Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, in any business it is important to ensure that the industry is constantly refreshed by new blood and thus new ideas and new ways of working. The difficulty of acquiring a fishing quota is one of the very obvious reasons why we now have so few young people entering the fishing industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said. If you couple that fact with the statistic that...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I noted that in the earlier version of this Fisheries Bill, which came out over 18 months ago now, there was a clause early on that tried to define a UK fishing boat as one with at least one UK shareholder holding more than 5%. That seemed quite a low bar to me, but the thinking behind it was probably based on the 1970s attempt by the UK to apply an ownership limit to foreign...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 14 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and I apologise to him that I did not add my name to it. Somehow, in my muddle of the various sheets of amendments, I managed to miss this one until I saw it on the Marshalled List. When I made my plea in Committee for the need for much firmer links between the aspirational objectives...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it is always my ambition to kick-start a change in a Bill in Committee and, hopefully, persuade the Government to pick up the baton and run with their own amendment based on my and others’ suggestions—although in a better format, with better language and so on. However, it seems that an equal and alternative route to success is to get the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to pick up the...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, my reference to the Marine (Scotland) Act was really trying to say that the authorities up there went for the socioeconomic objective rather than the long-term environmental objective and, as a result, six years after the Marine (Scotland) Act, fishing continues in what should be a protected area. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said in his introduction, short-term socioeconomic...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it is probably my naivety, but it seems to me that Amendment 2 is one of those amendments that really should not cause the Government too much of a problem. It just subtly tells them that their first attempt at outlining a sustainability objective is good, but not quite right or strong enough. It needs to emphasise more the importance of both a short-term and a long-term healthy...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, UK rural and seaside tourism is not a good business at the best of times, with often only part-time work in the summer from which you hope to save enough to survive the winter. People in Cornwall are now talking about three consecutive winters, owning to the freeze on income during this summer. So when do the Government hope that their coastal or tourism task force, which she...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I declare my farming and landowning interests. I have a lot of good things to say about this Bill but no time to say them. The change to ELMS and the wider approach to the food chain are great—it is about more than just production on the land—but, despite the paper Health and Harmony: The Future for Food, Farming and the Environment in a Green Brexit, there seems to be little in...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, Covid-19 has shown the importance of having a resilient food industry. It is obvious that our food security needs to be under constant review. We do not need dodgy imports that undercut our own agriculture, and, as we move away from the cosy security of the CAP, we must ensure that our own high-quality domestic agriculture remains the foundation of our nation’s food security...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 105 because I think that this group of amendments, around Clause 25 and the overhaul of the fishing opportunities, is a really important part of the Bill. I do not think that Defra and the devolved authorities have yet given it quite enough thought. As the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, has said, it is an opportunity and we must not let it slip. When we...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 81 on the equitable treatment of British and foreign-licensed boats. I would have added my support to the previous group of amendments on remote electronic monitoring, but the mood of the House was not for another person to stand up and agree. But I will do so now. We will be in close negotiations with the European Union, and—we have been looking...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, particularly Amendments 98 and 99. It is an interesting idea to have the IFCAs involved in determining fisheries’ opportunities. There does not seem to be much respect for the MMO among smaller fishermen. In our committee last year, for instance, we heard complaints that it tended to take a short-term view of micromanaging individual small...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 34. It is obvious that setting quotas at MSY is a largely short-term approach. I realise that it is incredibly complicated, particularly for mixed fisheries—the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, just introduced me to a new complication—but the point is that MSY tends to be set to allow for some harvest or return from whatever level the stocks reached, unless, of...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 31 in this grouping because I think it is important that we put in place agreements with other nations who host most of the stock we live on. When I first heard that a new UK fisheries policy was one of the primary reasons for Brexit, I scoffed, because surely fish do not understand national borders. As we know, they move about and we can never have a...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I thank noble Lords for taking part in the debate and, on the whole, for their support of the principles involved, or indeed the accountability of the fisheries authorities. I totally accept that the amendment may have been too loosely drawn up, for which I apologise to the House. The objective was to create a discussion and a response on whether the objectives in Clause 1 are worth more than...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, this amendment largely speaks for itself. It is all very well having all the noble objectives in Clause 1—made, one hopes, even more noble if some of our discussions to date bear fruit in the future—but, as they used to say in 16th-century diplomatic circles, “Fine words butter no parsnips”. Once we are cast adrift on the post-Brexit realities of running our own fisheries,...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, as far as I am concerned, I am dealing only with coastal fisheries and marine fish.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords—
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I apologise to the Minister. It may be that he cannot answer this question but, when it comes to the future division, he said that the boats may have access to the waters but not necessarily to the quota, which explains many of the problems. Is the quota going to be divided into the areas that currently exist—7A, 7B, 7C, 7D and 6—or are we going to have completely new areas? How localised...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 2 and would have done so to Amendment 6, had I been allowed, but there were too many subscribers. I support Amendment 2 because, as many noble Lords know, the existence of intergenerational poverty and deprivation in rural areas has long been of concern to me. While the numerous villages and market towns throughout rural England all have their problems...
