HL Deb 09 May 1922 vol 50 cc286-300

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF ANCASTER)

My Lords, I am afraid this is a somewhat long Bill, the Second Read-in of which I now move, and it is only right I should say, in the first place, that the Bill is largely a consolidating measure. There are in it also a few important amendments to the existing law which I shall attempt to explain to your Lordships. This Bill is one which is intensely desired by all those who are in any way concerned with salmon and freshwater fisheries. They have long felt that such a Bill is urgently required. In addition to the support both of salmon and trout fishermen, those who fish for coarse fish are also very anxious that this Bill should pass into law. Moreover, I think it will command the support of a very large number of persons who desire that the amenities of our country districts should to a certain extent be preserved, and that some of those bright and clear rippling streams which at present flow through our country districts should, if possible, remain in that condition, and not be converted into open and smelling sewers and the means of conveying all sorts of poisonous matter to the sea.

As I have said, the Bill is primarily a consolidating Bill. There are no fewer than twenty Acts dealing with fisheries that were passed between the years 1861 and 1907. I am referring only to England. The consolidation of these Acts has long been urgently demanded. In the process of consolidation existing legislation has been frequently amended by the omission of what appeared to be obsolete or otherwise undesirable, and by variations of language to interpret what is obscure and to reconcile apparently contradictory passages in different Acts. Any person who attempted to follow the law among these nineteen or twenty Acts would find his task a most difficult one. In addition, opportunity has been taken to group clauses dealing with the same subject.

Having said so much in regard to consolidation, I may briefly refer to the main lines on which this Bill proceeds by way of amendment. In the first place, certain amendments are proposed to the existing law by means of which we desire to give fuller power to the fishery boards, and power to the Minister to enable him, if he finds that a fishery board has become practically defunct, and that in consequence fishing in the district has been prejudicially affected, to endeavour to resuscitate that board, and to create an interest in the fishing in that particular district. In the second place, a certain number of Amendments to the existing law have been inserted mainly to meet the demands of those who fish for coarse fish as opposed to the salmon and trout fishermen. Thirdly, the most important direction in which amendment is proposed is in that of attempting to prevent further pollution of our streams, and, if possible, to mitigate the pollution which already exists.

This Bill is practically the same as that which was introduced in another place by the Minister of Agriculture last session. That Bill was introduced mainly for the purpose of obtaining the views of fishery boards and angling associations and officials, as well as those representing the Federation of British Industries. It consequence of the introduction of that Bill a Committee consisting of representatives of all these different interests—boards of conservators, angling associations, the Federation of British Industries, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries—have carefully considered the provisions of this Bill, especially those dealing with pollution, and I had hoped to be able to tell your Lordships this afternoon that it is an agreed measure. Agreement has been reached on most points, but I have reason to suppose that the Federation of British Industries has become somewhat alarmed at Clause 8, which deals with the protection of waters containing fish from poisonous matter and trade effluents. In spite of that I hope your Lordships will give a Second Reading to the Bill to-day, and before the Committee stage I shall have an opportunity of meeting the representatives of these various interests again when we may yet arrive at a compromise on the point in dispute.

To those who might be disposed to oppose the Second Reading in the interests of British industry I may say that I cannot make any pledge at the present time without consulting the fishing interests. The point has been raised during the last few days and I have had no opportunity of consulting them. For the moment I can only say that I feel some sympathy with the suggestion advanced by the Federation of British Industries that differentiation should be made between works which are discharging effluents into a river at the passing of this Bill and any new works. That is the real point at issue, and I have some sympathy, as I say, with the suggestion made by the Federation of British Industries. I hope that before the Committee stage the various interests will come to a compromise on the matter.

Let me now pass to the amendments effected by the Bill. The Ministry is taking certain powers in order to be able to resuscitate those fishery boards which have ceased to function, or which function only in a haphazard manner. Under existing legislation the Ministry can require a fishing pass to be of such form and dimensions as it can approve, and it can sanction or disallow any by-law. It has no power, however to initiate any scheme for the improvement of the fishery. Under Clauses 38, 39, 40 and 41, the Ministry asks for powers to enable it to set up fishery boards where they have ceased to exist and to stimulate into more active work those boards which may be said to be hibernating.

