UK Government will make those considerations. That is why I mentioned in particular the English quota management rules. These are matters of responsibility for the devolved Administrations and ourselves in terms of quota. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Teverson]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his question because even if we use the traditional ICES areas, those do not reflect the boundaries between the devolved nations. It is an interesting question.

I thank the Minister for his explanation. I feel reassured by that. If it does not relate to quotas and refers only to vessels steaming around in circles doing nothing at all, who can complain? However, it does not seem to be much of an objective if that is the case. On that basis, I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 17 withdrawn.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 19 is trying to deal with the same matter, but it attempts to use the activities of fishing fleets to bring

“social, economic and employment benefits to the United Kingdom or any part”.

In other words, it is intended that the activities of fishing boats should not merely benefit the fisheries, but also the rest of the United Kingdom, and in particular produce social, economic and employment benefits. One can see that this is a bit wider than the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, but it is just a question of what precisely this “national benefit objective” is aiming at.

I think it does not aim at benefiting the fishing industry itself, but at benefiting others through the activities of the fishing industry. Paragraph (b) of my proposed new subsection, which contains a reference to fish and aqua- culture activities, manages to achieve the same sort of thing. In other words, in both cases the activities of the boats and the management of the fleets are supposed to bring these general social, economic and employment benefits to the United Kingdom and parts of it.

The issues in this amendment were brought to my attention by the national authority, or corporation, of the fishing fleets of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish people are somewhat separately represented, and it is not altogether surprising that their attitude is that the Bill is pretty good and perhaps the best thing to do is to leave it alone. It may be that they have ideas about the present situation, and the way in which the Bill is constructed is, from their point of view, very acceptable.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 78, which is in a similar vein around national benefit. It is quite clear, certainly in the south-west, that if all the fishing vessels with British flags actually landed their catch—or a major proportion of it—in their home port, the number of landings in the UK and the viability of those ports would be hugely increased. Of course, we have here the issue of what used to be called “quota hoppers”, around which everything has gone staggeringly quiet during the Brexit negotiations and the formulation of the Bill.

As we know, a little under half of the English—not Scottish—quota is effectively owned by Dutch, Spanish or Icelandic interests. Grimsby, which I think used to be the world’s or Europe’s largest fishing port, now has a very important fish processing industry, but hardly any activity in terms of landings. Most of the quota there is effectively owned by Dutch vessels that land in Holland.

So, we have a question: how do we change that? The Bill does nothing to change this area. In a way, it suits the fishing industry establishment to keep things as they are, because those are the members. Whether vessels are English or foreign-owned, those are the members of the fishing organisations. That is why, in Amendment 78, I have used the scientifically calculated number of 75%, which came out at the end of my spreadsheet, to suggest what proportion of fish should be landed by English-flagged—or British-flagged, depending on how we want to define the devolution thing—vessels. It is a probing amendment, but only in the sense that something needs to be done in this area. Very few other EU member states have allowed the foreign ownership of quota in the way that we have. We decided to do that. We are where we are, but we need to make sure there is a national benefit; I assume that is why this objective is here.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps I may intervene on the noble and learned Lord. We should not forget that we are talking about British boats in British waters—it is not about foreign vessels. Sorry, I will sound like Michael Gove or the Prime Minister, but this has nothing to do with the European Union or the Commission: it is purely a British decision, apart from foreign vessels and where they have to land. That is why we have raised the issue.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I can see that, if it is restricted to British vessels, it is perfectly within the powers of this Parliament, but I am not at all clear that it would be right to impose that kind of obligation on British vessels without attempting to encourage foreign vessels to do the same. As I mentioned at Second Reading, something like this is already happening, and in pretty small ports—though they have a large amount of traffic, usually overnight, when refrigerated vehicles go straight to Europe and arrive quickly at their markets, which are pretty hungry for the result.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I repeat what I said: work is already being undertaken on this by the Government and the devolved Administrations. It is work in progress, but that is the right route, particularly as these are devolved matters and that is important. The Government want to find ways: although we must and do respect the devolution settlement, there are many respects where we have been seeking to work together and why we are legislating on behalf of all four parts of the United Kingdom on this matter. It is the case that we are acting in concert with the devolved Administrations. We are very mindful that many of these areas are devolved, but we think that in the interests of simplicity and straightforwardness there are many areas where we would like to have a single focus, as it were.

