The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)

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It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, and to speak to this important Bill. I hear what the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport says about Labour’s support for the Bill, and I am grateful for the genuinely consensual way in which Labour and Conservative Members normally work on fisheries. Those negotiating on our behalf with the EU hear how this House speaks as one on fisheries, as we did very strongly on Second Reading. We are all determined to get the very best for our fishermen.

It is fair to say, as the hon. Gentleman did, that the previous Committee worked hard to improve the Bill. Those improvements and those made in the other place are reflected in the Bill before us today. I am grateful to all the people who worked so hard to bring it to its current incarnation.

The blanket requirement that amendment 61 would place on all authorities is not appropriate. It is for the fisheries administrations to determine appropriate policies for meeting the objectives set out in the Bill. Public authorities already have relevant duties under a vast amount of other legislation. A statutory body’s objectives and duties will be set out in primary legislation. Inshore fisheries conservation authorities already have a duty under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 to seek to ensure that the,

“exploitation of sea fisheries resources”,

is carried out in a sustainable way. Under that Act, the Secretary of State may give guidance to an IFCA on how it performs the duty, and the IFCA must of course have regard to such guidance. I am worried that the amendment could dilute the accountability of fisheries policy authorities, as clearly established in the Bill, by dividing responsibility for the objectives more broadly across a wide range of public authorities, which might lead to divergent approaches.

A similar argument applies to amendment 62. The Bill already contains a robust framework of reporting and review requirements that will provide sufficient information to inform and drive progress against the fisheries objectives. Clause 11(1) states that the fisheries policy authorities must, every three years, prepare and publish a report on the extent to which the policies set out have been implemented. Clause 11(2) requires the report under subsection (1) to include the extent to which the policies contained in a relevant fisheries management plan have been implemented and how they have affected stocks.

Bearing in mind the number of objectives, we strongly believe that an annual reporting requirement would place a disproportionate burden on fisheries managers and the industry for not a great deal of gain. Not enough would have changed in a year, and the report might have little value. It would divert needed resource away from direct fisheries management, reduce the authorities’ ability to move towards co-management with the industry, and potentially hamper the deliverability of the eight objectives.

There is of course nothing to prevent a parliamentary debate—a Government debate, an Opposition day debate or a Back-Bench debate—from taking place if that were considered appropriate as an annual event, or more frequently. I for one am always happy to talk about fisheries policies in Parliament and I am sure that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport is, too. However, that does not change my view of this amendment, and I therefore ask him to withdraw it.

Victoria Prentis

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For the reasons that I have set out, I believe that the reporting requirements that need to be legally binding and are in the Bill are more than sufficient, but I am not in any way denigrating the idea that we might want to talk about fisheries far more often.

Victoria Prentis

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I appreciate the intention behind both amendments 71 and 72. However, as anticipated by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, I feel that the law is already clear on both those points. I do not think it is necessary to amend the Bill in this way and I will go into some detail about why that it is.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport gets to know me better, he will learn that I am never happier than when discussing older laws. My personal university and legal background make the Magna Carta a fascinating document to me—indeed, I was discussing with the Fisheries Bill team yesterday. He should not set me down trains of thought unless he wants to hear the responses.

On the proposed public access objective, the United Nations convention on the law of the sea—UNCLOS—establishes that the UK has sovereign rights to manage the marine resources within our exclusive economic zone, which obviously includes fish. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that UK case law, which is slightly more recent than the Magna Carta, recognises clearly that those fish are a public asset, held by the Crown, for the benefit of the public. The public right to fish was confirmed most helpfully in a case called Malcolmson v. O’Dea in 1863. Legally, it is well established that no one individual can own the fish.

In terms of the rights to exploit and fish the fish, most UK fishing opportunities are managed, as the hon. Gentleman set out, through fixed quota allocation units. As he said, the High Court has held those units as a form of property right. Fixed quota allocation holders do not own the fish in the sea, but the FQA units entitle those holders to a share of whatever quota is available in that particular year. That is quite clear in the legal cases.

Victoria Prentis

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It is always a pleasure to give way to the former fisheries Minister, who has knowledge of areas of law I can only dream of.

Fixed quota allocation units do not confer a permanent right to quota, but Government policy, as set out in the fisheries White Paper—a document particularly beloved of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—is to maintain the FQA system, which has provided certainty to the industry for many years. That is important to those who have invested money in FQA units and very important to those who have borrowed money in mortgage form using FQA units as collateral.

Victoria Prentis

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I believe very firmly in the rule of law, and I would never accept that the legal system and reality are in any way in divergence. The Government have made it clear that the current quota system needs to stay in place for the reasons that I am in the middle of giving. However, for future quota allocation we will—and probably should—look at very different ways of doing that. I will go on to explain why that is the case.

