Common Fisheries Policy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-26
Topic: Agriculture
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, not to worry too much because the fishing industry will have already assumed that it will be sold out. It always does. I suspect that it hears all the expectations, but is very cynical about them. That certainly seems to be the case in Cornwall, where I come from I do not wish this debate to be a Richard Benyon love-in, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, along with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I was very critical of the common fisheries policy. I was on the fisheries committee of the European Parliament. We said that there had to be regionalisation of this policy. We also said that the way international agreements, which I will come on to, are implemented has to change so that there is some conservation of the stocks of African or Mediterranean states, rather than them being completely pillaged. We also covered areas such as discard, which I will come on to as well The fact is that Britain took on that agenda. Whichever DG it was, I think DG14, the Fisheries Commission, was one of the most conservative and backward-looking directorates that I found in Brussels, yet we changed that. The irony is that we are leaving the common fisheries policy when we actually had significant regionalisation for a couple of years—that is still being implemented—a landing obligation, although I will come back to its effectiveness, and many other reforms The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, brought up control of our waters. We have absolutely no control over the fish. In fact, the spawning grounds are often in a different EEZ from where they are caught. We have negotiation over quotas, with relative stability being the problem where we can maybe negotiate, but we should never forget that we have total control of enforcement over our own EEZs, whatever nation is flagged on a vessel. If we are not controlling them that is our problem I can now talk a little about that, because I ceased to be a board member of the MMO at the end of January after six years of the privilege of being in that position. The MMO, like most Defra organisations, suffered budget cut after budget cut. Its main concern, which comes back to environmental protection, is that it was to do the minimum—I exaggerate slightly; it wanted to do the most it could—to avoid infraction. It did a great job with reducing resources—much better than most private industry could do. That was its challenge I come back to the SIs. As we have said, we are waiting for the Fisheries Bill, which is not here, but one of the most important preparations for day one of a no-deal Brexit—which is of course not in the SI and I am not asking the Minister to respond on it—is how we cope on the high seas with the very high emotions of fishermen and fisherwomen who will be excluded from their traditional fishing grounds. We saw last year at the Baie de la Seine how tempers rose very strongly over a completely different issue. There was actual conflict and physical abuse, not of people, but of vessels, and danger to individuals because emotions understandably run very high in the industry, where there is high danger to individuals considering the conditions it has to operate in. If we get it wrong on day one and there is conflict on the high seas because of it, it will be the first area where there will be physical conflict because of Brexit. It is a real issue. Both sides have to be very clear on enforcement and how they will respond to provocations. If there is one area where there will be conflict it will be this one. I very much hope that there will not be, as we all do, because there is danger on the high seas. Anyway, I am not asking the Minister to respond to that. I am sure the authorities are making sure that will be the case.