HL Deb 09 April 1975 vol 359 cc85-97

2.55 p.m.

Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY rose to call attention to the need to encourage fish farming in this country as a contribution to the necessity for more protein for the growing world population; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am most grateful for this opportunity of drawing attention to what I believe to be an extremely important subject, that of fish farming. I had hoped to bring in a Private Member's Bill, but the lateness of the Parliamentary Session and the expense which would have been wasted brought all my Scottish blood to the fore. Therefore, I thought that it would be better to have a useful debate and, judging from the list of speakers, it will be a most useful debate and might perhaps induce the Government themselves to produce a Bill.

Now that our deep-sea and offshore fishermen are having such difficulties I want to make it quite clear that in this debate we are not advocating fish farming in any spirit of competition with the deep-sea fishermen. Indeed, it is really in a complementary sense that we are speaking, because we want to help to conserve species that are perhaps disappearing and also to help solve the very great environmental and international difficulties which surround fishing at the present moment. Present circumstances demonstrate very clearly that there is a real need for a general all round look at this valuable form of food production in a very hungry world.

At this stage I must confess that I find myself in very unexpected company—on the one hand our Norman King, King John, and on the other, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. Taking the latter first, Lord Brockway has so often wrung our withers with his accounts of the starving population of the world—and when I say "wrung our withers" I thought this was rather a nice expression. It is a Shakespearian expression, and then I wondered what "withers" were. It took me quite a long time to find out, but I now find that I have suffered from wrung withers owing to a bad back for a considerable time, and I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has only added to that.

I thought I had to do something and I have found that talking and appealing to the UN does not do much good. I know that because I have been there. Obviously, however, more protein must be produced This drew my attention to fish farming, about which I knew nothing some four months ago. I do not farm myself and I have no personal interest, but I discovered the most interesting things and people in the process of getting ready for this debate. I have two files of notes here, my Lords, but I shall not try your patience; I shall not be very long in introducing this interesting debate.

I discovered that the United Kingdom is among the foremost countries in Europe—perhaps, indeed, in the world— in respect of our scientific research into how to grow fish in domesticated conditions. Here I should like to acknowledge the wonderful work that is being done by the White Fish Authority and other pioneers like Unilever and British Oxygen, and so on; but we are very far behind other European countries in the production of commercial fish for consumption. For instance, Eastern Europe produces 250,000 tons of edible farmed fish, Western Europe produces 75,000 tons of edible farmed fish, while the United Kingdom produces only 2,500 tons. On the other hand our import of farmed fish cost us between £1 million and £2 million a year from Germany, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Japan, and so on. I do not know whether your Lordships are aware that the excellent soles which we eat in our dining room come from Denmark, and a great deal of the trouble in the recent deep-sea fishing waters is due to the fact that the Norwegians heavily subsidise their fishing trawlers.

Nevertheless, in this country fish farming is most definitely a growth industry, but some very important things need to be done to help it along. The industry must be brought under the umbrella of farming for food production, as it is on the Continent of Europe, and not looked upon—as it has been hitherto in this country—as a means of restocking our lakes and rivers for sporting purposes, important though that is.

A recent Directive from the EEC—and if anybody wants to look at it, it is No. 72/118—in which fish farming is recognised as part of the agricultural set-up should help us in this country on the matter of grants and derating, of which ordinary farmers have the benefit. Last night I was telephoned by a fish farmer who told me that he farms poultry, for which he was derated and for which he received grants, but, on the other side of his land he was fish farming, for which he was not derated and received no grants. That seems to be an absurd situation. Therefore, it must be brought under the general umbrella of farming for food production. I think that the EEC Directive has probably helped recently in two appeals for derating. Other appeals have failed, but these two won through.

Then there is a pamphlet called Britain in Europe, which shows that the European Agricultural Fund has contributed almost £2½ million to our fishing industry last year. I think the influence of the EEC is shown also in a leaflet issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food dealing with fisheries and food, the farm and the horticultural development scheme. Here for the first time fresh water fish farming for food is included, yet still more redress is needed.