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps I can be helpful to the Minister, in that the whole area of foreign ownership of British-flagged vessels is an English issue, and I am sure that we can solve it in that way and help the Minister get this into the Bill. It is an English, not a Scottish, problem. That is one thing we can do. The other thing is that, on the under-10 fleet redistribution of quota, of course the big promise of the Government is that the pie is going to increase anyway, so there will be plenty for the under-10 fleet. If the Government’s promises, in terms of taking back control and getting rid of relative stability, is what we manage to achieve, then that should not be a problem.

What I particularly want to do at this stage is to go through a thought experiment with the Minister. Taking the point that it is the Government’s objective, quite rightly, post Brexit to have a much larger pie—because the fish stocks are within our EEZ and we will have this whole idea of zonal attachment—we will have much larger fishing opportunities for the fleet as a whole. So, with that bigger pie, are we going to allow the foreign-owned British companies with British-flagged vessels to take even more quota than they have now, or have the Government got a cunning plan to make sure that this expanded quota stays and resides more with real British fishing fleets? I would be very interested to hear the Government’s answer.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

For tonight, I will say that these are matters under active consideration. We take the point that there is scope for additional quota to benefit coastal communities. I am not in a position to give precise details because this is under active consideration, but the noble Lord has absolutely hit on the point that this is about additional opportunities. The Government are working on and considering how best we fulfil that in a way which benefits coastal communities. That, as with a number of other aspects, is work in hand.

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[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 125 in my name, also in this group. I also lend my support to the two amendments spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. This is very welcome. I start by being positive about the climate change objective being added to the list of 12—or however many we have now. It is good to see it there. As I stated earlier, there really is no business as usual anymore. Climate change impacts are upon us and we are living through an age of consequences. This will permeate all the discussions around fishing policy that we bring on the back of the Bill. Fishing quotas will change, the availability of fish stocks will change and the resilience of the natural environment will be increasingly affected and diminished, so it is incredibly important that we take this seriously.

The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, rightly goes to the heart of the definition here. It seems a little lacking in ambition and specificity, as stated in the Bill, which refers to

“the adverse effects of fishing and aquaculture minimised”.

What does “minimised” mean when, really, they should be eliminated? In fact, any economic activity now taking place specifically within the natural environment should not just seek to have zero emissions, it should be seeking to be a positive sink. We will have to use policies and the framework for managing the natural world to ensure that we are not just reducing our outputs, but seeking to enhance the ability of the natural world to absorb carbon dioxide.

That has to be an aim because we have left it so late. We are about 20 years behind where we should be in reducing emissions on a global level, so the challenge now will be that of eliminating emissions in a decade. Thereafter it will be about soaking out the greenhouse gases that have been emitted. The oceans and the marine environment are a huge component of that, so we should be ambitious. I think that the bare minimum should be to achieve net zero, not simply minimising adverse effects and adapting to climate change.

My third point is about accepting that we may have to implement the precautionary principle, which states that for the period we are in, where there is so much uncertainty, we will be allocating below scientifically determined maximum sustainable yields because of the risk of climate change that overlays everything. We might have to get used to allocating quota on a very precautionary basis because we are entering uncharted waters, if I may be excused the pun.

I turn to my Amendment 125. Amendments that seek consultation always feel a bit redundant in primary legislation, but my point is that, under the powers granted under the Climate Change Act 2008, we have the ability to introduce a policy. Before any activity that causes a net contribution to greenhouse gases, we can simply consult and then use secondary legislation to introduce that policy. If the Government were minded to get going on achieving the net zero target, simply asking for public consultation would be the trigger to introducing secondary legislation to bring in very targeted, market-based policies to encourage investment in low-carbon activities. The Government now have the opportunity to consult on how we can best make this sector carbon neutral and use the powers that already exist to bring in those policies; hence the quest for a public consultation.

It is worth stating that, at the moment, the fishing industry has an effect on climate change in a number of ways. It is not just about how vessels are propelled or the energy choices made by processing plants, it is also about how the degradation of the natural environment can release greenhouse gases. Trawling activities, for example, can disturb the sediment at the bottom of the ocean, which releases otherwise stored carbon. There are plenty of examples and reasons why one would want the sector to take this issue seriously.

