Fisheries Bill [HL]

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment. I admit that there is, perhaps uncharacteristically, a smidgen of innovation in this part of the Bill. The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and I will listen to the Minister’s reply very carefully because, as we know from Northern Ireland and “cash for ash”, these schemes can have unintended consequences. While, as always, I commend the Government on being determined to keep the discard ban active and well managed, we need to understand how this will operate practically and make sure that those unintended consequences do not arise.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I seek clarification as I raised a number of points earlier in the Bill relating to this issue. The amendment is useful in that regard to tweak information out of my noble friend. I wondered what the background was to the move away from eliminating discards to this discard prevention charging scheme. Is it from the model developed in New Zealand, and are the Government satisfied that that model is working better now than when there were initial teething problems?

I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify, but I understand that this provision is not deemed to apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Has he had any discussions with the devolved Administrations to see if they are proposing to go down this path at a future stage? I understand that the Scottish Government may bring forward their own Scottish fisheries Bill in this regard; I simply do not know the answer to that.

In Clause 28, how does my noble friend imagine the discard prevention charges being monitored? The way that subsection (4)(a) and (b) is drafted could indicate that this is a voluntary scheme. Are the Government minded to link the scheme to the REM that we discussed earlier, and would that involve cameras on boats as well as other equipment?

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

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.

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps I may make an obvious point. It is generally understood that discarding is continuing as it always has done and that there is very little change in fishers’ activity in that regard. Therefore, bringing in a charge will be a greater incentive to them to carry on as they are at the moment. I welcome this initiative but for the scheme to be successful there has to be remote electronic monitoring or whatever on the vessels so that fishers cannot discard at sea. The scheme will work only if that is done; otherwise, it will be an additional incentive to discard.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

That reminds me of a point that my noble friend Lady McIntosh raised. We have had a discussion about the requirements—not only REM but all the ways in which we need to work. We absolutely need to work with industry but we also need to say to it, “It is in your vital interests to work on this area because, in the end, if there aren’t sustainable stocks, there isn’t a sustainable industry”. They are so intertwined. I repeat that, once a scheme is up and running, the existing arrangements for prosecution of overfishing and the issuing of fines remain. This is an add-on, a further tool. There are other countries where it has worked well; this is an opportunity and work is in hand. We want to get the best scheme. It is important that we look internationally to see where it has worked and where it has not so that, when we deploy this, it hits the right target.

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I assure noble Lords that saying what I have said is not in any way to diminish anything that has been said on the issue of the importance of scientific endeavour, but I wanted to put on the record what we think the Bill enables. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Teverson]

May I come back on a couple of points? I thank the Minister for his positivity and I am grateful that he points out that the Bill allows financial intervention in terms of selective gear—that is very useful. One of the things that has come out from Select Committee work is that something that is perhaps not tracked by government, and I am not saying that this is easy, is how selectivity is being applied or is increasing. It is one of those areas that is quite important to track, so I just make that point.

I find it difficult to accept the idea that by giving a financial answer to sustainability we will get a rush to fish. Let us get back to the real world. The way it has worked in the past and will do in the future is that there will be, I presume, an annual agreement about quotas for the various fisheries. At that point we will get the dilemma that if we have an extremely low TAC we know that it will be very difficult for certain sectors of the industry, whichever sectors they are. That is the point at which the political compromise will be made and we will say, “All right, that is not sustainable. We have to help coastal communities, so we will fudge the scientific advice and allow that quota to go up.” This amendment would mean that at that annual negotiation we can say, “No, don’t fudge the scientific advice. You have to go by the scientific advice, but we recognise that there is pain in that sector of the fleet and we will find a financial way around it.” The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has often made the point that this has often been used in Europe as an alternative, sometimes quite successfully.