My Lords, we need a reorganisation whereby one Ministry has overall care of fish farming. At present, there are too many cooks, not spoiling the soup but the fish. This must be looked at very carefully. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of the Environment both have a big say in this matter. The White Fish Authority is a kind of step-child engaged in scientific experiments but with no commercial outlook. The Highlands and Islands Development Board have a certain autonomy which they have used to good purpose. The Crown Estate Commissioners keep a tight rein on the offshore rights and, in the long run, the EEC is bound to have something to say. All this needs to be sorted out and these bodies need to be brought together for the sake of fish farming.

My Lords, at this stage, I should like to return to King John who, as a result of being too lavish with his grants of the offshore fishing rights—although I think he had the right idea—brought on the revolution leading to the Magna Carta and then, bless his heart, he died of a surfeit of lampreys—most unfair! Since then, the Crown Estate Commissioners have kept a tight hold on their responsibilities and, although they may grant rights for fishing on the seabed, these rights do not protect fish farmers using rafts and cages for free-swimming fish. It is a curious legal anomaly that, if one has rights to the seabed, one can protect anything that grows on the seabed, but once there are free-swimming fish, one has no legal protection. This restricts policulture and leads to friction, especially in Scotland, between yachting enthusiasts and fish farmers. This kind of difficulty could be solved with good will on both sides.

Another matter requiring attention is the use of warm waste water from industrial concerns and from nuclear power stations. This is very important. Waste warm water is extensively used in Europe, but in this country we have only just started to make use of it. The control of waste water temperature and access to warm water is of great importance and assistance in the rate of growth of fish, and in bring them to maturity, especially in the case of salmonides. The varieties of fish which can be grown now are salmon, rainbow trout, halibut, turbot, lemon soles, hake, plaice, carp, and quite a number of other small coarse fish. With a little extra effort, we could be entirely self-supporting in trout. It is anticipated that trout and chips may replace cod and chips when cod becomes scarce, as, indeed, they are.

My Lords, another matter which needs really close attention is the pollution of water. There is also the question of disease. There should be better exchange of information on these two subjects, and international control where necessary. Last year, we imported £37 million of fishmeal pellets. This should not be necessary. We should be able ourselves to produce the 300,000 tons of fishmeal required by co-operation with deep-sea fishermen, who throw overboard a great deal of fish offal that could be used for turning into fishmeal.

We must study the home marketing of fish. Our housewives must get used to new specimens of fish. I am glad to say that in this country we are very conservative, but the housewives must be rather more experimental in this matter. Considering the shortage of protein in the world, and considering that we are surrounded by sea, that we have lakes, rivers, reservoirs, gravel pits, all of which could be used, I cannot think why we cannot get on with the job. Where have all the eels gone? We used to have smoked eels. Where are all the cockles and mussels, and where are King John's lampreys? I have not been able to track them down. Alas! no noble Lord here can die from a surfeit of lampreys; they are almost unobtainable.

My Lords, we have a growing number of fish farmers, and we are doing well with our lobster trade, which is a valuable export. We need co-ordination, encouragement and sympathy on the part of Ministers and their officials—and here I am looking at the Front Bench. We need some help from local authorities and river boards to solve the present not very great difficulties. River authorities are difficult, because they seem to delight especially in having different regulations for different rivers, which is puzzling for the fish farmers.

When the record produced on one fish farm amounts to 1,000 tons of protein an acre—which you cannot do with any other form of livestock farming—and when that becomes the norm, we shall be well on the way not only to being self-supporting but to being able to succour Lord Brockway's starving millions. We need training schemes and expert advice to be available to the new-comers to fish farming. If we do all these things, we can beat other countries hollow. I should like to give belated thanks to poor King John who died in such a very good cause.

My Lords, I shall conclude now because I never speak for very long, as your Lordships will know. I shall be followed by other noble Lords, and I am very grateful to them. I should like to thank the Front Bench opposite who have helped me in answering some of the details that I required. At the end of the debate, I should like to congratulate the two maiden speakers, whom I am delighted to see are to make their debut on this important subject. I hope I can rely on the friendly Ministers opposite—because this is not a Party matter—to prevail on the powers in another place to further what is, after all, a patriotic cause, and for which they can get nothing but glory in having a Bill put forward from the Government side. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.10 p.m.

The Earl of KIMBERLEY

My Lords, I am sure all in this Chamber this afternoon are most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, for introducing this debate. I should like to say from these Benches that we entirely agree with her that in no way is fish farming meant to be detrimental to the sea fishermen of England, Scotland or the rest of the United Kingdom.