This is an opportunity to do something really positive. We must think about the provision of licences to cover the activities that take place in this environment with a positive vision that will create jobs and allow activities to be carried out in the natural world that will help us as we seek to combat climate change. There is no reason why fisheries cannot be part of that process. There are particular types of fish stocks and particular ways of fishing that can lock carbon up while low-impact aquaculture can make a net-positive contribution to our carbon budgets. I hope this is not seen as an imposition; rather, it should be seen as an opportunity.

Again, to finish on a positive note, seeing this objective included is very welcome. I happen to be in the camp of thinking that sustainability is the primary objective, so this climate objective is integral to that. However, we need to see a little more action and commitment to some of the specifics of what making this a primary objective would really mean for how we manage our fisheries. I am glad to have had the opportunity to discuss these amendments.

[Lord Teverson]

I put my name on the amendment and am pleased to welcome it. One message from the climate change committee was that we cannot do decarbonisation and net zero sequentially; we have to do it all at the one time. That must include this industry.

My only word of caution is that fish oil is used as an energy source on some occasions, and could be described as renewable. It is used as biodiesel, like fishmeal. That should be excluded completely. We do not do that in this country, but I have a feeling the Danes have occasionally done it before.

Fishery Protection Squadron

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

As I said in my first reply, co-ordination and collaboration with all the devolved Administrations—indeed, the four fisheries administrations —is absolutely key. Marine Scotland is represented on JMOC. In addition to the three vessels referred to by the noble Earl, it has two aeroplanes for aerial surveillance. The point is that there is collaboration with all four fisheries administrations to ensure that all UK waters are better protected.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that fishing vessels are very sophisticated nowadays? They know when a large, grey naval vessel is about to go over the horizon, so surely, exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, we must put more investment into electronic surveillance—aerial surveillance and satellite surveillance. We must also ensure that all vessels fishing in UK waters are on an equal footing, and that all comply.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

This issue goes back to the very essence of sustainability and the reason why we need to do this. Heightened surveillance is in the long-term interests of the fishing fleets—for all vessels, whether they are foreign and subject to negotiation, or our own. It is about ensuring that sustainable stocks are in our waters and are fished properly. That is why, as I outlined, we have the electronic reporting and data system, the vessel monitoring system and even more innovative technologies to complement what we already have. This issue is really important.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Teverson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, one thing that I have come to learn about fisheries is that, the more you learn about it, the more you do not understand it. It is absolutely true; if there is one sector where the more you know, the more you do not know, this is it. Following on from that, it is very easy for us, quite rightly, to criticise the common fisheries policy—I have been one of its fundamental critics in the past—but no fisheries policy is perfect. Nowhere in the world can you find a perfect fisheries regime.

The closest I have ever got to seeing one was in New Zealand, which is seen as having one of the most successful systems that works well for producers as well as conservation. It has complete control of its continental shelf, which helps, but strangely enough its industry is totally concentrated. In fact, we would find it completely unacceptable in this country because there are no fishing coves with small boats; it is dominated by large vessels with tradeable quotas that everybody bids for annually or triennially—I cannot remember which. Because of that, those few boats can be controlled very strongly by the authorities, and it is in the interests of the three or four producers not to keep an eye on each other—and the problem, actually, is recreational fisheries, which I am pleased to say come under this Bill.

That model is absolutely inappropriate for the United Kingdom, but we should not forget that we have a very disparate industry here. Some in the industry make a shedload of money in this country. We all think of these sectors—which I know in Cornwall and others will know on the west coast of Scotland, the east coast of England and, I suspect, Northern Ireland—where fisheries are a really hard living. However, the big companies make a lot of money, so we should not think too sentimentally about a large proportion of this industry in terms of money and volume. Good luck to them; I am not against that, but there are certain things which come from that. We think of fisheries in terms of the products we eat for our supper or have with chips, but the shellfish industry is also incredibly important to the UK—going out with pots and all those other things are important as well. It is a very varied industry.

Scotland is very different from England as well. I was slightly surprised by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, who I think said that the Shetlands lands more fish than the whole of England. I may be wrong, but I think Peterhead is the largest fishing port in the UK by far, followed by Fraserburgh, then Lerwick and Scrabster. However, Newlyn and Brixham are not far behind, certainly compared to Lerwick, but they are very different industries looking at different things.