Another important matter dealt with is the increased protection given to freshwater fish. This has been done at the instigation of the Anglers' Association, which numbers many hundreds of thousands and which is most anxious that some improvement should take place in this respect. Under existing legislation salmon and trout alone are effectively protected. Under the Act of 1878, known as the Mundella Act, a close season for freshwater fish was fixed and boards of conservators, now to be called fishery boards, were enabled, with the approval of the Minister, to exempt the whole or any part of a district from the operation of the close season. The power to abrogate the close season has been omitted from the present Bill in order to meet the wishes of anglers. All the provisions of the Bill enacted for the preservation of salmon and trout so far as they are applicable are made also to apply to freshwater fish. In addition to that we intend to allow anglers representation on fishery boards where they pay a small licence duty. It will lead to a greater interest in fishing among many thousands of people and also provide a small sum of money which will be available for stocking and improving some of the existing rivers with freshwater fish. This is done by Clause 64.

Now I come to what is perhaps the most important part of the measure—namely, that which deals with pollution. In the past pollution has undoubtedly been the great enemy of the improvement of salmon and freshwater fishing in this country, and any one who is interested in fishing will agree that the law is, at the moment, in a most unsatisfactory state. The Bill, in the first place, simplifies the procedure in the case of a prosecution, and it places any river that contains coarse fish on the same footing as regards pollution as a river which contains salmon. At the present moment a river which is a salmon river is in a better position to fight pollution than a river which contains only coarse fish. By this Bill we propose that the fishery board of a river which contains no salmon shall have the same power to check pollution as the board of a river which contains salmon and trout. This new power is given in Clause 8, and there is also a proviso to prevent frivolous prosecutions by any interested person. It says that no prosecution shall be brought by any person who feels himself aggrieved unless he obtains a certificate from the Minister of Agriculture.

At the present moment prosecutions for pollution in rivers other than salmon rivers can only be instituted by the sanitary authority, with the consent of the Ministry of Health. By Clause 54, fishery boards will be able to prosecute. From the fishermen's point of view the position previously was most unsatisfactory because in very many cases the worst polluters and offenders were the sanitary authorities themselves, and the difficulty was to stir up the sanitary authority to prosecute even in the grossest ease of pollution. There is a further provision as regards pollution, extending the power of the fishery boards to deal with pollution of that part of rivers which extends to the sea or to tidal waters. That is carried out by Clause 54. Before that is done, a local inquiry must be held by representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, and be determined by an Order of the Ministry of Health.

There are complaints among fishermen that these new powers given to the fishery boards and the extension of the powers to tidal waters do not go far enough, and we have been urged very strongly by those interested in fisheries, both of salmon and of coarse fish, that we ought to go a great deal further. There may be opposition to this Bill on the ground that it does not go far enough, but I can only say to noble Lords who take that view that as things are at present I think it is impossible to go further than we have gone. Our chief object has been to take the manufacturers with us wherever we possibly can. It would, of course, be perfectly hopeless to try to pass legislation through Parliament which in any way seriously affected some of the great industries of the country. In that connection, I may say that we have a small Committee continually sitting, representative of manufacturers and of fishermen, and including those who can give every scientific assistance, to try to deal as best we can with the noxious refuse passing from factories and other sources into the rivers.

We believe that science will help us a good deal in that respect, and, if we can only take manufacturers along with us, we may be able, with the help of science, in many instances to convert what is now a dangerous fluid flowing into the rivers into an innocuous one by certain methods of treatment, and it may also be possible to obtain from these noxious fluids certain by-products which, while they may not be profitable, will at least pay the cost of the treatment. I say that in order that your Lordships may know that, although we may not have gone so far as some of your Lordships would wish in the direction of stopping pollution, we are trying to take manufacturers and others with us and are doing all we legitimately can.