My Lords, it is interesting to know that 25 per cent. of the protein produced in the United Kingdom comes from fish. The remaining percentages are, beef 26 per cent., pork 20 per cent., poultry 19 per cent., mutton and lamb 7 per cent., bacon and ham 7 per cent. So, along with beef, the fish comes top of the poll. Last year we imported £50 million worth of fish. This need not be necessary. We must remember that in the future our sea catches are going to decline, due to over-fishing and also probably to restrictions which are going to be placed on distant waters, some of which have already occurred in regard to places like Iceland. Unfortunately, on our small island we have little room to increase our arable acreage and to increase our farming live-stock. Already we are among the most efficient agriculturists in the world, and unfortunately we lose agricultural land every year through development and to motorways.

So how are we to find more land? The "land" will be liquid. We must find this "land" in our rivers and in the sea. We have ample resources in this country to make fish meal from fish which are unacceptable for human consumption, but we suffer from a dire lack of processing facilities. There are also many fishing boats which are not used, or are out of work, and these could be used for industrial fishing. I know that the man in the street may well say that it does not make sense to feed fish with fish, but if for a moment we go into the matter of intensive chicken fanning and trout farming we will find, for instance, that the trout is much more productive. The conversion ratio for chicken is 2.2 to 1 and for trout it is 1.5 to 1. This means that chicken have a decided advantage until they are ready for the table, but you then find that 60 per cent. of the trout is edible and only 33 per cent. of the chicken.

Most of the fin fish in Europe are found in fresh water. I entirely agree with the figures of the noble Baroness on Eastern Europe and Western Europe. I have been informed that the trade estimate for 1975 for the whole of Europe is that over 1 million tons of fanned fish will be produced out of fresh water. In spite of all this the Regional Development Board dismisses fresh water culture in one line; namely, It had not yet considered the research requirement for these special areas of fish cultivation. Basically our lack of development of fish farming in this country results from lack of incentive, which unfortunately is created by Government uncertainty in the classification of fish farming. Fish farming is an integral part of livestock farming.

May I ask this question: Are fish livestock? Livestock are defined in Part I, Section 1(3) of the Rating Act 1971 as: any mammal or bird kept for the production of food or wool or for the purpose of its use in the fanning of land". I agree that a fish is not a mammal or a bird, but surely it is high time that it was added as a third category. Fish farmers are concerned, in the same way as are ordinary livestock farmers, with foodstuff prices, food conversion, growth rate, disease precautions, development of breeding stocks, husbandry skills, utilisation of rearing facilities. But the Government do not know whether fish farming is fishing, farming or industry. The Department of the Environment says it is rateable as industry. The Department of Trade and Industry says it is agriculture, and, therefore, no grant aid can be given in development areas. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food says that it is not agriculture, so it is not eligible for building grants. It is small wonder that there is lack of incentive for investment in aquaculture.

On 1st May last year, in reply to a Question by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, stated that the Department of the Environment would not derate fish farms. The Department said there was insufficient volume of fish to consider fish farming as agriculture, that it was not in the main stream of food production. It is high time the Department was told that it was wrong. There is no reason for it to continue with this dog-in-the-manger attitude. The noble Lord, Lord Robbins, on the same day asked what were the criteria of the Department for distinguishing one kind of protein from another, and how it decided whether to give aid to domestic production. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said he would look into the matter and produce an answer. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, will be able to give us that answer today.

My Lords, it is high time we extended our resources towards understanding the husbandry problems of fish species that we wish to farm. At present there are only minor academic facilities in our agricultural colleges. We need a staff of experts, who should be trained by people with practical experience. I see no reason why they should not go to Denmark, or Israel, or the United States, who are experts in this field. We also need much closer co-operation and co-ordination in research programmes between the Ministry's laboratories, the Central Electricity Generating Board and industry in general.

A lot of fish farming investment is concentrated in other European countries. I am told there are at the moment 20 major investors queuing up to the Irish Government to start it over there. I should like to know from Her Majesty's Government whether they can give any assurance that fish farming will be treated as agriculture and thus fall into line with EEC practices. We need a national policy to exploit our water resources, to encourage investment. It is irrelevant whether it is private or public; that is of secondary importance. However, if it is nationalised, no doubt we shall have no shortage of red herrings.