I was in Mevagissey at the weekend, looking at the vessels there. It is the second largest Cornish fishing port, and there was a proud sticker on the side of one wheelhouse saying “Fishing For Plastic.” There are schemes like that, so we are not paying for fishers to sit down with their feet up and enjoy the rest of the year at the taxpayers’ expense. It is a bit like the initiative on elms in the Agriculture Bill that I praised in the past. There are ways of doing it. There is no incentive to rush out to get your quota and then stop: this is about an annual situation. Responding to the positivity of the Minister, I am trying to explain that this amendment does not do that; it is trying to solve the dilemma in a positive way, a way that has been done by other fisheries administrations before. I think it is key to solving the economic issue while making sure that we are able to stick to sustainable fish stocks and scientific advice. I just wanted to make that clear.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made that point extremely well, and I hope the Minister will take it away and reflect on it further. As he says, there are all sorts of sustainability activities that one can imagine the fishers being funded to carry out that are not just straight fishing. If we were being more imaginative in the Bill, we could be more imaginative on those sorts of issues as well.

I want to say something about funding, because the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, quoted the Secretary of State on long-term funding commitments and asked which budget they will come from. I know that the Minister mentioned the spending review, but that is not the same as the commitment that seems already to have been made. I think he said that he would write or give us further information. Perhaps he could do that in writing to say what that longer-term funding will be and how it will be funded in the future. That would be extremely helpful, because that question mark still hangs over this.

I was not convinced. I did not come to bang my drum for Amendment 113 in particular, but the more the Minister tried to rubbish it, the more I got quite defensive about it. For example, in the Bill we have this long list of reasons for funding to be given by the Secretary of State, some of which are quite major and others one might think are not so significant. We are trying to say that collecting the scientific data is as important as them. I am sure that it is. It must be on a par with that because it is at the heart of our sustainability measures. Given that we already have a long list, I cannot see why we cannot add a paragraph (j) to the bottom of that long list.

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Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

117: Clause 34, page 23, line 15, at end insert—
“( ) licensing of fishing vessels.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment includes an additional activity as a relevant marine function for the purposes of imposing a charge.

[Lord Teverson]

I shall speak also to Amendment 119. When I looked through the list of items that the Marine Management Organisation should be able to charge for, I was surprised that it did not include fishing vessel licensing. It is like saying that people do not have to pay road fund licence tax for their cars, which I am sure we would all like individually but would not be a good idea for the environment. In this case, for incumbents, we are not even charging for quota, or whatever, and yet vessel licensing is an important activity. I just do not understand why that is not in the list. The majority of the fishing industry can well afford to pay the administrative cost of licensing. All sorts of Treasury rules limit how much public charging can take place to ensure that it is reasonable. I know that variation of licences can take a lot of the regulator’s time, so I do not understand why it is not included. It should be. I shall be interested to hear from the Minister.

My other amendment states that the Marine Management Organisation should not be dependent on public funding. A huge number of regulators in this country do not receive any public finance. Two years ago, I asked a Question about that and the Government kindly sent me a list of 25 regulators in the UK that require no public funding because they charge the industry for regulating it. I will not read them all out, but it goes from the Animals in Science Regulation Unit, which I must admit I had not heard of, to much more important organisations, such as the Land Registry, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Office of Rail and Road, Ofwat and the Oil and Gas Authority. In financial services, there is the PRA and the Financial Conduct Authority. There is Ofgem in energy. There is the Civil Aviation Authority. All those organisations just say, “We provide an important public good, the regulation of an industry, and we expect the industry to pay for doing it.”.

I do not understand why we as taxpayers should have to pay subsidy for the industries that the MMO regulates, from offshore wind through to fisheries, all of which are extremely profitable. Why do the Conservative Government not expect the taxpayer to be relieved of that burden? That is obvious to me. That is why I have tabled the amendment. The Marine Management Organisation should fend for itself. It should be able to set sensible charges, as any other UK regulator does. I should be very interested to hear from the Minister why taxpayers should subsidise those extremely profitable industries, which include, as I said, offshore wind, marinas and most of the fishing industry. I beg to move.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

I rise to speak to Amendment 118 in my name, which is a probing amendment and seeks to upgrade the regulations on this matter from negative to affirmative. While the Bill’s negative procedure has not been commented on by your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee or Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and may seem technical, it involves money.

Under Clause 34(5), the MMO has considerable discretion. The initial charging structure becomes important as the UK sets up the fisheries framework outside the CFP. Some questions arise, to which it will be important to have answers. Will the MMO undertake this charging function on the basis of full cost recovery? That lies behind the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. Schedule 7 replicates that clause in relation to Scotland on page 74, Wales on page 75 and Northern Ireland on page 76. Is it expected that all the Administrations will set up identical charging structures to avoid any competitive imbalances?