We on these Benches are looking for four principles in this Bill. The key one is sustainability. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said that that must be defined better, and I accept that entirely. The amendments I have been thinking about do not do so sufficiently, so I look forward to his intervention.

The second principle is looking at how the inshore fleet—particularly the fleets with boats under 10 metres—are dealt with. Exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, ironically it was completely in our power to give that sector as much of our total quota as we wanted. To give George Eustice, the Fisheries Minister, his due, he started to reallocate some of that quota to the under 10 metre or inland fleet over the last couple of years. That is an important area.

Another important issue for these Benches, which I do not think has been mentioned, is transparency. This is a national resource, yet there is little transparency about how quota is divided up and who owns what among the producer organisations. We talk about statistics of foreign-owned British flag vessels, but no one has an exact percentage of what quota they have. Much of this area is not easily understood, and we would like to see a dose of transparency about the industry—this is not to threaten commercial confidences in any way, but we need to understand how a lot of these mechanisms work. There is an incumbency at the moment; it is not necessarily just for the future.

The final principle for us, coming back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said, is that we should never forget that this is a national resource. We are talking about the UK taking back control; this should be a resource that is nationally ours as citizens. We should take care over how it is distributed and looked after.

I will go through a couple of things in the Bill. To come back to something said very well by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, the objectives at the beginning of this Bill are seriously muddled. There is the sustainability objective, yet most of that is about a socioeconomic objective. I would not be averse to maybe having a separate socioeconomic objective. The sustainability objective must be the prime objective among all the others. We have confusion with eight, potentially nine, objectives, and that is almost impossible. Organisations such as Ofgem in the energy area have a number of objectives that can become confused. We need to indicate which objectives are the most important and which are not. The sustainability objective needs to stand by itself and the rest should be shifted elsewhere.

The socioeconomic aspect is important, but there are other ways to solve that issue other than going for short-term non-sustainability. We can fund fleets—the EU does that—and there are ways in which we can finance people not to fish, if necessary, to protect our national resource. It would not be perfect, but it is a way in which to do it. There have been decommissioning schemes in the past, and one of the main reasons why all fleets have reduced in size is nothing to do with the common fisheries policy specifically but because we are much more efficient in how we operate our fishing vessels. Of course we are. They innovate with larger vessels, larger nets, bigger engines and all the technology that allows them to fish more intelligently. Therefore, fleet sizes are going to come down. The biggest example of that was when sail was replaced by steam. The whole of the south-west fishing fleet halved in a matter of years. It is around technology.

The objective on equal access also concerns me. It sounds reasonable and means effectively that wherever vessels are registered—in Scotland, Wales, England or at a particular port—they can fish where they want. That is my understanding. My concern is because the industry is highly concentrated and wants to concentrate more. It has large returns and big financial resources. The Bill proposes a method by which quotas can be auctioned, tendered or used, but what is to stop additional concentration and for those vessels to come to other parts of the UK and start to take away other stocks that are relied on by other regions? I can imagine a situation whereby there was an auction for a quota in the south-west and Scottish vessel owners said, “Yes, we will try to buy that up”, but the Government said, “No, we want that for the south-west”. Given the current objective, I would say that that situation would be a matter for judicial review and the Government would lose. I am concerned that having a stated objective would be a potential threat to other regions that the mobility is no good for. However, I am not trying to stop that mobility because, in Plymouth, Scottish vessels are important for a lot of the fish processing. I am just concerned about having equal access as an objective.

Another issue in the Bill is the stock management plans, which, as proposed, are a fiction. As we know, some 80% of our precious stocks swim outside our EEZ, and quite a few of the spawning grounds for those stocks are also outside it. It is therefore impossible to have a credible fisheries plan—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned this—just for one’s own territorial waters. That does not work around the United Kingdom. I should be interested to hear from the Minister what will happen to what has been the relatively successful regional management of the common fisheries policy, with agreements on regimes for the North Sea and the western waters. Will we try to continue those? We must try to make them work first before we go down the route of national plans, which need to be produced as a result of the overall plans in those fishery areas. Otherwise, the national plans cannot work and I do not see that sequence provided for in the Bill.

Another issue is data, which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. There must be more transparency within producer organisations. They effectively run the business and sort out quota, which has huge value, but they are pretty opaque organisations. There should be a public duty to have much more transparency in their actions, allocations and how they are run. A lot of that is there to some degree already, but it would be a lot healthier for what is a national resource if there was more transparency.

