Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the Minister to this House and look forward to working with him.

When I started contemplating this debate, one phrase kept popping into my mind: “There are plenty more fish in the sea.” It is usually used, of course, by people who have perhaps heard a bit too much from their friends about their broken hearts and wish to reassure them. I tried to look up the first use of this phrase, but it seems to have been lost in the mists of time. As the noble Viscount has just outlined, that is because things have changed very much over centuries. The tenor of this metaphor in the age of online dating may be more true than it has ever been, but the vehicle for the metaphor no longer bears the weight that it carries.

There is a lot of focus on the state of nature on land. We have recently seen reports from NGOs, and people can see for themselves what is known as “insectageddon”: the fact that, when we drive along the highway at night, we no longer see insects spattered over our windscreens. The loss of, say, our cod is much less visible and much less talked about. We owe a real debt to the commentator George Monbiot, who has drawn attention to this and written about the fact that it goes back a very long way—further even than the noble Viscount went. Paleolithic fishers were catching giant beasts that medieval fishers could not imagine, and what medieval fishers saw modern fishers cannot imagine even in their dreams. We have shifting baseline syndrome and we should never forget that.

Before I get to the main points of this debate, I will say one more thing directly to the Minister: although not specifically our topic today, it is clear from this background that we need to see many more marine reserves and many more genuine no-take zones protecting our fish stocks.

On the specific point of today’s debate, I record my debt to the Greens/EFA parliamentary group fisheries adviser Björn Stockhausen, who very much informed what I am about to say. The Green parties of the United Kingdom will continue to be part of the European Green Party, with which we will continue to work very closely. Similarly, our fish stocks will continue to be European after Brexit. Fish do not carry passports. If they tucked them under their fin on one side, they would be able to swim only in circles. They do not stop at borders. We will have to continue to work very closely with our European neighbours.

Several noble Lords have referred, as I did yesterday, to the fact that the discard ban is not simply an EU rule. This is the people’s rule, fought for and won by people. It is up to the Government to enforce this rule to continue to reflect the will of the people after Brexit—and up to your Lordships’ House to scrutinise what the Government are doing about that, as these two reports do.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who said that not much attention is being paid to this by NGOs. We should pay tribute to the excellent ClientEarth, which put out a report last October highlighting how France, Denmark and Spain are, like us, failing to enforce this ban. I ask the Minister to ensure that, in ongoing talks and negotiations, we focus on doing the right thing ourselves so that we can push for others to do the right thing as well; this needs to be part of the negotiations.

A number of noble Lords have referred to the challenges of being a fisher. They need to be properly paid; we need to look at issues that also apply to our farmers and growers about the payment pressures put on them by supermarkets and multinational companies. We know that much of our stock, our catch, is sold into European markets. What kind of access will our fishers have to those markets?

In light of the food strategy for England that will come forward quite soon, we also need to think about more sustainable, closer-to-home consumption of some of our catch. I ask the Minister to ensure that his work is closely integrated with the work of the food strategy, in this area and others.

I come to a couple of specific points on these reports. Paragraph 49 of the EU Committee’s report refers to how

“Using different types of equipment could enable some fishers to fish more selectively.”


What do the Government plan to do to help and support fishers to do that?

The report also extensively covers the issue of remote electronic monitoring. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has already covered that point extensively so I will merely say that I want to ask the questions that she has already asked.

Paragraph 57 refers to a system of

“real time notifications that is useful to, and trusted by, fishers.”

We need to change systems and indeed, as other noble Lords have said, cultures so that we can reduce the choke risks for fishers. What plans do the Government have to support that happening?

Finally, there is a small area that I want to address—small in both senses of the term. Paragraph 71 refers to vessels under 10 metres not having the same ability to mitigate choke risks. What are the Government planning to do to support and help those vessels under 10 metres in particular? Those vessels, which often work locally in inshore waters and are a part of strong local economies, make a different kind of contribution and, I would say, a very positive one, unlike the giant vessels taking huge volumes from our seas and oceans. What are the Government planning to do to ensure that we have strong support for those crucial small vessels?

National Biodiversity Network Report

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the point about gene editing is that it is very important that we use the best science to ensure that we feed the world and restore nature. The whole point about the scientific endeavour is to make sure that we do both. We must be aiming for both. We cannot find ourselves enhancing the environment and then not producing enough food. We need to work on that as a joint endeavour.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to neonicotinoids. I am sure that he will be aware of the report from Japan in Science this week of the horrific effects documented there on the lake and fish populations. We have been through this again and again with different pesticides that arrive as a wonderful new cure and then are exposed as causing massive damage. Is it not time to stop soaking our countryside in pesticides, with the effects that we have seen on nature, and move to organic and near-organic solutions for agriculture? That has to be the way forward for nature and people.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the balance is as I have sought to describe it. Yes, we need to improve and work on soil fertility and soil health. Mixed farming is very important. However, scientific advances in integrated pest management are the way forward. We have to move to a more nature-friendly form of farming. That is important and farmers recognise that. This country can do it well.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am honoured to follow the noble Baroness, with whom I share a recently acquired—in my case—interest in fake ermine, and in many other animal welfare issues. I rise conscious that I have spent only a few days in this Chamber, yet already I have encountered great encouragement and kindness—something I will continue to rely on in the days ahead, as we face up to the stupendous chaos that is British politics.