I acknowledge that the MMO is an existing body with an excellent track record; its relationships with stakeholders are usually very positive and productive. However, if this legislation established a new public body, your Lordships’ House and the other place would have a strong interest in the exercise of this power and the procedure attached to it. When the Minister replies, I would be grateful if he could give as much detail as possible on the level of charges, the frequency of any changes envisaged and the relevant percentage of cost recovery that any sector of the industry will be required to cover.

This last point is of particular interest, as I have noted, and covered by Amendment 119 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I am curious about the noble Lord’s use of “appropriate” in proposed new paragraph (b) in relation to his subsequent use of “must” in proposed new paragraph (c), in that there may be some implicit contradictions in the amendment. I ask the noble Lord: does the maximising of charges on the 10 metre-plus fleet mean that it could pay more pro rata and therefore be seen, in some way, as partly subsiding the under 10-metre fleet? This amendment also seems to mandate the MMO to make full cost recovery across all its responsibilities. I await the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, relating to the charging, or not, of the MMO’s services. He is absolutely right that in most other industries the regulators are funded by the industry.

I had cause to write to the MMO because a neighbour of mine in Cornwall had a problem with it over a small planning issue. I do not want to get into the rights and wrongs of it except to say that the general reaction of the neighbour and others was that the service was incredibly slow. In fact, it took a whole year for them to get an answer on whether they needed to apply for a licence. I suspect that this had a lot to do with the fact that the MMO was probably subject to government financial cuts and was not allowed enough people. I am sure that it is very good at what it does, technically and commercially, but it did not have enough people to answer on this small issue.

Looking at all the regulated industries mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, some of which I know about and some of which I do not, whatever one thinks of their decisions, they usually operate in a timely and professional manner. If they do not, we can still raise issues in your Lordships’ House. At least it is not an issue that they do not have enough money to employ the right people. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister why this sector gets all the regulation for nothing while in virtually every other sector, the people who are regulated have to pay.

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps I may come back to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, whose point is well made. I have probably not written the amendment exactly as it should be and he is right to pull me up on it. What I am trying to say is that that part of the amendment seeks to recognise that there has to be some sort of relationship between the charging regime and the ability of a particular unit in the fisheries industry to make money. It is clear that there is a deep division in the sector between larger vessels, which on the whole are pretty profitable to very profitable, and the under 10-metre sector, which struggles rather more. I would not want to see punitive charges being put on that sector because that would not be the way to proceed.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his amendment. It is Government policy to set charges in order to recover, where possible and appropriate, the costs of services provided to industry, which is why we are using this Bill as an opportunity to expand the existing powers available to the MMO. I should also say at this juncture that I want to acknowledge the noble Lord’s service during his time with the MMO, which I have been informed about many times. He has an advantage over us all in terms of knowing the inner workings of the organisation.

Currently, the costs of regulating sea fisheries management functions are met by the taxpayer. Fisheries management is one element of the broader function, although it includes other activities that will not be included within the scope of the charging power. However, in line with Treasury guidance, it may be more appropriate for some costs to be met by those being regulated. This may sometimes include services relating to compliance and monitoring.

The charging powers under the Fisheries Bill will enable us to move over time to increased cost recovery for the MMO where appropriate, thus ensuring consistency with the application of charges to other users of MMO-regulated services and more widely across the Defra group. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his comments, which I will take away as well. We are all in public service and we want to get these things done in as timely a way as possible.

As set out in the Fisheries White Paper, costs recovery will ensure that the MMO has the funding it needs to carry out a process of continuous improvement, making the service it runs as efficient as possible. We will need to work closely with industry to agree the pace of this change to ensure that it is sustainable. That is why the clause also places an obligation on the Secretary of State to consult appropriate persons before implementing a charging scheme. This will provide the industry with an early indication of the type of services being proposed, the detail of the charges’ composition, and when the charges are going to be brought into effect. I should also say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that paragraph 7(3) of Schedule 3 to the Bill already provides for the relevant national authority—in England, the Secretary of State—to make regulations authorising the making of charges in relation to a sea fishing licence.