There are other minor amendments to the existing law, one of the most important of which is that sellers of salmon and trout should be registered. That is enacted in Clause 33. We believe that will be a very great deterrent to poachers. I am one of those who think that if you have to obtain a game licence before you can sell pheasants' eggs it is not making a very much greater demand upon dealers in salmon and trout to insist that they also should take out a licence. I have had cases brought to my notice of most gross examples of poaching, where salmon have been killed in large numbers by the use of explosives in pools and by other methods, and then exposed for sale. At present nothing can be done in such cases. When you have a licence for these dealers in salmon and trout, though the fee may be quite a small one, the fact will be a great help in detecting these gross cases of poaching.

Another provision requires that people who take water from a river and put it back again are to fix gratings both where the water runs out and where it re-enters. That is covered by Clause 23. There is also a small amendment which allows in certain cases a darn to be erected without making it necessary that a fish pass should be put in the dam. We have had certain cases brought to our notice where a dam has been specially erected in order to prevent migratory fish such as salmon and sea trout going up a certain branch; we have known that they have all been poached there and come to an untimely end. Anyone who does that is not acting against the law, because the law is that you should put a fish pass in the dam, which is what you do not want to do, because the fish will go up it. The other chief amendment relates to penalties. The maximum penalties have been increased, and a general penalty clause has been inserted.

I have now touched, I think, upon nearly all the chief amendments to the existing law. In conclusion, in asking your Lordships to agree to the Second Reading of this Bill, I should like to say that here in England, as most of your Lordships are aware, a great many of these fishings are public rights, and we consider that as a Ministry of Fisheries we are bound to try to protect those public rights, and, by protecting them, to make our rivers as prolific as we can. All those interested in the subject will agree that as a Ministry we should be deficient in our duty if we did not do our best, in conjunction with manufacturers, to preserve them, in the interests of the public and in the interests of the protection of both salmon and freshwater fish. So long as we can do that, I think most noble Lords will agree with us that we, as a Ministry, are in a fiduciary position. On those grounds, I ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Ancaster.)

VISCOUNT ULLSWATER

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will permit me to intervene for a few moments to bring before your Lordships the grievances to which a portion of the inhabitants of the County of Cumberland think that they will be subjected under this Bill. In introducing this measure, the noble Earl pointed out that the greater part of it was consolidation. With regard to that we have, of course, no objection whatever to make. There are some new clauses, to which he referred, dealing with the pollution of rivers and the constitution of fishery boards, and to these we have no objection. But with regard to the position of the fishermen in the Solway, not only has no provision whatever been made, but such rights as they now have are filched from them by this Bill. The noble Earl pointed out that —I think he said twenty, but he was not quite accurate; there are only nineteen—nineteen Acts are repealed, and the one Act which Parliament has passed in favour of the fishermen of the Solway, namely, the Act of 1907, for which they had been struggling for a hundred years, stands amongst those proposed to be repealed.

I am afraid it is a very long story, and I should be sorry to inflict it at any length upon your Lordships. It begins really over a hundred years ago. Many of your Lordships, probably all, have read Scott's celebrated novel "Redgauntlet." Your Lordships will still remember the incidents that are described, and how, in consequence of the unfair treatment of the Englishmen by the Scotsmen, raids were made by the Englishmen against the stake nets in Scotland. That grievance, existing in 1804, continued during a number of years and there were constant quarrels during the whole of the nineteenth century between the Scottish and English fishermen fishing on either side of the Solway. There have been a series of investigations by Committees, Commissions and so forth, with a view to remedying this grievance. On every occasion the grievance has been admitted.