That kindness is in spite of the fact that I am aware I am being looked at with some trepidation, arising from the knowledge that I am bringing into this House an unfamiliar kind of politics: the politics of Extinction Rebellion, of the anti-fracking stalwarts at Preston New Road and Misson Springs, and of the tree protection groups in my home city. I have been reminded of the words of a senior councillor in Sheffield who, when I invited him to join me in front of a tree-feller’s lorry in defiance of police orders, said: “You Greens are dangerous”, and scurried away. In introducing myself, I give noble Lords fair warning that we Greens are aiming to overturn the entire status quo. We want to radically transform our society, our economy, our environment and our politics. Yet I would argue—to borrow a phrase from the other side—there is no alternative.

Earlier, we heard the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, referring to the Government’s growth strategy, yet we Greens know that there cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet. That is not politics; it is physics. This new kind of politics is just what your Lordships’ House, the other place, the whole country, needs. Things will not continue as they are. We must build something new, different and much better.

I speak regularly in schools, colleges and universities, sometimes through the excellent organisation Speakers for Schools, which I commend to noble Lords. Often, I begin with an apology. On behalf of my generation—I am 53—I say to this new generation: “I am sorry. We have made a right mess of things”. But my focus is always on hope. Together, all of the generations, from the climate strikers to the oldest Member of this House, can together build something new: a far better society.

I must, early on, offer my profound thanks to my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb for her support. I know that she will enjoy hearing that phrase in the Chamber after the lonely years she has spent here working incredibly hard as the sole Green representative. I also pay tribute to the Herculean labours of Caroline Lucas in the other place. My noble friend Lady Jones has set a standard that I hope to live up to, of using this Chamber and its processes to best effect while never getting too comfortable.

I address noble Lords today specifically about the agriculture Bill. My first degree is in agricultural science, and I continue to be fascinated by the amazing and still barely understood ecology of the soil on which all our lives depend. On other occasions, I will have cause to speak further on the subject of tardigrades and nematodes, mycelium and rhizobium, but you may be relieved to hear that I am not going to do any more soil science today.

I have not seen confirmation of whether the Government’s agriculture Bill will match their previous versions. I would be delighted if the Minister, when answering, could shed light on that. I suggest that three key things should be changed. The first is the provision of healthy food as a public good—earlier, the noble Baroness the Minister referred to the Government’s aims for farming, and food was not mentioned. Secondly, the Bill must ensure that the Secretary of State has a duty to act, rather than just the possibility of acting. Finally, the promotion of organic agriculture should be prioritised as the only form of agroecology that has a recognised system of registration.

Today, however, I will follow the tradition in telling noble Lords a little more about myself, and so will range back to the personal, which, as we feminists have long known, is intensely political. So that noble Lords do not have to sit there wondering, the accent comes from Australia. I am told that I am the second Australian-born woman to enter this Chamber, and I look forward to hearing the experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who was sitting opposite me earlier. Her accent has long graced this chamber, but that voice has far older antecedents. Noble Lords may not know that the first woman to speak in the other place, the suffragette Muriel Matters, who achieved that feat by chaining herself to the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in 1908, was also Australian. At that time, my native land was known as “The Workingman’s Paradise”. It boasted the world’s first Labour Government, and it rivalled Finland as a leading place in global social progress. Today, Finland still proudly holds that place—for example, with a schooling system that provides an education for life, not just exams—while, sadly, Australia’s politics has deeply degraded.

My other political tradition is from Sheffield, or what was once known as the “People’s Republic of South Yorkshire”. Sheffield was home to the first women’s suffrage society in the UK, founded in 1842—yes, before London’s—and the adopted home of the socialist and gay rights campaigner Edward Carpenter. He was a Green before Greens had been invented. As proof, I offer the fact that he brought sandals to Britain, even making his own. Even earlier, Sheffield was home to the Chartist poet Mary Hutton, the wife of a pen-knife cutler, who wrote a poem entitled “On the Poor Laws’ Amendment Bill”, which spoke of the legislators and the great allowing the poor,

“To writhe with endless pain and misery”.

Noble Lords, particularly those on the Benches opposite me, might care to consider the continuation of that suffering today, two centuries later, and the parallels with the endless pain and misery of universal credit. I would like to think that it is uncontroversial to say that the duty of the Government is to alleviate the suffering of those most in need rather than to add to it. This is one reason why I have long been a champion of a universal basic income, something you will be hearing a lot more about from me.

But I am aware of the time, and so will leave you with one key point. We on this planet, and in this country, have enough resources for everybody to have a decent life, for the natural world to be restored and for the climate emergency to be tackled, if we share those resources out fairly. As the Green Party has long said, economic and environmental justice are indivisible. That is a mountain for all of us to climb. I hope that noble Lords will join me in that, because, to quote the American suffragette Susan B Anthony, “failure is not an option”.