Lord Teverson (LD)

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 8, 9 and 15. Amendments 8 and 9 would do a similar thing to my noble friend Lady Miller’s amendment, in that they would add to the licence conditions not just plastic—I agree entirely with my noble friend’s comments on that—but the proper protection of populations beyond national jurisdictions and the deep seabed. These amendments are the least probing ones to this clause. It would be very straight- forward to apply them to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. A lot has moved on over the years, but these three areas—plastic, fisheries and the deep seabed—are hugely relevant now. These amendments would save the Government having to amend the 2009 Act on another occasion. My Amendment 15 is more probing. Having said that, I feel very strongly about how we manage fisheries on the high seas. That is a huge problem. It is estimated that something like 40% of all stocks on the high seas are currently overfished. We have huge problems with by-catch of non-target species. Then there is something I used to know as Klondiking, which is the transfer of fish from smaller vessels to large factory vessels in the open sea; it is a method usually employed by illegal, unreported and unregulated—IUU—fisheries. This is a big issue. The irony is that anybody outside this area of knowledge would probably be surprised that fisheries do not really appear in the BBNJ. What does it do? In effect, it says that we are going to delegate this issue to the management regimes that are out there now—that is, the regional fisheries management organisations—and let them get on with it as they have done in previous years. We are a member of five of those organisations: two to do with tuna, two to do with the Atlantic and one to do with salmon. That work is important. The fact that the organisations are there is good, but their processes are rather weak, certainly in terms of enforcement, by-catch and data, because they can deal only with single species, rather than the biosphere or ecological systems as a whole. On trans-shipment and the lack of observers, there are no rules for any species other than the specific ones on which nations are agreed. There is a real issue here. If we want this treaty to be successful, and if we want our high seas to reflect our slightly better management of fisheries in our own EEZs, this area needs to be improved. How do we do that? We could do it through better-supported state control and flag state control, providing enforcement and expanding their remit. As a maritime nation, the UK has an obligation to try to make these organisations work hugely better, in the spirit of international agreements on biodiversity beyond national boundaries. This is particularly the case with IUU. I was privileged to be a board member of the Marine Management Organisation over six years. I remember an IUU case to do with tuna off west Africa. Proving it and getting what you needed to bring it to court was so complicated and difficult—though I understand why—that the regulator, the MMO, just did not have the money to do it. The potential offenders had much deeper pockets than the enforcers and regulators. In the end, as so often happens with these things, it went to HMRC under money laundering regulations. I have one question for the Minister. How many successful prosecutions of IUU have there been recently? She could come back to me in writing. This is a really important issue. We are all in favour of stopping illegal, unreported and irregular fisheries, but the resources to do so are difficult to get. I would be interested to hear what success we have had on that recently and how the UK might strengthen the work of at least the five regional fisheries management organisations that we are a member of.