To go back to FQA units and the existing law, which is reality as far as I am concerned, this method of allocation has its detractors across the House and in the industry. However, FQA units confer benefits, such as creating a sense of stewardship of the resource and enabling quota to be traded to get into the hands of those who want to fish against it. If amendment 71 were passed, I am concerned that it could undermine the FQA regime and that that would undoubtedly cause instability, prevent investment and, ultimately, have a damaging effect on the jobs and coastal communities that we all want to thrive. For example, I know that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Interfish is one example of those that fish to FQAs. We propose to keep the existing quota system broadly as it is, while looking at the future system for the extra quota that we will be able to allocate.

Victoria Prentis

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There is no contradiction; I just do not feel that the extra amendment is necessary. Another reason for that is that the national benefit objective in the Bill already requires UK fishing activities to bring social or economic benefits to the UK. That means, in effect, that the Bill already recognises the importance of managing fisheries for the public good.

I now move on to the important issue of safety and training requirements. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport is right to highlight that the matter was mentioned a great deal by Members across the House on Second Reading. It is right that I should—as I did on Second Reading—pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s long campaigning on this important issue. It rightly concerns us all and, as the hon. Gentleman said, it is shared between Departments, but that does not in any way detract from the importance of moving forward. Indeed, it rather strengthens our hand across Government.

Safety at sea is, of course, not just about fishing. It is a maritime vessel issue. The safety of all vessels falls within the remit of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Legal requirements for the safety of vessels are already in place in several pieces of legislation, most particularly in the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Health and Safety at Work) Regulations 1997. Adding further complexity to an already comprehensive framework of legislation will not do much to improve safety. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport rightly said, training and behaviour change are what is needed. I was particularly glad to hear him mention personal locator beacons, not least because grants are available to fund those at the moment. I encourage all those who could benefit from wearing a personal locator beacon to apply for those grants. I am pleased to see—I think the hon. Gentleman would agree—that positive progress has been made, with the industry taking greater responsibility, with support from the relevant authorities where possible. We should not be complacent, obviously, and I look forward to continued working across the House on that important issue.

On the equally serious issue of modern slavery, working conditions and the general wellbeing of our fishers, the UK has fully implemented the requirements of the International Labour Organisation’s work in fishing convention. Of course, we have the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which ensures that—from 2016—officers from police forces, the National Crime Agency and Border Force can board and search vessels, seize evidence and arrest offenders. Section 1(2)(b) of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 already requires that

“all seafarers working on ships within the UK internal waters and ports are entitled to be paid at least the national minimum wage.”

That is

“regardless of where the ship is registered”

or where the worker ordinarily lives or comes from. The legal exception to that is for those paid by crew share. We know that almost three quarters of fishermen are paid that way.

Recent research conducted by Seafish shows that average gross crew shares in the UK range from £1,060 a month for onshore workers to over £4,000 for mates. That is in line with or better than national minimum wage requirements, so we do not feel that the amendments are necessary and I ask the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport not to press them.

Victoria Prentis

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I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out subsections (2) and (3) and insert—

‘(2) The “sustainability objective” is that—

(a) fish and aquaculture activities are—

(i) environmentally sustainable in the long term, and

(ii) managed so as to achieve economic, social and employment benefits and contribute to the availability of food supplies, and

(b) the fishing capacity of fleets is such that fleets are economically viable but do not overexploit marine stocks.”

This amendment alters the definition of the “sustainability objective” so as to revert to the definition as it stood before it was substituted at Report stage in the Lords.

Victoria Prentis

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I am afraid this will be rather a marathon as there are a number of amendments grouped together, but I am sure we will manage to get through them.

The Government recognise the intent of the other place, and indeed the Labour party, in seeking to focus attention on environmental sustainability in these amendments. However, we feel that the Opposition amendments create serious and, I am afraid, unacceptable legal and devolution constitutional issues and would undermine the Bill, including the important environmental objectives that we are all so keen to see.

The ambiguity of a prime objective creates a significant risk that we will be prevented by law from supporting coastal communities as they transition from the status quo to a new and improved fisheries management regime. For example, in the past two years, if we had not been able to agree with the EU a small quota above scientific advice for cod in the Celtic sea, the issue of choke species would have led to the closure of many valuable fisheries in the south-west, as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport knows. In fact, those fishermen target other species, some of which are certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. In 2018, fish caught near the seabed and brought into the south-west ports, plus landings of cuttlefish, were worth about £57 million and were a significant part of the economy in those areas. I am worried that under a prime fisheries objective, that level of appropriate flexibility would not be lawful. Having a prime objective would limit our flexibility in annual negotiations, I am told by the fish team, which conducts those negotiations. For example, it could mean that other parties would know that our negotiating position on quota had to be within a certain environmentally sustainable limit, and we could be tied into accepting an outcome that might disadvantage the UK.

