Universal Credit: Farmers

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Carmichael]

On a point of order, Mrs Murray. It was remiss of me while intervening in the debate not to remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I hope you will allow me to do so now for the record.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (in the Chair)]

Absolutely.

Question put and agreed to.

Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Alistair Carmichael

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I rise to speak to new clauses 11 and 12, standing in my name. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray). I listened very carefully to her remarks, as I always do on matters related to the fishing industry, and I absolutely understand her background and family history, which has brought her to a very close interest in fishing safety over the years. I am grateful to her—enormously grateful to her—for accepting that I am well intentioned. I would hope, as I am a vice-chair of the all-party group on fisheries, of which she is the chair, that she would have expected nothing less.

I am afraid I was not entirely persuaded by the hon. Lady’s reasoning, however, and on this occasion I will stick with the views of the representatives of the fishing industry, who say that amendments such as new clauses 11 and 12 are necessary. I say to the Minister, who has obviously been told that they are probing amendments, that they are no such thing. Unless I am able to hear any reason or persuasive arguments as to why I should not push them to a vote, then with your agreement, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will certainly seek to test the views of the House on new clause 12 at least.

The hon. Lady’s proposition was an interesting one. She said that we should rely on the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and also on the licensing provisions. I am actually a great fan of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. It is legislative poetry. A whole body of case law and regulations have been born and grown up out of it, of which I am not always a great admirer, but the Act itself is very simple.

[Mrs Murray]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Carmichael]

I will just explain this to the hon. Lady, and then I will give way to her.

The Act creates an obligation to provide a safe system of work for those who come into contact with it. It is a measure that has to be applied in a way that is reasonable and proportionate. I cannot imagine that any safe system of work would deal with the sort of piracy we have seen off the west coast of Shetland in relation to Pesorsa Dos, which I will speak about in a second or two. With all due respect to the hon. Lady, it seems to me that, in seeking to rely on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and licensing conditions, she is in effect saying—or advancing an argument that would be akin to saying—that we do not require the Road Traffic Acts and the offences of dangerous or careless driving simply because we license cars, but if the hon. Lady wishes to intervene, I will give way.

[Mrs Murray]

I think the right hon. Gentleman misunderstood what I said. I actually mentioned the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Health and Safety at Work) Regulations 1997, under which a massive number of M notices—merchant shipping notices—are published, meaning that vessels have to be kept and operated in a safe way. If we license other vessels from other nations, we could insist, as part of their licencing, that they behave in a responsible way and that the vessels meet the same requirements as UK vessels.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Lady advances an excellent argument in support of my new clause 11, but as it happens, I am going to press new clause 12. The difficulty she has is that I do not hear any argument from her about enforcement, so when we are in the exclusive economic zone, if these regulations or licensing requirements are breached, how do we enforce them? At present, there is no power for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to do that, but that would be a sensible and reasonable thing to do, and it would, I suggest, be entirely appropriate given the stated aim of taking back control.

[Mrs Murray]

I think it is the Marine Management Organisation that enforces licensing but in his area, the Scottish fisheries protection agency goes out on board the vessels.

[Mr Carmichael]

There will be no provision in licensing that will deal with the dangerous and reckless conduct that we have seen west of Shetland, and that we will see in other territorial waters, I think, in the next few months as the political heat is turned up in relation to fishing and the changes that are going to come in on 1 January.

I want to make a couple of points before dealing in detail with the reason why new clauses 11 and/or 12 are necessary. The first is on Government amendment 36, which I raised with the Minister in her opening comments. I understand the reasons why a lot of late Government amendments to the Bill have come and I have sympathy with them, knowing the to and fro that there has been between the Minister’s Department and the various devolved Administrations, but the Bill is not new. We had the Bill go through all its stages in this House—certainly the Public Bill Committee—once already. It started then in the other place and it has been through Committee here, so introducing at this late stage—when, frankly, there is little opportunity for meaningful scrutiny of it—a provision that strikes at a fairly important constitutional point in relation to the Channel Islands as dependent territories requires further explanation from the Minister.

Essentially, the difficulty is that saying that this is just a backstop power is one thing, but the Government giving themselves a backstop power that can be used unilaterally—possibly without any consultation, although I accept that that is unlikely—takes us down a very difficult and dangerous constitutional path. I think that this requires greater scrutiny than this House is able to give it today, because once I have given way to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), I will not say much more about it.