Fishing Industry

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid I am not yet in a position to provide that update, but I will do my utmost to ensure that it is made available as soon as possible.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I grew up in Conwy, which was then a busy fishing community and is still heavily involved—tragically at times. Even this January, a fishing boat, the “Nicola Faith”, was lost with all its crew. Fishing can be a very perilous job for those involved, and we need the rescue operation—the coastguard, helicopter searches and, possibly best known, the RNLI, with 444 lifeboats around our coast. It is a legendary charity. Has the Minister had any discussions whatever with those organisations, especially the lifeboat organisation, which I am sure has suffered in fundraising because of the pandemic—anything to make sure that we keep the lifeboats and are able to support them adequately, as they are vital back-ups to our fishing fleet?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely valuable point. I have absolutely no doubt that the Fishing Minister, my colleague Victoria Prentis, and our representative here in this House, my newly appointed noble friend Lord Benyon, have had meetings with the lifeboat organisations and others that the noble Lord mentioned. Of course, the difficulties he describes have been heavily exacerbated by the pandemic, as in almost every sector. I was pleased that up to £23 million of emergency funding was made available during the first part of this year to support the seafood business affected by the impact of Covid-19, as well as the new and tricky import conditions.