Amendment 118 would change the parliamentary procedure for regulations made under Clause 34 from the negative resolution procedure to the affirmative. The Government have carefully considered the delegated powers in the Bill and the procedures which should apply to regulations. We consider that we have struck the right balance between the need for parliamentary scrutiny and the need to be able to update MMO charges through secondary legislation. Indeed, I am reminded that it is usual for fees and charges to be imposed by arm’s-length bodies to be set out in regulations made under the negative resolution procedure. A recent example is the power for the Secretary of State to charge fees through regulations under the Ivory Act 2018, where the negative procedure is used.

As highlighted earlier when we discussed the procedure for the days at sea regulations, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has reconfirmed in its report of 26 February its view that we have struck the right balance with all our delegated powers in this Bill.

Turning to Amendment 119, the MMO has some existing cost-recovery powers that are currently utilised for marine activity. An activity for which the MMO currently charges is customer-initiated advice direct to developers without Planning Inspectorate involvement. Such developers could seek licences for building wind farms, for example. While the reasons for the amendment are entirely understandable, the Government feel that prohibiting the MMO receiving grant in aid funding would risk significantly limiting the activities it currently provides to industry. It is current government policy not to charge for activities such as control and enforcement, marine planning, research and delivering grant schemes. If the MMO were put under an obligation to self-fund entirely, there would be difficulties with charging for and delivering the activities I just outlined.

So far as paragraphs (b) and (c) in the amendment are concerned, there are existing government guidelines in place to provide guidance on cost recovery. Clause 34 also sets a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to consult before any charging scheme is introduced. The industry would therefore be fully engaged with any decision on a proposed scheme.

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I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that the charge will not exceed the reasonable costs incurred in carrying out specified fisheries management functions. Again, this is work in progress. It has been helpful to have this debate on the desire for the MMO and us to move forward on cost recovery. We need to work candidly with industry on the requirement for consultation. The direction of travel is entirely in line with the noble Lord’s aspirations. There are areas in which we think this is appropriate, but current government policy is that we would not seek cost recovery in areas such as research, because they are important and in the national interest. On the basis of work continuing on this matter, I hope the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Teverson]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. Did I hear correctly that the Bill already gives powers to charge for the licensing of fishing vessels or the variation of those licences?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Yes; as I said, it is in the Bill. Paragraph 7(3) of Schedule 3 provides for the relevant national authority—the Secretary of State in England’s case—to make regulations

“authorising the making of charges in relation to a sea fishing licence.”

If there is any embellishment to some elements of that, I will include it in the letter, but that is what Schedule 3 says.

[Lord Teverson]

I thank the Minister for that reassurance, and for his extensive reply. Regarding the funding of the MMO, I fully agree that it has some broader activities, including marine planning, although I am not aware that it does research. That is new to me.

The direction of travel is absolutely right, and there are all sorts of challenges. We know that departmental budgets get cut. Defra is always on the front line of those cuts, as is the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and a number of others. When cuts occur, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies have their budgets cut as well, and although we expect increased efficiency from all those bodies, sometimes they are unable to provide exactly those services, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, illustrated. We must try to free them from that, because on the whole, what do users of those services want? They want quick decisions; they want to invest in offshore wind, or marinas, or coastal developments or nuclear power stations. Obviously, they are worried about the charges, but they want action. If there is proper cost recovery and those resources can be put against those needs, it will suit everybody, because everybody can get on with the job they want to do. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 117 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

122: After Clause 45, insert the following new Clause—
“Producer organisations
Producer organisations in England must publish on their websites the following information—(a) the names of their members;(b) their most recent annual accounts;(c) the sources of their funds;(d) their constitution;(e) the quotas and other fishing rights distributed to each member and any other party;(f) their method of distributing quota and other fishing rights;(g) all management plans required of them by legislation or regulation;(h) the members of their governing bodies.”

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, one of the central themes of Brexit was escaping the common fisheries policy. However, a bedrock of that policy is the producer organisations and I do not think that the Bill refers to them anywhere. They are effectively co-operatives in the fishing industry, but they are an essential part of the common market organisation which is the core of the common fisheries policy. They have important powers and abilities, which stem from the fact that they allocate the vast majority of quota—itself a very valuable national resource—among their members.

