I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for tabling this amendment, which I have signed. It is the latest move in his long and valuable campaign for the adoption of remote electronic monitoring of fishing vessels. I do not blame him at all for our being here late at night; I blame the Government. If they had written a better Bill, it would not have attracted 300 amendments and we would not still be here after seven days, with an eighth day in prospect.
We discussed remote electronic monitoring when considering the Fisheries Bill, and your Lordships were able to get the Minister to put a firm commitment in support of it on the record. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, stated:
“The Government are clear that we will be consulting on increasing the use of REM in the first half of 2021, with implementation following that. I am not in a position to give a precise date today for when this will be implemented, but I can absolutely say—and I want to put this on the record—that the Government are absolutely seized of the importance of REM.”—[Official Report, 12/11/20; col. 1174.]
That is great, isn’t it? We could all be confident that this would go in the Bill.
Unfortunately, things do not seem to be progressing particularly quickly. The latest update I could find on the GOV.UK website, from 7 May, says:
“We’ve considered all the submissions and will continue to use the evidence provided to inform further thinking on the use of remote electronic monitoring in England. We’ll engage more with stakeholders in the near future around the topics that were highlighted in this call for evidence.”
This language does not reflect the previous enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, so can the Minister here today please confirm that the Government remain
“absolutely seized of the importance of REM”?
Can he please give details of the Government’s thinking that has been informed by the consultation? It would be wonderful to know how long it will be before this thinking turns into action. Given the long lead-in times for retrofitting all the existing fishing vessels, the sooner the Government can move forward on this and articulate a specific monitoring scheme, the better. We need to embrace this technology as a matter of urgency. If the Government continue to drag their feet, it would seem that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has been left hanging out to dry.