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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.Mr. Morley : I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 11, at end insert
, provided that it shall be a condition of any licence granted under this section which contains a condition under paragraph (c) above pursuant to those regulations that any days on which such a restriction applies should be spent at a port nominated in advance by the owner or charterer of the vessel.'.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to consider the following amendments : No. 2, in page 1, line 11 at end insert provided that it shall be a condition of any licence granted under this section which contains a condition under paragraph (c) above that a proportion of days spent in port pursuant to these regulations may, at the direction of the Minister, be taken in any United Kingdom port.'.
No. 17, in page 1, line 11, at end insert
provided that, in respect of any British-registered vessel regardless of nationality of ownership, any day which is not to be spent at sea as a result of a condition under this paragraph shall be spent in a British port.'.
No. 19, in page 1, line 11, at end insert
provided that the period of restriction shall not exceed 4 days in any month, or 48 days in any period of twelve months.'.
No. 20, in page 1, line 16, at end insert
; but time spent in fishing for shellfish shall not count as time spent at sea'.
No. 21, in page 1, line 16, at end insert--
(6C) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (6B) above, any day or part of a day during which a fishing vessel sails to its home port or to a port in which it is to undergo repair shall not count towards the number of days spent at sea as long as no fishing is undertaken during the voyage.'.
Mr. Morley : The House now has an opportunity to deal positively with the problem of foreign vessels that register as British and are therefore legally entitled to fish on the United Kingdom quota. The Government tried to tackle that problem, which has existed for some years, by amending the Merchant Shipping Act 1988, to try to restrict the vessels that went on the United Kingdom register according to the nationality of their ownership. That was doomed to failure, because of the Government's commitment to a single market within the European Community. It was never likely to stand up in court.
Although quota hoppers were stopped from fishing--the fishing was suspended --the owners of the vessels concerned brought a case against the British Government in the European Court on the ground of discrimination on the basis of nationality. They argued that, if the Community was moving towards an open market, it was wrong for a member state to discriminate in licence conditions on the ground of nationality rather than the business that was being pursued. They won that case.
What worries me, apart from the current position, is the fact that such people are entitled to claim damages from the Government for the fishing time that they have lost. What is even more serious is the possibility that they will try to claim a track record as well. When we were discussing days -at-sea restrictions, the Minister said that he would have to try to calculate a national track record to be spread among the various vessels, on the basis of the targets laid down for us by the multi-annual guidance programme of the European Community.
The problem of having quota hoppers on our register is twofold. First, they will inflate the fleet, because every vessel that appears on the United Kingdom register is
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counted as a British fishing vessel, thus adding to our problem of over-capacity. Secondly, any problem involving retrospective track records may have to be included in the target figures that the Minister will have to meet. I shall be interested to hear his comments on that.8 pm
Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 16 provide the Minister with a helpful opportunity to try to deal with the problem of quota hoppers. They offer him three different ways of doing that. They present the principle of using licence conditions in a way that blatantly favours British vessels. I am not suggesting that any individual should be discriminated against on grounds of nationality ; I am saying that, if people are registering their fishing boats as British, sailing under the red ensign and applying for British fishing licences, they must expect to obey the conditions of those licences, whatever they may be. If those conditions are laid down for all licence holders in the country, and if they are applied fairly and equally, it is clearly not a case of discrimination.
Some of the amendments suggest that, if days must be spent in port, they should be spent in a British port. It is stretching a point to allow vessels that are registered as British to be based in Spain, to operate in Spain, to land in Spain and to enter United Kingdom ports rarely if at all. There is no reason why such vessels should not adhere to the licence conditions that apply to our British ships. There is also a practical implication--the question of enforcement. If vessels are operating from foreign ports, who is to make sure that the enforcement is carried out? Who will make sure that the vessels spend their days tied up in port as a condition of their British licences? How will the Ministry do that? We discussed the issue in Committee, but the Minister has not yet given us a satisfactory answer about how it could be done and what the cost would be. Will MAFF fishery inspectors be based in Spain, Holland and France to ensure that vessels abide by the regulations?
