Fishery Limits (United Kingdom) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I certainly congratulate the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, on her persistence in bringing forward this Bill. She does address a serious issue. I agree with her on a few points, the first of which is the effect of moving the debate day to Thursday. Secondly, over the years the Commission has dragged its feet disgracefully, and the Council has been completely hopeless in putting political expediency before any sort of consideration of conservation of fish stocks. Also, the total allowable catch system has proved a disastrous way of addressing the conservation of fish. Finally, I would agree with her that effort reduction is part of the way forward. But I am afraid that there my agreement with her must end, because although her Bill is trying to address a serious issue times have moved on and it is no longer the way in which we can address the conservation of our marine environment, which includes the conservation of our fish stocks and ensuring the livelihood of some fishermen in a fishing community. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s report of December 2004, Turning the Tide, made it clear that all its recommendations, which merit being adopted en bloc by the Government, leave a clear framework for a way forward. It makes it clear that action needs to be taken across EU waters at EU level and equally in our UK waters. However it makes no suggestion—indeed, it refutes the suggestion—that that should be done by withdrawal from the EU. There are a couple of reasons why we need to work within the framework of a much wider geographical area than our own. First, species move across seas and oceans and they do not pay any attention to national boundaries; secondly, as I understand from the scientists involved, there is an unprecedented movement of species due to climate change. The fairly steady pattern in where species live, which applied perhaps 20 years ago, no longer applies. It is clear that we need to develop healthy marine ecosystems, both in our UK waters and in EU waters. The EU is about to publish, in July, a marine thematic strategy. It will be a first for the European Union in that it will come from the Environment Directorate and will therefore have a much greater emphasis on conservation than the fisheries strategies, which always had a more commercial angle. Conservation and developing a healthy ecosystem are the first steps in achieving what the noble Lady wants to achieve: to create a livelihood for the fishing communities. If we continue down the road that we are on, even if we repatriated our fisheries waters I do not believe—for a couple of reasons that I will set out in a moment—that it would make a great difference. The UK Government are intending to introduce a marine Bill. I hope that the Minister will tell me that that is under way and that the draft Bill will be published shortly, because it is extremely urgent. It is incredible that we have no planning system for what happens in marine areas, so that what may be valuable spawning grounds within UK waters may be subject to gravel extraction, all sorts of dredging and other activities that damage the fish stocks. Now that the pilot for that type of approach has been completed in the Irish Sea, the Government should speed up their   introduction of the marine Bill. Even if it is imperfect—as I am sure we will accuse it of being from time to time—I would welcome its early introduction. Another way forward of which I am sure the noble Lady is aware—it has been under way for a while now in Scotland—is the approach taken by Ross Finnie, the Scotland fisheries Minister, who is trying to deliver genuine regional management of the fishing stocks there where regional advisory councils are given genuine powers over managing fish stocks on the basis of scientific evidence. They are making definite progress—albeit slow progress—in that regard. Perhaps the first measure of success, beyond the fact that the North Sea Regional Advisory Council has been set up and that decisions are increasingly taken on the basis of scientific evidence rather than political expediency, is the recent example of the European Commission banning sand-eel fishing in the North Sea due to dangerously low stock levels. When sand-eel fishing falls to low levels, it is a barometer of the health of an awful lot of other fish stocks, because of their place in the food chain. A number of practices still go on that are extremely detrimental in a way that we probably have not begun to understand yet, but they have been explained well in   Turning the Tide. The greatest such practice is bottom-trawling, which will have to be addressed. I congratulate the fishermen from Looe in Cornwall who took the initiative to go back to hand-line fishing for mackerel, and now market and label their produce as such. That is ecologically far more sound. The next thing at which the Government should look seriously is extending the experiment taking place round Lundy of the no-take zone, which is yielding very promising results in the way that fish stocks can regenerate quickly. When I was there last weekend, I noticed that the fish stocks might have regenerated particularly fast, because there was a little ring of trawlers just beyond the no-take zone. That tends to suggest an increase. I disagree with the noble Lords, Lord Stoddart and Lord Greenway. It is hard to speak against fishermen for all the reasons of political expediency, and because they have a wonderful tradition of doing a brave job. The job appeals to us not only because they bring home produce that we like, but because of our hunter-gatherer instinct. However, they should be prosecuted when they do things that are, as the noble Lord, Lord   Stoddart, said, a little wrong. That is a bit like being a little pregnant. You are either doing something that is against the law and wrong, or you are not. If we are seriously to conserve fish stocks and introduce ways of conserving fish, when people break they law they will have to be prosecuted, unfortunately. I support Defra in taking that action.