I have here the Report of an investigation which was ordered and was made in 1880 by Messrs. Walpole & Young, and it states the case so admirably that I hope your Lordships will excuse me if I read it as it stands in the Blue-book, although the passage is a rather long one:— Two Acts of Parliament, superseding the old law of close season fixed in 1804, had thus brought conflicting close seasons into force on the two sides of the Solway. The English Act of 1861 had instituted a weekly close season of forty-two hours on the English side of the Solway. The Scotch Act of 1862 instituted a weekly close season of thirty-six hours on the Scotch side. The English Act of 1861 prohibited the use of any net for taking salmon whose mesh was less than 2 inches from knot to knot or 8 inches round. A by-law, made under the authority of the Scotch Act of 1862, prohibited the use of all nets for catching salmon whose mesh was less than 1¾ inches from knot to knot or 7 inches round. These Acts thus effectually introduced discordant law on the two sides of the Solway Firth. In some parts of the firth the difference was immaterial. The Solway between Dumfries-shire and Cumberland is a narrow bay, which at low water dwindles into a contracted channel, fordable in some places. The Solway on the contrary, west of this line, opens out into a broad firth, the two shores of which are separated by a wide interval of sea. There was and is little or no objection to the existence of different laws on the two sides of the firth where it is broad. There is and always was great inconvenience in the maintenance of different laws on the two sides of the firth where it is narrow. In the former case, the fishermen of the two sides rarely come into contact and never interfere with each other; in the latter, they frequently meet and their conflicting interests, as the law at present stands, tend to engender and maintain considerable animosity and bitterness of feeling. I regret to say that animosity and bitterness of feeling still continue, and I hope the Ministry by this Bill will take some steps to bring this anomaly to an end, and to bring about a better state of feeling.

A special Commission was appointed in 1865, the object of which was to regulate stake nets or fixed engines on either side of the Solway. My Cumberland friends hoped to derive considerable advantage from that fact and that all nets found to be illegal on either side would be removed, and that only fixed engines which were legal would be permitted to remain. What happened? As soon as the Commission went down there the Scotsmen took objection that the Commission was not entitled to deal with Scottish fixed engines at all. Their view was supported by the Law Officers of the day, and therefore the Commissioners never interfered with the stake nets on the Scottish side and proceeded to abolish the whole of the stake nets on the English side. At the present day the Scotsmen have fixed engines all along their shore, and the unfortunate Cumberland fishermen have not a single fixed engine. That is a severe handicap. I have already pointed out the difference in close times. That still remains and is a severe handicap, while the difference in machine also still remains and is a severe handicap.

Sir H. Maxwell, in 1892, was appointed chairman of a Committee to inquire into troubles in the Solway relating to white fish, but so much did his Commission feel the strength of the case of the Cumberland men with regard to salmon trout that, although it was not directly within the terms of their reference, they went out of their way to report upon the unsatisfactory state of things in the Solway owing to the difference in the fishery laws in the English and Scottish waters. I need hardly say, however, that nothing was done. In the year 1895 Sir Stafford Howard was chairman of a Committee which again inquired into the whole subject and made certain recommendations. Their recommendations were that stake nets should be re-erected on the British side so as, by letting them out, to form a fund out of which the stake nets on the Scottish side might be bought out. That seemed to offer some ray of hope for the Cumberland fishermen. These proposals were converted into the Act of 1907, and the fishery board was given power to take action, but now the noble. Lord comes along and obliterates the one ray of hope contained in the Act of 1907, because that Act is one of the Acts to be repealed. These unfortunate men, therefore, will be left even without the possibility of that remedy.

That is how the matter stands. I am speaking, I may say, on behalf of the Corporation of Carlisle who have very large interests in that district; on behalf of the noble Lord in this House who owns, I believe, what is technically called a several fishery, for which in years past he has had to fight, and upon the determination of his claims, which have been admitted repeatedly in the Law Courts, he and his ancestors have spent sums of money amounting to well over £15,000. I am also speaking on behalf of the lessee of these fisheries and of the commoners of the manor along that portion of Cumberland, who claim common rights to exercise fishing in that district. The noble Earl, in his concluding words, spoke, I thought very properly, of the position of the Ministry. He said they were bound to protect public rights, but he was only thinking of the public rights of the fishermen and persons in the upland rivers. He had forgotten the public rights of those at the mouth of the river—long established rights, exercised for centuries, which it is proposed partly to sweep away and partly to leave in the very unsatisfactory state to which I have called your Lordships' attention.

I propose to submit, when we reach Committee stage, a series of Amendments which I hope the Ministry may accept. They seem to me to be reasonable, and they are framed with a desire that they shall he upon most reasonable lines. It would be perfectly possible to ask your Lordships to exclude from this Bill the whole area of the Solway. I do not propose to do that, because I think it would be unsatisfactory to leave this portion of the fishing grounds of England without any legislation for its control. But what I do propose to do (and I think your Lordships will admit that it is a perfectly reasonable proposal) is to assimilate the English law in that district with the Scottish law, which prevails immediately opposite—two or three miles only, in fact, across the water. The only answer which I can conceive that the noble Earl will make to me is that this is a matter which might well be dealt with by the Eden Fishery Board.