I am delighted that the landing obligation remains in the Bill and that the Government still see it as important. However, as has been said in previous debates and mentioned by a number of Members, if the landing obligation is to remain, we must have remote electronic monitoring. One cannot have non-discarding regimes that work without it. That obviously needs to apply also to foreign vessels that come into our waters. As has been stated by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, there also must be a way in which we can access the data from foreign vessels that land abroad in order to have joint management.

The Bill is necessary. The marine environment is under pressure. Fisheries must become sustainable, not just in the long term but in the short term—and that is possible. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who is a valuable member of the committee that looked at this area, was right to say that maximum sustainable yield may not be the right measure and is something that must be looked at. That area gets complicated.

The Bill is needed, but we must put that painting that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, talked about into the picture frame before the legislation leaves this House. Understandably, a lot of downstream regulation in terms of technical measures and so on has to be done by secondary legislation. However, we have to get the Bill right. I am not sure about banning foreign landings by UK vessels. I have talked to the industry about that and it takes away part of their commercial ability. Now that we will have the friction of phytosanitary controls on land borders—although they will still be in operation at ports—such a ban would make it even more difficult to keep our markets open in the European Union. It is an interesting concept, however.

The Bill is important. We agree on a number of areas, particularly on the landing obligations and on getting the objectives right, and we very much look forward to Committee.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard)
Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I confess to having a roughly 4 acre field for which I get no subsidy whatever, except for an electricity pole for which I get about £200 a year—maybe less than that. I am also a co-chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership.

I will approach this in a slightly different way. I support this Bill, which is a sort of sticking plaster between now and 12 months’ time. It is quite delicious to me, in a way, to see the Conservative Front Bench going out strongly for state aid for a particular sector—something that normally the Conservative Party would not necessarily associate itself with. I know that this is a money Bill, so we will, quite rightly, not have much influence over it, as it is the other end’s business. We say that perhaps rather glibly as the Bill goes through, but this is big bucks—it is a lot of money. We put state aid into this industry of between £3 billion and £4 billion a year. That is quite a bit of money. In fact, if you look at it per household in the United Kingdom, every household contributes about £120 to the agricultural industry. That is just a little less than the TV licence fee, for instance. I guess that the 1.6 million people who use food banks might find it quite ironic that, on average, as a household they also pay £120 towards the food production sector in this country. That may well be necessary, and I will not argue against it here, but we should be aware of that, because that money can be used for other things as well, and increasingly will be, we are promised, over the next eight years.

I must admit that I am particularly impressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, who has somehow managed to persuade the Treasury, almost it seems without any argument, to add about a quarter of a billion pounds to this. That is excellent—perhaps we could find a way to do that with other sectors. I would like to have a masterclass from him afterwards on how he managed to achieve that.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, in his excellent speech, talked about trying to get more certainty in this area. In fact, he mentioned that one good thing about the common agricultural policy, with all its faults, was that there was predictability. However, I should remind the House that, at the moment, the EU Commission is going through a major reform of the common agricultural policy which is in fact so fundamental that it has had to postpone it for one year. That has two strands: one is semi-renationalisation of agricultural policy, and the other is that some 25% of the EU budget, of which agriculture is a major part, will be dedicated to the climate change challenge. Ironically, therefore, even if we had stayed in the European Union, which clearly we will not, some of these issues regarding our agricultural sector would have come anyway, and maybe the Government could have come up with some of the same solutions that they are coming up with now. However, I am concerned that that uncertainty will be extended over some seven years—in fact you have to add this year on as well, so there will be eight years of transition to the next form of final implementation of the new system regarding payments for public good.

Actually, I want to praise Michael Gove as Secretary of State in Defra for changing the agenda here in a forthright, brave and courageous way to make a radical change in how this works. I regret that he will no longer be the custodian of the 25-year environmental plan, of which this effectively is a key part, because there is public expenditure here on a big scale, and a way to do it.

