My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful response. We are all looking for the best way to stop wasteful discards. As he will know, that has been campaigned for over many years. We were very pleased when the discard ban was introduced because it felt as though it was finally beginning to address the issue. If we now move away from it, we need to be assured that anything that runs in parallel has equal advantages.
I suppose that I had not quite understood that the scheme would be voluntary, so I assume that it is all still underpinned by the current discard ban and the charging scheme will work only in certain areas and certain fisheries.