THE EARL OF ANCASTER

Hear, hear.

VISCOUNT ULLSWATER

I thought I should get that reply. But does the noble Earl know how the Eden Fishery Board is composed? How many representatives of these fishermen are there on the Eden Fishery Board? Only two. The upland fishermen are represented by twenty members. The two unfortunate representatives of the Solway net fishermen never have a chance, and the probability is that this fishery board, so far from shortening the close time and putting it on a level with the Scottish close time, will lengthen it in the interests of the anglers who fish the upper waters. I have no confidence in that fishery board in that particular respect, and I feel pretty certain that I shall be able to convince your Lordships, when we reach the Committee stage, that the really fair thing to do—seeing that the position is a rare and unique one, that this is the only part of England when we are brought into direct conflict with our neighbours across the border in Scotland—is by Statute in that exceptional case to fix the close times and the sizes of the mesh. At all events I shall, when the proper time comes, make my appeal, and I hope that I shall not appeal in vain to your Lordships.

I do not say that this Bill is designed entirely on behalf of the anglers and in respect of sport, although I think, if I wished to make that point, I could have founded myself on a good deal that fell from the noble Earl, when he referred to the necessity of preserving the amenities of sport, and talked a good deal about poachers, and pools, and so forth. But let me say that his Ministry is just as much concerned for the commercial fishermen as for the sportsmen. The commercial fishermen, after all, make a livelihood by fishing, and are responsible for putting far more fish on the market, and thus adding to the food supply, than are those gentlemen who go out for their own amusement, and who now and again send a salmon to their friends.

LORD GAINFORD

My Lords, as chairman of a fishery board I want, without reflecting on any of the noble Earl's predecessors, to say how glad I am that he is now representing the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in your Lordships' House. Our fishery board have found him, representing a Government Department, to be in full sympathy with our desire to see the waters of this country in a proper condition for the production of fish life. I do not think the aspersion (if I may so call it) thrown on the noble Earl by the noble Viscount who has just sat down, is justified, because in supporting fishery boards, as I think the noble Earl has done and is doing by the introduction of this Bill, he shows himself alive to the very fact upon which some stress has been laid— namely, that the commercial fishermen are those to whom we ought to pay the greatest attention. And I believe that the Ministry of Agriculture do recognise that it is the food of the country, and not the sport of the private riparian owner, which is important.

This Bill is long overdue. For a long time the board on which I have had a seat for many years have had great difficulty in preventing the pollution of the river Tees. In the north of our county, the County of Durham, we have seen the river Tyne gradually destroyed as a salmon river by pollution. We have watched the increased amount of pollution going into our river, and we have recognised that if this pollution continues it will be only a few years before the Tees will follow the example of the Tyne, and, instead of being a first-class salmon river, which it might be, will become nothing more than a dirty sewer in a great many of its reaches.

Our difficulty as a fishery board has been that the laws affecting us have been almost incomprehensible to the ordinary layman. There have been nineteen Statutes, and in many cases they differ so much from one another in language that the ordinary layman who serves on a fishery board is perfectly bewildered, and does not know what the law really is. This Bill is an attempt to consolidate the law, and I believe it makes the law clear to the average man. That is a great advance, which will be much appreciated by the fishery boards of this country. We have hitherto been prevented by the administration of the law from stopping the pollution of our English rivers. It has been almost impossible for us to secure convictions, although it was obvious that the intention of Parliament in 1861 was to enable convictions to be obtained and to prevent the pollution of the rivers of this country. Under the existing law it is almost impossible to prove that a particular fish which may be found dead in the river or in the estuary was killed by a particular poison inserted at a particular point above the place where that fish has been found. The individual who may be prosecuted for putting poisonous matter into a river can always allege that the quantity of water mixed with the poisonous matter is so great that the poison has not really affected any fish which may be found dead on the river banks or in the river.