Victoria Prentis

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I think the hon. Lady is possibly slightly unaware that we do not currently have good data for many stocks. We fish, we think, just over 100 stocks—we have 100 stocks available to us to fish in the UK, and we are very fortunate to have a very wide, mixed fishery—but we simply cannot say whether we are meeting MSY because we do not have the data available. That is why it is so important that we do the work where we need to, such as in Dogger Bank, to find out what is happening.

I can answer the hon. Lady more fully as we go through the Bill; we have a whole section on MSY coming up. I know it was not the intention that this amendment, inserted in the other place, should cause difficulties by introducing a hierarchy into the set of interlinked objectives, but I feel that returning clause 1 to its original balance is the best outcome for the environment, our fisheries and our coastal communities.

Amendment 74 would extend the scope of the Bill to the management of fish and aquaculture activities in freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems are already managed through a comprehensive suite of legislation, which emanates mostly from the EU water framework directive. The Environment Agency regulates inland waters under the Environment Act 1995. Freshwater fisheries are also regulated under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975. There are, of course, specific challenges to managing freshwater ecosystems, most of which are unrelated to fishing or angling—for example, those relating to water quality or obstructions in sluices. We are further strengthening our regulation of such issues through both the Agriculture and Environment Bills.

This Bill has been developed to put in place a new sea fisheries management regime and clearly focuses on the marine environment. We recognise that the term “marine and aquatic” is used elsewhere in the Bill where appropriate; we want there to be no doubt, for example, over the scope of an administration’s powers to make grants in relation to inland as well as marine activities. However, this Bill’s core purpose is managing marine and coastal fisheries, and that is why we do not feel that this is a helpful amendment.

Amendment 75 is also well intentioned, but we feel it would have significant unforeseen impacts, which could lead to stopping a great deal of fishing activity and damaging our coastal communities as a result. Requiring our fisheries and aquaculture sector to reverse all the negative impacts of their activities on marine ecosystems, as proposed in the amendment, would simply render many fishing activities impossible.

On amendment 76, we of course agree that we must protect sensitive species from incidental catches in fishing nets. The Government are committed to encouraging the fishing industry to minimise bycatch of sensitive species as much as possible, and we are developing UK plans of action for cetacean and seabird bycatch, working closely with the fishing industry and environmental groups. Our various bycatch monitoring programmes are essential to inform that work. We will be launching a broader programme of work on protected, endangered and threatened species bycatch to support a more holistic system.

However, the effect of this particular amendment would be that fisheries administrations would have to have policies that would eliminate all bycatch. While our goal is to reduce bycatch to as close to zero as possible, in some situations complete elimination of bycatch will not be possible and some sensitive species will inevitably be caught. The wording that bycatch should be,

“minimised and, where possible, eliminated”,

reflects this intention and ensures that our objective is ambitious but achievable. It is accepted by both environmental organisations and fishermen.

Turning to amendment 77, the Government support extensive monitoring. We already have an extensive data collection programme that uses effective and innovative methods, such as underwater TV surveys. We feel this amendment is unnecessary, as the objective to collect scientific data is already included within paragraph (a) of the scientific evidence objective. It is important, as not all scientific data can be collected or used in real time. There may be a period of several weeks, or indeed months, between samples being taken from a fish on deck and the completion of the scientific processes. We agree—I know we will be discussing this issue further on another day—that the increased use of remote electronic monitoring may well help us to achieve this scientific objective, which is why we have included powers in the Bill that would allow its future roll-out, or further roll-out. Even then, given the volumes of data collected, that data may well not be checked in real time.

Turning to amendment 78, the CFP’s landing obligation, which was fully implemented last year, requires all species subject to catch limits to be landed and counted against quota, rather than discarded at sea. There are a few limited exceptions. Now that we have left the EU, the Administrations are free to develop discard policies that are tailored to the industries. However, as I have noted, even when our fishing practices are highly selective there will be instances in which this unwanted bycatch cannot be avoided entirely, given the high number of mixed fisheries in UK waters. If, for example, that catch is scientifically proven to have high survivability, it will be better for the long-term sustainability of the stock for it to be returned alive, rather than landed dead. There may be some limited instances in which there would be a high economic or safety cost to land bycatch caught unintentionally, so that is the purpose behind the “where appropriate” phrase in the Bill. I am worried that the effect of this amendment would be to undermine our future discards policy.

