Fisheries Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-03-04
Topic: Agriculture
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my noble friend. There were 14 amendments in this group, so it was not easy to tackle them all, not least since we managed to introduce them all in 18 minutes—it did not leave a lot of time for the preparation of notes on amendments. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, because the point he just made in his further intervention illustrated forcefully the point I was making. This is all absolutely fine if everybody agrees; it is when they do not agree that we want the legislation to tell us what happens. I do not think it does that yet My noble friend has explained that there will be a memorandum of understanding and, as we have heard, there is the 2012 concordat relating to licence conditions and how the economic link requirement is implemented and so on. I do not dispute that non-legislative means may well deliver the co-ordination between the fisheries policy authorities that is required, but it is not transparent to us now; nor is it transparent yet to the industry. That is why the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations asked, quite properly, the questions and illustrated how problems could arise; for example, on the implementation of the equal access objective My noble friend quite rightly challenged my drafting, but we can deal with that if we need to. It could perhaps be "statements under this Section" and not "under this Act"; we can deal with that very easily. If necessary, we can make it very clear that the independent reviewer could be resorted to by any of the fisheries policy authorities before the point at which the joint fisheries statement is made—that is just to clarify; I thought it was clear but it clearly was not. We can deal with the drafting The issue that we come back to is: what happens when they do not agree? I am afraid that my noble friend lapsed straight into the problem that I think we are trying to avoid, which is that the fisheries policy authorities that have devolved responsibilities will set out their policies and the Secretary of State will set out policies on reserved matters in the Secretary of State fisheries statement. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made perfectly clear, we want and the industry needs—and it will clearly be better—all the policies to be set out in the joint fisheries statement. They can be; there is absolutely nothing in the Bill that requires the Secretary of State to publish a Secretary of State fisheries statement on reserved matters. The Secretary of State can put it all into the JFS. It would be better if it were all in the JFS, but it will all get into the JFS only if there is agreement between all the authorities to this effect. But that is pretty important: remember that the reserved matters in this context include quota functions—the catch quota and effort quota—which could, in certain circumstances, completely override what might otherwise be the licensing of fishing boats by devolved authorities. If we can get it all into the JFS, it would be a better outcome I will happily beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I do not think that we have concluded this conversation. We need to keep this conversation going, and I hope that my noble friend will make it clear that we will—she does not need to go back to the Dispatch Box. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.