It should be said that, for various reasons, genuine British vessels operate from foreign ports. Equally, genuine British vessels may want to fulfil some of their days-at-sea restrictions in a foreign port : they may have entered into a contract for refitting, they may have been landing there or it may suit their operational arrangements. That is why one of the amendments gives the Minister the option of making it a licence condition for those who are to spend that time in port to nominate the port in advance to the Minister, so that he will know where they are. Even if it is a foreign port, it will be a nominated foreign port, which will make the measure much easier to enforce.
Mr. Curry : Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that boat owners should notify Ministers of the port where they intend to spend the entire period for which they will be tied up, or does he mean that they may have to name the port in which they will spend each specific day?
Mr. Morley : In typically generous fashion, I am deliberately giving the Minister an opportunity to make such decisions for himself, thus allowing him the maximum flexibility. That not only helps the Minister, but deals with a serious problem. A number of vessels are still coming on to the register, and the Minister should spare a thought for what that will do to our capacity targets. The
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implication is that, for every foreign vessel that comes on to our register and flies the British flag, there will be another over-capacity problem for the Minister to handle.If the Minister is determined to apply the measures in the Bill, he may as well take the opportunity to use the amendments to try to end an anomaly in British law and solve the problem of quota hoppers. I accept that this is a tricky legal area ; some of the amendments may need some technical knocking into shape, and I should welcome an assurance from the Minister that he is prepared to examine them further. I shall not be impressed, however, if the Minister says that his legal advisers have told him that the amendments will not work. I strongly suspect that they are the same people who advised on amendments to the Merchant Shipping Act 1988, which did not work at all, and I think that we should exercise some common sense.
Mr. Moate : The position is not merely anomalous, as suggested by the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) ; I find quota hopping offensive and outrageous, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister--or other Ministers--will tell us at some stage of the Bill's progress what the Government will do, or try to do, to deal with it.
No doubt my hon. Friend will describe the immense legal difficulties involved and will enlarge on the legal dilemma--touched on by the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe--that now confronts us. Although the position may be legally complex, there must be a political solution. It is outrageous that the European Community should allocate national quotas to us and then allow those quotas to be undermined by another Community rule. "Outrageous" is a strong word, but I suspect that my sense of outrage is widely shared. Why should British quotas be taken up by Spanish vessels? If Spanish vessels register in British ports, we accept that they have found their way through a legal loophole ; none the less, the position is unacceptable.
We make much of the fact that, for the next six months, Britain will have the European Commission presidency. I gather that we are renegotiating protocols to the Maastricht treaty, among other things. Why can we not renegotiate another protocol to deal with the quota anomaly? I am sure that the European lawyers could come up with some amendment to the Maastricht treaty to deal with the provision and to make it acceptable in European law. Presumably our European partners intended the quotas to work for British fishermen ; let us translate that intention into practice. If the amendments are unacceptable, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us what the Government plan. Are they going to try to do something, or do they intend to sit back and accept the present untenable position? If we cannot control or prevent quota hopping, a number of alternatives are on offer, by which we could try to control quota hoppers who, presumably, will operate under the British days-at-sea regulations. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us how he intends to ensure that the British days-at-sea regulations apply to Common Market vessels fishing in British waters. If he cannot do so, there will be an even greater sense of outrage among British fishermen when they are tied up and see Dutch, Belgian or French fishermen fishing in our waters. My hon. Friend knows that that is unacceptable. We have to find ways to overcome the problem.
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The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe put forward some practical ideas. They may not be perfect, but they are certainly worthy of examination. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond today or, if necessary, at some other time and tell us how he intends to apply the days-at-sea regulations to foreign vessels and, more importantly, what the British Government's plan of campaign will be to eliminate the problem of quota hoppers, in conjunction with our European partners. My hon. Friend the Minister sighs. I know that it is a difficult problem to solve, but there has to be a political solution, in conjunction with our European partners. If partnership means anything, let us put it on the agenda and deal with the issue during our presidency of the European Commission.Mr. Curry : What my hon. Friend thought was a sigh was the tail end of sinusitis.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) : I support the submissions by the hon. Members for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) and for Faversham (Mr. Moate). It is important for the House of Commons to understand the extent of the outrage felt by the industry, to which they so eloquently referred. The Government must be left in absolutely no doubt about the sense of unfairness that the Government have created among the fishing communities, because of the legal bind into which they have got themselves.
