Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment and those associated with it. I suppose we could say that one is the smelt amendment and the other is the shad amendment. Speaking as someone who fishes regularly, I believe it is extremely important that smelt, or smelts as they are called in some parts of the British Isles, are protected. There is no doubt that, particularly with electrical generation through turbines, a large proportion of smelts have been wiped out when travelling downstream. This is a very serious matter because they never come back to fresh water if some of their number are slaughtered at that stage. This indicates that fish pass technology needs to be improved tremendously. It is easy to say, "Oh well, we’ll put something in the estuary of this river and the fish pass will go in", but that is not good enough. The mature salmon may be able to get upstream sometimes but on the way back the small smelts, which after all are the seed-corn of the next generation of salmon, are destroyed. Therefore, it is particularly important to include this provision in the Bill. I am very familiar with the River Wye and the River Usk. The shad is an important and rare species, not only in the British Isles but in Europe, and it needs protection. Lampreys, which are extraordinary fish—they look like eels but have flat noses—also need protection. Indeed, the lamprey is an extremely important species in the Severn, Wye and Usk. I think that that illustrates the importance of these amendments—in particular, to migratory species.