We have at the moment rivers free of disease, which is endemic in other countries which export fish. Canada and the United States minimise the risk of infection of imported fish by forbidding importation unless the fish come from certified disease-free farms. In the United Kingdom we do not limit our imports and may well import diseased fish. As the noble Baroness said, here farmed fish sales are limited due to lack of distribution channels, and farmed trout are not yet widely available to the housewife. We need a marketing programme for trout for the consumer, to try to promote availability, the reliable quality of the fish, ease of preparation for the table, and its cleanliness. It is high time that the trout lost its slightly snobbish aspect. It is a very good fish and is not that expensive.

The trout farmers have been endeavouring to carry out this programme, but due to lack of finance the programme has been slow. Perhaps the public loan funds could help support it, or direct contributions would encourage development. Incidentally, a one-year-old trout will live in sea water, and grow even more quickly in its second year. Trout farms also have their problems over their water rates. One farm I know pays water rates on water that it takes from the river. It then returns the water to the river, so it is charged for water that it does not take or waste. There does not seem to be much sense in it. In another instance it is also charged for water it does not use. It took out a licence to take some water from a second river in case of an emergency. The farm has never used this water because the emergency has never arisen, but the water authority assumes that because it has a licence to take this water it must be using it.

May I speak about sea fish for a moment. White fish farming, as the noble Baroness said, is viable, and particularly with Dover sole, turbot, and halibut. Halibuts are slightly difficult due to their large size, and they also take a longer time to mature. Plaice are easy to farm and, as your Lordships know, are frequently on our luncheon menu. But due to the lower price, it is difficult for the plaice farmers to recover their expenses of production. However, young turbots, which are a little difficult in their infancy because they have very small mouths, grow very quickly once one has overcome that initial problem whereas the Dover sole, which has a large mouth and can feed on the brine shrimp when it is minute does not grow quite as well as the turbot, but does remarkably well. A test done in some fish restaurants last year proved that white farmed fish were just as acceptable as poissons sauvages.

The power stations on the estuaries and inland waterways are very important to us, and those on the estuaries are also very beneficial to shellfish due to the warmer water from their cooling towers. At Hinckley Point, shellfish double their size in 14 months instead of the usual two years. Among these was the common prawn. This thrives remarkably well. The common prawn, in flavour and texture, is far superior to the imported prawn, but little prawn farming is done, and very little commercial prawn fishing. In 1971 we imported £8 million worth of prawns. In Southampton Water imported United States clams have been extremely successful due to the warmer water. If in 1962–63 that warmer water had not been there, we should have lost practically every oyster and slipper limpet due to the fact that the sea was below freezing point. However, there is one snag that exists in warmer water round power stations; that is, that the wood boring invertebrates do much more damage to the piles and piers and particularly jetty supports.

Not very long ago, Jersey took—I would not say a leaf out of our book, but maybe out of the French book by planting 60,000 oak stakes with seeded mussels on one of their beaches. Mussels will produce a crop of 13 tons per acre or, in European Common Market language, 32 tonnes per hectare. This is a much higher yield than one could get from cattle on any land, and the French have been growing mussels for many years and growing them very cheaply.

In our polluted rivers such as the Trent, pollution has been vastly improved by power stations pumping out something like two to three tons of extra oxygen per day into the rivers. As an experiment, cooling tower ponds have had fish kept in them, and even with chlorination there has been a very low mortality. Carp and eels, fed on the same diet in three types of water—river water, condenser outlet water, and cooled recirculation water—all did reasonably well, but in the condenser outlet water they grew six times heavier in one year. I agree that the carp suffered from a fungus infection, but this was rapidly cured by putting them back into the recirculating water, which had a higher chlorine content.

We have little evidence in the United Kingdom of any species being eliminated by thermal change, but there are many gaps in our knowledge of the natural ecological systems of water temperature. We must do more research and find out more information about migratory fishes, and also how to prevent mortality at the power station intakes. A good deal of work on this aspect has already been done. It is already in progress in rivers, and it should be expanded to estuarine and marine fishes. The legislation mentioned by the noble Baroness is out-dated and inadequate. Fish fanners need legal rights for their stock, because they are not defined as livestock and are therefore technically not capable of ownership until they have been harvested. Let us hope that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will show a much greater interest in fish and shellfish farming and help end some of these anomalies.