I am not against producer organisations. There might be better ways of doing this in future, but I do not disagree with the Government ejecting them and finding some other method. What is exceptionally important, given the value of the assets they distribute, is that there is maximum transparency about who owns them, their legal structure, how they make decisions about their constitution, how they distribute their assets and who their members are—all information we want to know when taking about valuable assets that are part of the national resource of fish stocks and quotas.

This is a probing amendment more than anything else, to try to understand the Government’s approach to producer organisations. Will it be just carry on as you are? I believe there is a need for full transparency about how these organisations operate. I will be interested to hear from the Minister how the Government will ensure transparency about this key national asset. I beg to move.

[Lord Grantchester]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for tabling Amendment 122 on producer organisations. It is right to say that the more someone learns about the fishing industry, the more they realise they know very little. This is certainly true of a key part of the fisheries industry: the boat fraternity, its ownership, quota and producer organisations. It is far from transparent, which makes for a difficult task when trying to appreciate the consequences and implications of Government policy. This amendment is one way to shed light into this opaque part of the industry. Whether it is the right or best way to bring transparency the Minister can help to determine. If there are other, better ways, perhaps he can bring them to our attention, which would be to the benefit of everyone.

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[Lord Teverson]

I thank the Minister for that extensive reply. I knew that it might be a hostage to fortune when I said that this was not mentioned in the Bill. I apologise to his Bill team for not reading their Bill sufficiently before making that comment. I welcome the Minister’s response; again, it is around the direction of travel. Transparency is important in this area. He is absolutely right that producer organisations have marketing and production plans and a much broader remit than just managing quota. I ask the Minister and his colleagues—perhaps his honourable colleague at the other end who deals with fisheries full-time—to keep an eye on this issue and progress it, rather than forget it. It is for the industry’s longer-term good that it is transparent and beyond criticism. I thank the Minister for his reply; I accept it and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 122 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

123: After Clause 45, insert the following new Clause—
“Marine regulators
(1) The Secretary of State must carry out a consultation regarding—(a) the rationalisation of, and(b) the sharing of,regulatory activities between the Marine Management Organisation and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and lay a report of the conclusions of the consultation before both Houses of Parliament.(2) The Marine Management Organisation and the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities must—(a) fully cooperate in each of their geographic areas in order to maximise the use of resources and intelligence;(b) draw up and submit joint plans for cooperation in fisheries management to the Secretary of State annually.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to ensure the best use of all marine regulator resources by better shared facilities, resources and coordination.

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[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, we come to the last group of amendments. I suppose one is not really allowed to call this an amendment with my tongue in my cheek; it is around an important issue. The original Marine and Coastal Access Act laid out quite a structure around how the seas are regulated. It had a divide between IFCAs, which were inshore, up to six miles out—if I have it right, rather than 12 miles—and the MMO, which went out beyond that on our territorial waters to 12 miles, and then there was the EEZ fisheries enforcement. I do not think that that divide has worked particularly well. Also, when the MMO was originally set up, there was a vision that it would have a much broader role over what happens on our seas. That role is, of course, also divided with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—a very important agency but under the purview of the Department for Transport. It seems to me that there are opportunities for better co-ordination and more efficiency in the way that we regulate our seas, in all sorts of fashions. I do not necessarily say that this is easy, but I do not think that we are at the right solution at the moment.

In fact, in spite of my amendment, the biggest challenge is perhaps between the roles of the IFCAs and the MMO. That is why I have perhaps been overprescriptive in this amendment in saying that there needs to be an actual plan between the MMO and those organisations—for each region that the IFCAs cover—to make sure those resources are used efficiently. As the Minister mentioned, I was proud to be a board member of the MMO for six years. I am no longer that but, during that time, there was—I would not say a turf war—quite a struggle between IFCAs and the MMO. The IFCAs were concerned that they would be taken over by the MMO, or that the MMO would be quite strong in telling them what to do. It is a difficult relationship. It works well in certain areas—it has always worked very well in the eastern region—but not necessarily elsewhere. I am trying to highlight that.