I am concerned about the effects of the whole measure on small communities and, in particular, on small-scale businesses in the smaller ports. I underscore the need for an answer to the question about how quota hopping will affect capacity targets. The vital question was raised, fairly, by the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe. However, the issue is much wider than that. If the quota-hopping trend continues in this worrying way in relation to Spanish vessels and, in particular, to Dutch beamers, we run the risk of driving a coach and horses through the whole concept of relative stability and the share of total allowable catches.
That, in its own way, will have an important potential impact on the review of the common fisheries policy. This is not a temporary problem. We shall have to deal with it over a long period. It may have a fundamental impact on the way in which the common fisheries policy operates in this country in the years to come.
It is right not to make light of the fact that these are legal questions. They were all caused by the European Court of Justice when it exposed our industry to the predations of other European Community fishing fleets. That, combined with the unilateral imposition of days tied up that this measure unilaterally brings about, creates very great difficulties for our fishing fleets.
It is not just a matter of finding a way through the legal problems. The Minister cannot just sit back and listen to his legal advisers and then sigh, or say that he has sinusitis. The House and the industry deserve at least an update on the Department's current thinking on this important subject.
Apart from the legal difficulties, there are enforcement difficulties. The amendments go to the heart of the questions that are in the minds of small fishing communities throughout the length and breadth of the
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United Kingdom. They concern the way in which the Minister intends to police the provisions. Cast-iron, copper- bottomed guarantees have to be built into the enforcement procedures.Like the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe, who so eloquently moved amendment No. 1, I do not know whether it is technically in order. However, the amendment, and those grouped with it, go to the heart of the question that ordinary people on quaysides throughout the United Kingdom are asking : how can the provisions be enforced unless there is a move in the direction outlined in these important amendments?
If a fair scheme of implementation is not written into the Bill, fishing communities will be justifiably outraged. The Bill discriminates against the way in which the industry operates in this country. The question of enforcement must be dealt with.
8.15 pm
There is a great deal of confusion about the tie-up regulations. This issue was raised in Committee. Unfortunately, I was not one of those who was chosen to serve on the Committee, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) represented my interests assiduously and played an important part in its work. There is great uncertainty about the regulations. They must be clarified, either here or later in the Bill's passage through Parliament, or by means of a statutory instrument or whatever other device the Minister decides to use.
The best way to deal with the issue is put forward in the amendments. That would entail the inclusion of restrictions in the licences. I can think of no better way of resolving the problem. The spirit and intention of the amendments are clear. They have a defined purpose. They are necessary. I have great pleasure in supporting them wholeheartedly.
Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : The objective of amendment No. 19, which stands in my name, is to limit the Minister's power. I make no apology for that. As has already been pointed out, the powers being vested in the Minister under the terms of the original Bill--I appreciate that he has made certain commitments--are wholly unacceptable. Under its original terms, it would be possible for the Minister to ban fishing on every day of the year except Christmas day. Just to give the Minister such enormous power, even assuming that no sensible Minister would come anywhere close to using it, would undermine the livelihood of many thousands of fishermen throughout the country--in particular, the livelihood of the fishermen in my constituency. More than a dozen boats and their crews operate from the Torbay constituency, although the boats are moored mainly in Brixham.
The objective of the amendment is to limit the Minister's powers. My constituents and, I believe, everyone in the industry accept the need to conserve fish stocks. They represent their future, but the question is how fish stocks are to be conserved. Quotas do not work. If they did, the Bill would be unnecessary and we should not be debating it this evening. As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) said, the concept of quotas is deeply flawed, especially as foreign vessels--the so-called quota hoppers--take advantage of our quotas. That leads
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to consideration of the technical means to limit catches. Clearly, there would not be a need for an effort control exercise if the technical means worked.What has gone wrong with quotas? I believe that we are the only country in the European Community to take any notice of them. I do not believe for one moment that the French exercise any control over their fishing fleets. It became perfectly clear a few weeks ago that there were no enforcement officers or inspectors in French ports to exercise control or to police French fleets. Quotas have come to an end, and that is the heart of the problem. There can be nothing more galling for a British fisherman than to accept the principle of conserving fish stocks and to tie up his vessel, only to watch a foreign boat come to exactly the area that he would like to fish, for that boat to fish to its heart's content and then to claim off the British quota.