I was quite surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, did not mention that we have a biodiversity crisis in this country at the moment. If you look at the State of Nature 2019 report, which came out at the end of last year, you will see a list of all the species, particularly in rural areas, which are heavily challenged and the numbers of which have decreased since 1970. That is urgent, yet we have an eight-year transition period until we put in a scheme that has some hope of reversing that biodiversity challenge. I say to the Minister that, both on getting more certainty for the sector, as the noble Earl said, and on our environmental challenges, surely we can start to make that transition shorter. We had a debate on the landing obligation for fisheries—the Minister did not answer it, but he was there—and, although that was a European and partly British issue, we know that you tend to wait for deadlines to happen before you get round to doing something about them. I think that eight years is too lazy; it risks leaving those major reforms to the last few years, which to a large degree it already does. So let us bring it forward.

Of course, the real challenge to the sector is not this one. The destabilising factor is not the funding mechanism; it is international trade. Let us be under no misapprehension whatever that, with the United States, with Canada—which has refused to do a rollover deal with the United Kingdom on its EU agreement—with South America and with Australasia, the key asks for those trade deals will be on agricultural entry to the UK market. How that is done is down to how good we are at negotiating as a country with those other nations. I hope and pray that we will be very good at doing that, but the uncertainty about those trade deals, how they will be interpreted and who has power—that power equation—will be unknown for some time.

I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. As he is probably aware, in the Northern Ireland protocol under the withdrawal agreement, Article 11 states—clearly for once; it is a pretty unclear document otherwise—

“consistent with the arrangements set out in Articles 5 to 10, and in … respect of Union law”—

that is, European Union law—

“this Protocol shall be implemented and applied so as to maintain the necessary conditions for continued North-South cooperation, including in the areas of environment, health, agriculture”.

Under the state aid provision in Article 10, it states:

“The provisions of Union law”—


that is, again, European law—

“listed in Annex 5 to this Protocol shall apply to the United Kingdom, including with regard to measures supporting the production of and trade in agricultural products in Northern Ireland”.

Will this and future state aid to the agricultural sector be constrained by that Northern Ireland protocol?

My other question is this. Previous speakers have mentioned the Rural Payments Agency. The RPA has done a lot better on Pillar 1 payments. We are never confident about it, given its history, but what concerns me is that, as my noble friend Lady Bakewell pointed out very well, the current delay relates to Pillar 2. Effectively, the future support mechanism will be a Pillar 2-type process. How that is managed, enforced and communicated will be very complex. I wonder whether Defra has taken into account how much of the capacity of the RPA will be needed under the future regime.

My last question is this. A fundamental change that has not been mentioned in this debate is that at the moment, under the CAP, the money comes from Brussels a year later, as we heard, to cover the cost of the CAP paid out by the UK Government. That changes. This will now be an integral part of Defra’s budget. Given the fact that it is quite difficult to predict payments, there will be a difference from what has been budgeted for in government expenditure—Defra expenditure in particular—at the end of the year. If it is 10% of £3.5 billion, that is quite a bit of money. Will that be taken off Defra’s budget if it has under-budgeted or, if it goes over, will it be sent straight back to the Treasury? I know that in the past Defra has often suffered from Treasury cuts, and I am concerned that, if it gets its budgeting wrong, other essential services it provides will be prejudiced by the fact that the Treasury will be very unhelpful at the time.

Trade Policy: Environmental Aspects

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

We will obviously want to retain all our environmental standards—our food safety and other standards—both in our own production and in that coming via imports, because we want to be one of the world-leading countries with a successful green economy. Clearly, we will not compromise on those standards in our trade negotiations.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be very aware of biosecurity—I welcome his work in this area—the absence of which could be one of the greatest threats to our environment and our future biodiversity. One area of concern is ballast water for ships on international trade. In 2017, the International Maritime Organization greatly tightened up the regulations governing ballast water, yet I understand that the Department for Transport has not put any resource into implementing that decision. Will the Minister have a word with his DfT colleagues and make sure that this happens?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Lord hits on an important part of what we need to do. We are working on this; I have already had discussions with the Department for Transport, and I will continue to do so. We are very clear about the importance of this issue. One of the chief areas I am concerned about is invasive species, which is one of the key five environmental problems. What the noble Lord has said is extremely helpful.

Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Fisheries: implementation and enforcement of the EU landing obligation (26th Report, Session 2017–19, HL Paper 276).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may say to those Members who are about to leave the Chamber that fisheries is going to be a big issue over the next 11 months, so do not miss this chance to educate yourselves.

