Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2020-01-23
Topic: Agriculture
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): 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.