My Lords, it is a regular occurrence that I follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. Her knowledge of this area is absolutely excellent. I thank the Minister and his officials for having offered to meet before this session; regrettably, I could not do so because of other parliamentary business.
One of the general points to make first, coming back to what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, was saying, is that we are only 29 days away from the common fisheries policy regime and all the regulations around it ending. I realise that most of those will continue, but one of the great occasions of Brussels was the Fisheries Ministers’ bun-fight before Christmas, when they all sorted out TACs and quotas, and did deals around the scientific evidence. We have got better in recent years at recognising the scientific evidence. I do not understand what quotas UK fishers will be operating to from 1 January. The fishing industry does not cease operating for a new year, so I would be interested to hear from the Minister exactly what the rules will be for quotas by species and how they will be distributed. This is an immediate problem.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is not correct about the landing obligation and discards ban. I understand that the Government will keep to their undertaking. The first of these regulations changes the demersal discard plans slightly in terms of some of the exemptions, but I would be very concerned if the discard ban did not continue. The Government have very much promoted it within the European Union and the common fisheries policy, through correct pressure from the public, and I hope that it will continue. I will come back to the discard ban in a while.
The sub-committee that I chair has always been pleased to hear that the Government intend to continue their relationship with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. This is an important body and it would make no sense for us to operate a separate system from those that fish in the same waters and fish the same stocks as we do. I welcome that, but I look forward to the clarifications on detail that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked of the Minister.
I entirely understand why the Government will remove references to the European Union Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries from the legislation, as we are clearly out of the common fisheries policy now. But I would be interested to understand in more detail from the Minister how or if that is likely to be replaced. Does ICES give enough information and scientific advice for decisions to be made? I suspect that it does not. I would be concerned if Cefas, which the Minister mentioned, took on this role because, although I greatly admire the work that Cefas does, it is not an independent body; it is part of
the Defra family. Therefore, like all Defra bodies and other public bodies, it is financed directly by a department and is not necessarily completely independent in its views.
Although I understand that the Government must, rightly, come out of that organisation, I would be very concerned if we did not still swap data on a voluntary basis. Not to do so would seem to show a rather dog-in-the-manger attitude. So I ask the Minister whether he and his officials will open a dialogue, so that we can still share that scientific debate and information, as many of the fish discussed by that committee are shared stocks. We would hope to have a reciprocal basis as well. It would be a great shame if that relationship did not continue, at least on an informal and voluntary basis. Needless to say, if you want to solve the data issue, remote electronic monitoring is the way to do it. Data is one of the key pluses of that technology.
I move back now to the landing obligation. There is some change to the demersal regulations or exemptions in terms of the ban. Apart from the Government’s commitment to this, which I hope the Minister will confirm, I ask whether it is working at all. In the two reports that my committee did, we found that it had made very little difference to either the EU 27 members—and certainly those in the littoral states of the North Sea and the Channel—or the United Kingdom. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the department feels that the landing obligation and discards ban has made any difference yet to the working practices of the industry.
I very much welcome the Government’s call for evidence on remote electronic monitoring. That call ended at the beginning of this month. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how many people or organisations submitted evidence to it and when he anticipates the next consultation on REM will start.
One of the things that will happen with single market rules, with us coming out of the common fisheries policy—although we have built a framework in the Fisheries Act—is that we can have divergence between the nations of the United Kingdom. I would be interested in how quickly the Minister feels there will be divergence and how it will be treated or worked around by the Government and the devolved authorities.
I welcome how the Government have, on a number of occasions, reconfirmed to the committee that they will operate a similar scheme to the EMFF, but when will it start? It is very important to the industry. The EMFF is not a large fund—it is small in comparison with many other EU structural funds—but it is well targeted and focused on making a difference, particularly to smaller fishing communities and fleets. So when will that fund be up and running?
Lastly, I admit that I find Northern Ireland fisheries incredibly difficult to understand, but I would like to understand from the Minister whether, when a Northern Ireland fishing vessel lands in the Republic of Ireland or back in Great Britain, its catch is treated as a UK or an EU catch. What are the implications of that for any future tariffs, quotas or phytosanitary regulations? Those questions take me through everything I need to say.
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