Amendment 79 would cause significant problems for the industry and the fisheries administrations. The management of fishing opportunities, namely quota, is inherently different from managing access to fishing waters. The equal access objective ensures that all UK fishing boats can continue to access all UK waters. By contrast, the management of quota is devolved. At the start of each fishing year, UK quotas are apportioned between the Administrations by the Secretary of State, and each Administration is then responsible for distributing those quotas to industry: the Scottish Government determine how quota is allocated to Scottish-registered vessels, and so on. Allowing equal access to fishing opportunities regardless of where vessels are licensed and registered directly conflicts with those devolved arrangements, and implies that each Administration would have to make quota available to boats managed by the other Administrations. It is unclear how that would work, and the uncertainty it would create would threaten the stability of the current quota apportionment system.

Finally, I will make a few points regarding amendment 73. The Government’s world-leading commitment to net zero, declaration of a climate emergency, and the inclusion of a climate change objective in this Bill—an improvement on the Bill, in my view—all show how seriously the Government are taking their commitments to climate change mitigation and adaption. Emissions from fishing vessels count towards national emissions, and are part of national plans to address emissions in the longer term under the Climate Change Act 2008. The unique part of the Bill’s existing climate change objective is the focus on mitigating the adverse effect of all fish and aquaculture activities. While part of that mitigation is through decarbonisation, it is important to emphasise that many other potential impacts need to be mitigated, such as impacts on the health of marine habitats that impair their ability to store carbon. I am concerned that the amended wording would limit our options on developing policies for mitigation only through decarbonisation and port improvements.

Fishing activity is already part of the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050. The UK takes its international obligations very seriously, as underlined in the fisheries White Paper. We believe that it would be inappropriate to include in the Bill references to some, but not all, of our international commitments in this area. We feel this amendment is unnecessary, as it restates existing obligations and commitments of the UK under international law. I hope that the Opposition will feel able to support Government amendment 1, and will not press their remaining amendments.

Victoria Prentis

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I agree, in fact, with a great deal of what is being said. I reiterate that the Government are absolutely committed to leaving the natural environment in a better state than we found it in. There is no watering down of our commitments to sustainability, which are clearly stated in the Bill in the first objective in clause 1. However, I do not feel that the amendment helps to take this further. I am worried that putting the primacy of sustainability in the Bill might—inadvertently, I am sure—cause unnecessary suffering to coastal communities.

To focus on the MSY issue for a moment, I am not going to stand here and suggest that the current position is one we should be proud of. We have undoubtedly made progress on fishing at MSY. We are now fishing at about 67% of MSY. In 1990, we were fishing at 10% of sustainable stocks, so there is no doubt that we are where we want to be, although we are moving slowly in the right direction.

The Government hope that the fisheries management plan, set out in the Bill, will work locally and holistically to make the situation much better, fast, as we must do. However, I am concerned that if we put in the clause which makes the sustainability objective prime, there will be some really serious unintended consequences for coastal communities.

I will give three examples on MSY in particular. If we followed the zero TAC advice for whiting in the Irish Sea, it could close the nephrops fishery that has critical economic importance for Northern Ireland, where landings averaged about 15 million a year over the past five years. Another example, following the zero-catch advice on plaice in the Celtic Sea would close the very valuable anglerfish and megrim fishery and could displace those boats into a more intensely fished area elsewhere, which could also displace even worse environmental harm. Out at Rockall, latterly, there is a very low quota for cod, although the quality of the scientific advice there has been questioned. Following the advice on cod would close the valuable haddock fishery that might itself be taking some of the pressures off the fishery in the North Sea.

I have been asked repeatedly by Opposition Members for further clarity on the plan. I refer them politely to the fisheries White Paper 2018. Our Secretary of State is particularly proud of this document, having worked on it a great deal himself. It sets out very clearly the direction of travel that the Government are determined to follow as we leave the common fisheries policy and are able to take further steps. We are committed to environmental sustainability, and I hope that working together when this great Bill becomes law we will be able to move forward much more quickly than in the past.

I turn briefly to some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. I remind him that, while this is a framework Bill and touches all areas, it does not, in fact, deal with the Benyon review or some of the specifics that he mentioned. However, I do want to be as helpful as possible. The Benyon review was pushed out on World Oceans Day, which seemed an appropriate time, despite the pandemic. It is important that we get on with this important work. The Government are considering their response at the moment. I think it would be wrong and that this is not the place to go much further than that, but I am happy to take this up with the hon. Gentleman outside the Bill as soon as he likes. We are in a great deal of communication on this at the moment, and a lot of work is being done.

On decarbonising the fleet—I am glad he enjoys Fishing News as much as I do—fishing accounts for about 10% of the domestic shipping CO2 emissions. I am not in any way downplaying that significant amount. The grant-making powers in the Bill could well be used to give grants which would encourage vessels to move to more sustainable types of fuel.

Victoria Prentis

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There is no plan, but there is a very good clause which enables the plan to be made. It is something that should and will be done at local levels, but I would be amazed if decarbonisation of the fuels that vessels use was not the sort of thing to be considered.