HERRING INDUSTRY BILL. (Hansard, 25 July 1944)

LORD ALNESS

My Lords, this Bill is designed to secure the rehabilitation of the herring fishing industry. Yes, my Lords, "rehabilitation" is the right word, because, as your Lordships must be well aware, the herring fishing industry, during recent times, has passed through very dark and difficult days. Our fishermen are scattered all over the 1091 Seven Seas on national service. Their boats and their equipment are obsolete. The markets on which they relied have either been severely abridged or completely lost. Rescue work is therefore necessary if the industry is to survive. This Bill, accordingly, sets out to provide a stabilized and secure economic future for the fishermen concerned—for a race of men whom I venture to describe as worthy as well as hardy. Moreover, the Bill is further intended to provide obvious nutritional advantages for the whole population of the country.

The Bill comes before your Lordships with excellent credentials. It is endorsed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by the President of the Board of Trade, by the Minister of Food, by the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I would like, if I may, to pay a special tribute to the services which have been rendered by two ex-Secretaries of State for Scotland—namely, Sir John Colville, now Governor of Bombay, and Colonel Walter Elliot, Member for the Kelvingrove Division of Glasgow, who were in succession Chairmen of a Departmental Committee which went into the whole question of the present problems of the fishing industry, and on whose recommendations, in their Report, this Bill is based. I should also like, if I may, to pay a humble tribute to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland who, in this matter, as in many others, has proved himself to be not only a visionary but a realist.

In accordance with his customary technique, my right honourable friend, before the Bill was presented in another place, made it his business to engage in patient negotiation with the herring industry as a whole, and in the result, it is not too much to say, the Bill came before another place as a substantially agreed measure. The best illustration of that, perhaps, is that there was not a single Division with regard to any one of its provisions; there was not a single unofficial Amendment moved; and not the slightest conflict arose in the course of the debate in another place, between the provisions of the Bill as they affect England and the provisions of the Bill as they affect Scotland.

While all that is so, I should be the last to suggest to your Lordships' 1092 House that you should accept the Bill at its face value. Your Lordships, if I may respectfully say so, have the right and duty to examine the measure on its merits, and to form and express your Lordships' opinion both on the content and on the intent of the measure. That I respectfully invite your Lordships now to do. If your Lordships will bear with me for just a few minutes, I think I can single out the salient points in the Bill, which I shall presently invite your Lordships to read a second time. Clause 1 of the Bill provides, as was recommended by the Departmental Committee, for grants up to a total of £820,000 being made towards the provision of boats, gear and nets where these cannot be provided without such assistance. These grants may be made in each case up to one-third of the cost of the boats, gear and equipment, and there too the Bill echoes the recommendation of the Departmental Committee.

Under Clause 2, which confers additional powers upon the Herring Industry Board—these powers are suspended in the meantime by a Defence Regulation—the Board will, when its powers are restored, be enabled to make schemes, subject to approval by Ministers and to affirmative Resolutions in Parliament, for the purchase of boats and equipment for charter or hire to suitable applicants. Further, they will be empowered to arrange for the refrigeration and processing of such proportion of the herring catch as they think suitable, having regard to two considerations: first of all, providing a supply of herrings for the public all the year round; and secondly, providing for glut conditions, which have had somewhat unfortunate results. The clause will also enable the Board to regulate the conditions under which processing is to proceed, and finally to arrange for a proportion of the proceeds of the first sales of herring to be pooled among fishermen, and so to eliminate undue profits on the part of any one boat. I am assured that the last proposal has the assent of the entire fishing industry.

Clause 3 makes provision for the payment of grants during five years after the passing of the Bill up to a total of £250,000 towards the expenses to be incurred by the Board. Of this total a sum of not more than £75,000 may be allocated to administrative expenses. 1093 Clause 4 makes provision, on the lines of former Herring Industry Acts, within a period of five years from the passing of the Bill, for advances to the Board from voted moneys of the sum of £1,700,000 for loans to fishermen and for the other purposes which are enumerated in the clause, and which I do not propose to deal with in detail. Clause 5 provides for the extension by Ministerial order of the five-year period to which I have referred, during which financial aid is to be available to fishermen, if it should be found that during these five years, owing to circumstances which your Lordships will readily conceive, fishermen and the Board hive not had an opportunity of taking the advantage of these provisions which it is anticipated they might. In that case the period may be extended for not more than three years.

Clause 6—an important clause—increases the borrowing powers of the Board, which under the Herring Industry Act of £1935 were £1,000,000, to £2,500,000 Clause 7 provides that if it appears to the Board to be practicable and desirable to make provision for the election of members of the Board, the Board are to prepare their proposals for that purpose, and thereupon the Ministers are required to lay the proposals before Parliament with a report upon them, setting out their own views with regard to them. Clauses 8 and 9 are minor and formal in character, and I do not feel justified in detaining your Lordships by referring to them in detail. Such in brief is the outline of the Bill to which I invite your Lordships to give a Second Reading.

I wonder if your Lordships will allow me in conclusion to strike a personal note. It was my privilege and pride to represent a fishing constituency in another place for nine years, and I confess that I conceived a sincere admiration and even affection for the fishermen engaged in the industry. I early recognized that these men had proved their national worth both in time of peace and in time of war. Instead, however, of trying to pay what your Lordships might regard as empty verbal compliments to this great industry, I had rather, if your Lordships will permit me, relate a little incident of the last war, which I think illustrates far better than any poor words of mine could do the type of men whose lot this Bill is intended to safeguard and to better. On a December night in the North Sea, a minesweeper 1094 manned by fishermen was sunk by an enemy submarine in the approved German fashion, without warning and without mercy. The crew escaped on a raft. They were tossed through a long winter night on a tempestuous sea, with an icy wind blowing, and with scarce a rag on their backs. But they made the land. And what do your Lordships suppose that they then did? They went round to the nearest shipping office and signed on, every man of them, for the next voyage. Such is the type of men whose lot this Bill is designed, as I say, to safeguard and to better. One is proud to belong to the same breed as these men. One is proud to be able to sponsor a measure which is designed for the advantage—nay, for the salvation—of their high and hazardous calling. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.