There is another cause of a great deal of the pollution which from time to time we have observed in the river Tees. We have now and then found hundreds of salmon turned up and washed on to the banks below the points where certain effluents have got into the river, and it is alleged by those who have put the poison into the stream that that poison is not absolutely obnoxious to fish life, and that if you put the fish into that particular effluent the fish still live. What really occurs from the discharge of many of these effluents into rivers is that a chemical action takes place in the river which withdraws a certain amount of oxygen from the rivers and the fish die after the poison has been placed in the water. The chemical action in the water really suffocates the fish by an indirect and not a direct effect. In this matter the law is unsatisfactory and, although we know where the poison is inserted in our rivers and that at certain periods of the year, especially when the water is low, we are bound to have great mortality in our Salmon and trout, rivers, we are unable, in the present state of the law, to obtain a conviction or to restrain individuals from putting polluting materials into the rivers.

During the past few months I have had the privilege of sitting on the Committee to which the noble Earl alluded. We have as members of that Committee, as the noble Earl has stated, scientific gentlemen who have helped us enormously in our discussions; we have also representatives of the traders and of angling associations. We are all agreed that it is desirable that the law should be altered, and altered in the way which is proposed by this Bill. It is because we have endeavoured to meet one another around the table and to come to a general acquiescence in regard to the alteration of the law—and I believe the alterations proposed in the Bill will be to the general advantage of the whole country—that I ask your Lordships to pass this Bill into law during the present session.

VISCOUNT LONG OF WRAXALL

My Lords, I rise for the purpose of asking a Question of the noble Earl who moved the Second Reading of this Bill. Having expressed a very strong desire to avoid arousing unduly the hostility of the great traders of this country—a feeling we all share with hirn—he went on to say, as I understood him, that they were hopeful at the Ministry of coming to some sort of agreement or compromise with some of the traders somewhat on the lines, I presume, of a differentiation in the penalties attaching to the offence as between manufacturers already existing and putting their poisonous effluents into the water and new businesses b: ought into existence. I do not know whether what I understood my noble friend to say is correct, but if it is, I would venture to point out to him and to the Government that they could not possibly make a greater mistake than to do that; nor could they act more unfairly by those who are suffering under this difficulty at the present time. In many cases where the evil of poisoned rivers exists, every effort has been made to deal with it and to stop it under the existing law, and the experience of my noble friend Lord Gainford is the general one—that it is impossible to stop this poisoning of the rivers and to secure the conviction of those who are responsible for the evil. Surely those who have been causing this great evil for a very considerable time are not entitled to more gentle treatment or to greater consideration than those who start it after the passing of this Bill.

So far the Bill has been debated solely from the point of view of fisheries, but I would like to remind your Lordships that the same deleterious matter which renders a river poisonous to fish, in many cases makes it a perfect curse to the district through which it runs, because it affects other things besides fish; and the same difficulty arises when you try to put the law into force. I hope that my friends at the Ministry will keep a very stiff upper lip in dealing with the people who cause scandals of this kind, because it is surely a common elementary proposition that while people are entitled to run their businesses with the best result to themselves, they can only do that so long as they do not injure their neighbours. In this case grave injury results to their neighbours. For the protection of farmers raising stock on the banks of a brook which is infected in this manner the present law is almost useless, and if this legislation is persisted in I hope that the elementary principle to which I have referred will be respected by the Ministry—namely, that while there is no desire to injure the industries of the country, there is a very strong desire that those industries should be carried on in such a way as to cause no injury to others.

EARL STANHOPE

My Lords, I should like to suggest one small Amendment in the Bill in order that it may cover rainbow trout. As your Lordships know, the time for the spawning of the rainbow trout is different from that of the ordinary brown trout. The rainbow trout spawns, I am informed, from somewhere about the beginning of January to the end of May. I was myself spawning rainbow trout some four weeks ago. That being so, the close times laid down in Clauses 31 and 32 of the Bill are not so applicable to rainbow trout as they are to brown trout. I hope, therefore, that some alteration will be made in the Bill in respect of that close time to cover rainbow trout.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.