My Lords, I support this amendment from my noble friend Lady Morgan. It is in line with a more general issue that I raised earlier about the relationship between the executive competence of Welsh Ministers and the parallel competence, where it currently applies, of UK Ministers, and the competence of the Assembly itself and its ability to legislate and scrutinise. This is a fundamental issue and flaw in the Bill that we are now discussing. It is particularly reprehensible in the case of fishing.
I have the proud duty of trying to represent the northern part of Cardigan Bay. This will be well known to the Minister because he was based in the middle of Cardigan Bay for a very long time and, as far as I know, may still have a bolthole somewhere in the region—I will not pursue that in this debate. He also had a role further south-west in Milford Haven and so will know well the nature of the Welsh fishing industry and how it has been denuded over the years as a result of the reduction in the number of vessels and, more recently, the activity undertaken by the Welsh fisheries association with strong support from the Welsh Government in restoring and developing inshore fishing in order to ensure that we have product to promote Welsh fisheries as part of the Welsh food and drink initiative, which is currently the flagship policy of the Welsh Government. Therefore, I ask the Minister to take a further look at this.
It is essential, in my view, that we should be able to have direct oversight of our natural resources and not be in a situation where the oversight of the natural resources of Wales—in this case, the increasingly important marine resources—is located elsewhere.
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