The Minister has often said that there are now all sorts of co-ordination methods out there on the seas, which I welcome. But I still feel that the workings of the IFCA-MMO relationship is not good enough and that there is room for rationalisation between our ocean regulators, the MCA and the MMO. As previously, I am very interested to hear the Minister’s comments on how the Government see this. The main challenge is making sure that IFCAs and the MMO work closely together, maximising their resources and maximising sustainability and conservation. I beg to move.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 128, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, has attached her name.

In 2001, I was top of the Private Member’s Bill ballot in the other place and introduced the Marine Wildlife Conservation Bill, which passed its stages in the Commons but, sadly, did not go through your Lordships’ House. At that time, I realised how complex the whole marine environment—in the wider sense of the word—is, including how many different interests there are and the different contexts; fisheries is the most obvious, but there are many others. I am pleased to say that my early foray into this area led to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, to which my Bill was a little nudge.

I am a very simple person and this is a very simple amendment. It seeks to add to the Short Title of the Bill the words “and Marine Conservation”, as in the Long Title. I have listened to much informed debate here, and now have much more knowledge of fisheries than I have ever had; when I have not been in the Chamber, I have looked at Hansard. I therefore realise that this is very complex. I think it is the Government’s intention to make the Bill not just about the fishing industry but about sustainability, and to look at marine conservation—as I said, it is in the Long Title. It is important to put it in the Short Title also because a lot of people, including probably me, think that when we talk about fisheries we are talking purely about the industry. It is of course much more than that.

As most life in the marine environment is under the sea, it is not visible—there are obvious exceptions, such as birds and the cetaceans that surface from time to time. I am not sure that the public are entirely aware of what has happened in our depleted under-sea environment. I think that if it was terrestrial, many people would realise what was going on. It is rather like the American bison that once roamed the plains in their millions, and was then reduced to very few, or perhaps the passenger pigeon that once darkened the skies, and was shot and used for pet food, and then suddenly went extinct. If people realised what was happening under the water to a lot of our fish stocks, they would be appalled.

This Bill does a lot towards that. Although I am a little disappointed with some areas, I am beginning to understand this place and know that the Government will look again at some of these things on Report, and that the Bill will go down to the other place. But we have to be very careful. In the first speech I made on this Bill, I mentioned the Newfoundland cod stocks that disappeared. I am very concerned that, if we are not careful, similar extinctions will occur, which will have an economic and social impact on our fishing communities, not to mention on wildlife. Obviously, it is not just us who enjoy the nutritious meal that is fish; the sand eels that are taken are a very important part of the diet of many seabirds.

I always want to be helpful to the Government—it is a trait I have had ever since my party has been in government—and I think this would be a good addition to the Bill. It will not cost much, only the cost of reprinting, and it would send a message. Of course, it would also make it easier for us to make sure that the Government’s feet are firmly to the fire on some of the conservation measures in the Bill. With that, I leave this with the Government. If they want to take it as their own clever idea, I would be more than delighted.

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In light of this explanation, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Teverson]

I thought that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, was far better than mine. I am very sad that, despite the fact that it would have “no legal effect”, it is not possible. We come to the end of Committee. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is not still here, because he was here at the beginning. He said that he was just so excited; I am sure we all remember that strong advocate of Brexit saying how exciting it was to be able to talk about all the new ideas coming through in these amendments. Well, where are we? We have had the charging for things that should not be discarded, which was a change, but, other than that, I find the Bill very conservative. If I were to give the Government one bit of advice—I never thought I would hear myself say this—I would tell the Minister to deliver the Bill to Dominic Cummings at No. 10 and ask him to sex it up. I think that is seriously what is required. We have an opportunity here really to make a difference. This is Brexit and we are an independent coastal state for goodness’ sake—let us make the most of it. But what do we have? Something that is really just the status quo. Anyway, that is my feeling about it.

I thank the Minister for his perseverance with all of us during Committee—I know we do not normally do this at this time, but I really do—and I thank the noble Baroness. On this amendment, I recognise the progress that the Government are making in this area. I think, in reality, that the IFCAs and the MMO are structurally flawed; this is very difficult to solve. I am not saying anything else, but progress is being made there. The memorandums of understanding are probably new since I was involved in this—or they are being developed —but I welcome them. With those comments, and my commiserations to the noble Lord, Lord Randall, on his last effort, I look forward to Report and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 123 withdrawn.