I will speak to both of our reports, but before I start I want to make clear that, although parts of the committee’s report may be critical not just of the industry but of the sector, we should recognise that fisheries is one of the toughest and most dangerous professions, so we should have this debate in that context. I also welcome the Minister, in his continued role, in this House, and I welcome the fact that he will be replying to the debate on behalf of the Government. I look forward to his speech.

I shall go through one or two facts about the landing obligation or, as we know it in common parlance, the discarding ban, although the fishing industry itself would argue that the two things are rather different. However, most people can think of it as being pretty much the same thing.

In 2013, when legislation in the European Union on the landing obligation came into force, the estimated amount of discarding by European fleets was running at 1.7 million tonnes of fish in that year. That is not just a biodiversity challenge; it is obviously an obscenity in terms of food waste. Of course, for some people who do not know much about this subject—and why should they?—returning fish to the ocean because the vessels do not have a quota for them might sound quite benevolent, but in fact the vast majority of those fish are unable to survive.

Why are these reports, the first of which was published in the middle of last year, still important? It is because this is a challenge for the European Union fleet as a whole and will continue to be relevant once we become an independent coastal state. No doubt one of the questions that will be asked is whether it is still the Government’s policy to have a landing obligation once we have “control of our own waters”. Confirmation of that would be useful, although I know that the Government have been quite strongly supportive of the landing obligation since it was introduced.

I shall give a timeline on how the legislation has been working. It was passed in 2013, much of it as a result of pressure generated in the United Kingdom by celebrity chefs and British NGOs. It was implemented over a four-year period, meaning that it was gradually introduced. It was a major culture change for the fishing industry, so it was sensible to introduce it gradually to cover different classes of fish and stocks over the period. It was finally implemented in total on 1 January 2019, after that long period of preparation— six years overall—since the legislation was agreed.

For our second report, the committee wanted to understand how the discarding ban or landing obligation had fared. The answer was not something good or anything that could be welcomed. What became quite clear from the stories we heard in the evidence, some of which I will go through, is that in reality, if I can be harsh enough to put it this way, the fishing industry itself has carried on as it was, the regulators have been gentle in terms of trying to enforce the discard ban but have not had the tools to be able to do so, and member states have effectively turned a blind eye to what has been happening. We still have that great challenge there.

What is the evidence for that? First, we should have had a lot more undersized fish landed. Half way through 2019, the total tonnage of undersized fish landed in the UK was 85 tonnes. Noble Lords might think that sounds small, but, interestingly, even more was landed—almost four times as much—the year before, so that had actually gone down.

Secondly, there were very few facilities in the ports in reality. One of the big issues is around choke, which is when a vessel in a mixed fishery—very relevant to United Kingdom fisheries—runs out of quota for a species and therefore has to stop fishing altogether. That is one of the problems of the landing obligation, which no doubt many speakers will talk about. But, to the end of 2019, I do not think there was any sign at all of any choke arising and fleets having to stop fishing because of that.

Thirdly, another area that should be an indicator of problems, with the landing obligation coming into operation and fear of the choke, is that quota swaps would stop happening, because fish quota owners would not wish to lose the opportunity to carry on fishing. Yet the information from Defra is very much that the level of swaps continued.

It is not only the fact that this is not happening out there on the high seas; there are also particular dangers. First, a disregard of legislation and the law is clearly not a good thing generally and is a bad culture in any industry. Secondly, quotas were increased to take account of the fact that fish would be landed rather than thrown away. Those quotas have gone up, but the way in which people have acted has not changed, so we have the real issue of greater overfishing.

What are the challenges here? First, there is enforcement; this is always difficult on the high seas and in territorial waters. Fishing is a secretive industry in many ways; people do not want to say where those resources are. There is culture; this is a major change in the way the fishing industry works, and all industries find it difficult to change quickly. Also, there are not the tools to do the job. The stark fact is that it has been proven in other areas—New Zealand, British Columbia, parts of the United States and other parts of the world—that you need remote electronic monitoring, effectively closed circuit TV, to be able to do this. The technology has been tested, works and is getting much less expensive. The other area of challenges is exemptions. If you have too many exemptions, the whole system starts to fail—and those have been increased recently. I suppose there is also the experience of two other nations, Iceland and Norway. It is said that it took some 20 years for Iceland in particular to adjust to its landing obligations. No one is saying that this is easy.