We must try to put the aquaculturist in the same league and on the same financial footing as the agriculturalist. Fish farming is not a miraculous protein producer to feed the world, but in conjunction with agriculture it will go a long way to helping it. We want a major advance in the establishment of marine cultivation which will eventually provide much employment, reduce our imports, and give us a valuable trade in the future. Finally, I would say that the long-planned world conference on agriculture is going to be convened in Kyoto, Japan, in May and June 1976, and I can only say that I hope that Britain will be represented there.

3.28 p.m.

Earl CAIRNS

My Lords, I would crave your indulgence towards a maiden speaker. I shall take very careful note of the noble Baroness's advice; she welcomes speakers shortly. Although I have been a Member of your Lordships' House for some 25 years, I should explain that until recently I have been in the employment of the Crown in capacities where activity in politics was very much discouraged, and it is only recently that I have been able to make any attendance in your Lordships' House. I think I should next declare a personal interest in the subject of this debate. I am a humble fishmonger; that is to say, I have recently been Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Fish-mongers in the City of London, who have been steeped in fish for the last 700 years and are still so steeped. In recent years they have taken a leading part in promoting the cry that fish farming is coming. On their behalf, I have in fact been director of one of the earliest of our oyster hatcheries, which is now successful and has been turned over to commercial production. I am at this moment, also on their behalf, director of what I think is the only lobster farm in the United Kingdom, where we are endeavouring, without any success what-ever so far, to rear lobsters from the berry to the table. I have no personal financial interest in any of these activities.

Previous speakers have certainly convinced me, if I was not convinced before—and I hope that they have convinced your Lordships—that whereas in the last 50 years we have had a complete revolution in agriculture and in the growing of cereals and other crops, in live-stock and, more recently, in poultry, we are now on the verge of a parallel revolutionary advance in fish farming. I only hope we shall seize this opportunity, at a time when the stocks from the natural regeneration in the sea are falling and are in great danger, when international law on the preservation of what stocks there are is in doubt, and when, I presume, we are still to be members of the EEC, which has its own rather complicated regulations. It would be fatal if we did not take advantage of this opportunity.

I suppose that the country most developed in fish farming techniques is Japan. Two years ago, the Fishmongers' Company sponsored a visit of some 16 scientists for a tour of the fish fanning activities of Japan. I will not bother your Lordships with the details of the results which have been published in the United Kingdom, but here we are just toying with the idea at the moment. Admittedly, Japan has the advantage of a tremendous variety of water temperatures. Also, they are now suffering terribly from pollution. Indeed, even two years ago when this mission was in Japan, their Prime Minister instructed his Cabinet to eat fish so that the public would not think there was a danger from pollution. So, even if we do develop, let us be careful about this pollution problem.

I will not repeat many of the figures which previous speakers have given, but I fully support their recommendations. First, there is rather a nonsense in the Ministries of this country in that fish farmers are getting not a raw deal but no deal at all, because they are being shoved around from one Ministry to another. I believe that this problem is reasonably simple to rectify. Secondly, the existing law is undoubtedly out of date, as was pointed out in Lord Cameron's Report of 1970, when one of his main recommendations was that the law of the seabed should be revised and broadened. As the noble Baroness said, it is true that once you have found fish floating above the seabed there is no right of ownership. In fact, the same argument applies to those salmon in Lochailort which are contained in floating steel tanks, and by law these salmon do not belong to anyone. Another point of law which is extremely important is that anyone who possesses a half-grown turbot, or an undersized lobster, is breaking the existing law of the land even if he owns it, let alone eats or sells it. So there is clearly an urgent need for a revision of the law which, I believe, could be done by a fairly simple Bill.

Thirdly, I agree that the waste heat from nuclear power stations is one of the assets which must be harnessed, particularly for the farming of flat fish. Fourthly, there is a need to review the problem of protein production, thus reducing our imports. Before finishing, I should like to give credit where it is certainly due. The noble Baroness mentioned the scientists of the White Fish Authority and various commercial concerns. With respect to the noble Baroness, I would add the scientists of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who are absolutely splendid. I thank your Lordships for listening so patiently.