My Lords, I first thank and apologise to the Minister for having missed his briefing on Monday; I was election monitoring in west Africa. I left central Guinea-Bissau at the right time and the
journey all the way back to Gatwick Airport was perfect until I tried to get the Gatwick Express to Victoria, when it all went wrong and I missed the meeting.
For six years I had the great privilege of being a board member of the Marine Management Organisation, a Defra non-departmental public body. I have had an awful lot to do with structural funding over the years as an MEP, in other roles locally in the south-west and a little bit as part of the MMO. The EMFF recently has been one of the best-delivered structural funds. I am particularly thankful for the good work of the MMO’s finance director, Michelle Willis, under the direction of the chief executive, John Tuckett, who managed to deliver a programme of structural funding pretty well on time and of the right quality, which is unusual in this area.
I know the Minister always likes me to be positive, so I seriously congratulate the Government on one thing in particular—there will be others: in paragraph 6.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum, for the first time ever the Government have used the term “fishers” rather than “fishermen”. I have brought this up before, and the government response on why they used that word was that they consulted with the industry and that is the term it said it wanted to be used. There is something wrong in the way that that logic works. But congratulations on that. My sub-committee’s most recent report on the landing obligation, which I cannot go on to today, also used that terminology, because that is the way that participants in this industry are described in most other English-speaking countries. I hope that that will continue in future.
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I welcome the fact that funding will continue but, here we are: discrimination again. Paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that there will be,
“the same cash total in funds for farm support until the end of this Parliament, expected in 2022”.
That is farm support. Where is the fishing industry? It is funded only up to 2020. There is no commitment to fisheries for those final two years. Once again, I see discrimination for an agriculture industry that is, to be frank, pretty well off, against one, fisheries, where certain sectors are well off, but there is no government guarantee to continue that EMMF funding until 2022. I hope that I am wrong, but I have not seen any different.
I welcome the fact—the Minister mentioned that this will be in a future SI—that the scope of the EMFF will include energy efficiency measures, which is excellent, and working conditions. That is how it is described in the Explanatory Memorandum.
Having said that, the Minister may be aware that the European Union has been looking at the EMFF regulations and recently published amending regulation 508/2014 as regards certain rules relating to the EMFF by reason of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the Union. The rest of the European Union is allowing for the EMFF to be used when it is necessary to compensate communities when they have been excluded from UK waters for fishing.
I ask the question because fishing by UK fleets in other EU waters yields 94,000 tonnes of fish at a revenue of £106 million on average each year. Would the Government consider a similar scheme—not reciprocal,
because it can be done unlilaterally, as in the EU—for communities particularly hit by the fact that certain types of fleet and fisheries might be excluded from access if there is not a proper agreement? That will be useful.
I should also be interested to understand whether these EMFF funds will in future be equally open to a sector of the British fleet, known as quota hoppers, owned by foreign EU businesses. Will they, both Spanish and Dutch-owned, have a significant proportion of operations? I presume that they will have equal access post Brexit to these funds under non-discrimination in a UK single market. I should be interested to hear the Minister’s reaction to that.
My last question on fisheries contains devolution. At the moment, the Marine Management Organisation acts on behalf of Defra for the whole of the country, although it administers only the English proportion. I presume that under the new UK system, the default authorities will take full control of those funds and the MMO will be relieved of that duty. That will be useful to understand.
Lastly, I was surprised to read in the Explanatory Memorandum about a broader issue: the European Investment Bank. The European Investment Bank, which usually does not get out of bed for anything under about £5 billion—or €5 billion—says that EIB money will no longer be available once we leave the European Union. I find it interesting that that is in the EM. The EM continues that this will be replaced by “domestic finance mechanisms”. I have heard nothing from the Government about what will replace the billions of pounds—or euros—invested in environmental areas by the European Investment Bank. It seems that the Government now have some clue about that, and I should be very interested to hear from the Minister what that is.