This is relevant because these whole issues will remain post Brexit, when we have control over our independent waters. My questions to the Government that arise from this report are: will it remain government policy to keep the landing obligation? I looked through the Conservative manifesto, which says a number of good things about fisheries, but I did not see a specific commitment to this. If you really want to stop discarding, you need remote electronic monitoring technology. Will the Government bite the bullet, however difficult that is, and eventually—hopefully in the medium term—introduce this technology? If so, will they also then insist that non-UK vessels coming into UK waters also have that technology? Also, when will the fisheries Bill—which I understand might be introduced to this House—actually arrive, so that we can see and start to really look at legislation on these issues?

What is quite clear is that the discard ban is the right policy. Discarding however many million tonnes of food is clearly wrong commercially, ecologically and morally, so I support the Government entirely in what I hope is their intention to keep this policy. But we have to make sure that we have a way to implement it. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his response, especially because I do not think that he is even going to have this as part of his portfolio in the future. I hope he will remain very involved in this issue because clearly, in terms of biodiversity and all the other areas, the marine environment—as has been said, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett—is extremely important. I am sure that the House recognises his great expertise and his track record in environmentalism from the anthropological side—in his early days of travel abroad—right the way through to his editorship of The Ecologist. He hugely boosted its readership at the time, although latterly it became difficult for it to survive due to the change in the way the media works.

Furthermore, an MP standing down from Parliament on principle to cause a by-election is something that is not often done. It was courageous; it may not have paid off absolutely immediately, but it did two years later. I think that the House recognises both his courage and his commitment to this area.

On the report, he may well have had, as he suggested, instructions on how Ministers respond in the House of Lords and been educated on how to perform today. There is also a rule for committee chairs introducing reports such as these: when you sum up, you should be as brief as possible, especially when there is a debate coming up with 30 more speakers and it is the last business of the House on a Thursday. So I am just going to thank all those who have contributed, particularly those who are not members of the committee. I also want to thank our excellent committee clerk, Jennifer Mills, and our administrator, Jodie Evans, for their work. This is a really important subject and I think it is recognised that it will certainly be a key issue during the negotiations with the European Union. We will no doubt come back to this subject.

Motion agreed.

Office for Environmental Protection

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the Office for Environmental Protection will become (1) operational, and (2) take on its full statutory powers and responsibilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, we plan for the OEP to be operational from 1 January 2021, at which point it will begin to perform its full statutory powers and responsibilities. It will therefore be operational from the day that the UK leaves the oversight of the EU institutions, at the end of the implementation period. The OEP will be ready to receive complaints from day one.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister, and welcome that announcement and that reassurance. The Minister will also be aware that Defra, where this body probably will lie, keeps very close to its executive agencies and its non-departmental public bodies. In fact, it calls them “the Defra family.” How will he ensure that, if it is part of that family, the office will remain entirely independent and fearless in carrying out its statutory duties?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Lord is right: independence is key. The environment Bill will state that the OEP will be operational independent of Defra. Ministers will not be able to set its programme of activity or influence its decision-making. It will be accountable to Parliament through a sponsoring Minister. We intend the chair to be subject to a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing. Ministerial appointments will be regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. It is important that the OEP is independent. It will be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Yes, I asked rather the same question of officials, if I may say so. The OEP must lay its annual statement of accounts before Parliament, including an assessment of whether it has been provided with sufficient funds to carry out its functions. Clearly, we want to get the OEP set up and we need to establish a board and a chair before it becomes operational. We will have to see. As I say, I used the figure of 60 to 120 people. It may be 100. We are not setting a distinct figure. What we want is for the job to be done properly.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, it is well known to the Minister that perhaps one of the greatest reasons for the Government taking notice of the Commission and its powers and beyond is that the Commission is able to fine Governments who do not comply as an ultimate sanction. Will the OEP have that power over the United Kingdom Government?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the distinction is that under the EU arrangements the Commission may bring legal proceedings against a member state Government only. Under our domestic legal arrangements, we believe that fines would simply move money around the domestic public finance system. Indeed, fines may also shift resources away from their intended use in implementing measures to protect the environment. The key point is that if a public authority failed to comply with a court order, the OEP would be able to bring contempt of court proceedings, which could lead in turn to fines being imposed.