That is the position of the British skipper. We should bear in mind the fact that skippers and their crews are not rich men. I have seen their landing documents, and I know the size of their catches. They are barely making a living and rely on the good will of their bank managers : it is as simple as that. One of the great problems with the Bill is that it undermines the relationship between the skippers and their bank managers.
Skippers have been able to get loans and operate on large overdrafts on the understanding that they carry on with their livelihood, catch fish and pay their debts. As soon as the bank managers read in the newspapers that their customers' livelihood is subject to the will and whim of a Minister, it dramatically undermines their confidence in the skippers' ability to pay the interest on their loans.
The amendment would limit the Minister's powers. As I understand it, the Minister has agreed that the limit that he proposes to put on the days at sea is to be directly linked to the days at sea of each individual vessel in 1991. I welcome that, and I also welcome the introduction of an independent appeals tribunal. Clearly, the moment the Minister says he is going to reduce his powers and accepts a finite limit, there is bound to be argument about what the 1991 level was for each vessel. I thank the Minister for the commitment to the 1991 limit and for the introduction of the independent appeals tribunal. However, some confusion remains, and I hope that the Minister will deal with one issue in particular.
Some of my hon. Friends believe that the Minister's commitment to a 1991 limit is directly linked to the French and to our European partners introducing similar limits. From his remarks, I understand that the 1991 level will be introduced immediately and that any future step to reduce the figures will first have to come before the House but, in any event, will not be brought before the House or the other place unless our European partners agree to similar limits. There could be nothing more galling for British fishermen than to be the first victims of Maastricht. If we are honest, we must concede that Maastricht is the reason that the Bill has been introduced in this way. As the fishermen have said, the Bill was introduced before the end of the consultation period. Surely it is because the Maastricht Bill has effectively come to a dead end--and not a day too soon--that there was a gap in Government legislation.
It was a mismanagement of the House's affairs to produce a Bill with such wide powers, but to do so before the end of a consultation period seems to show a certain arrogance or incompetence, or both. I am profoundly
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disappointed, because the Bill has created an enormous feeling of ill will among fishermen who accept that conservation is necessary. Amendment No. 20 covers shellfish fishermen. I am attempting to exclude them from the legislation in every regard except that of decommissioning payments. I understand that there is a lot more to the issue than meets the eye. It is a European matter, and the Commissioner will have a say, so the Minister is not his own master. I should be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about shellfish fishermen.The shell fishermen themselves recognise the need for good conservation measures. When I spoke to them, they mentioned two particular proposals. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree to listen to the proposals and will discuss them with the fishermen. First, the fishermen are willing to increase the size of the lobsters they catch, which will, of course, reduce the total catch but will mean that there will be more stock available and more breeding stock. Secondly, at present the so-called cripples--the crabs which have lost one claw--are caught. I understand that the shellfish fishermen would be willing to throw back the cripples. Such crabs are not as valuable as others. They are being caught at present but could be thrown back and could become part of an important stock.
I am grateful for many of the Minister's remarks and for the concessions that he has made. There will be a broad welcome for the fact that he has recognised the fact that the blank cheque which he had proposed to write himself would be unacceptable to the House. There must be a long-term measure to protect shellfish stocks around our coasts. There is no alternative to a licensing system, which I believe the shellfish fishermen would welcome. I am disappointed that such a system is not proposed in the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give a firm undertaking to consider the needs of shellfish fishermen, the need to preserve stock and the need to introduce at some stage a sensible method of licensing.
8.30 pm
Mr. Salmond : Let me take the opportunity afforded by amendment No. 21 to revisit a subject with which the Minister is familiar. May we have an exact definition of what constitutes a day at sea and, in particular, clarification of whether a day spent sailing to or from a home port or going into another port for repairs will constitute a day's fishing for the purposes of the Bill? I read what the Minister had to say about that in Committee, although I confess I was none the wiser :
"The model is more of an a la carte, 135-day tie-up, than a dirigiste, inflexible eight-day tie-up."--[ Official Report, Standing Committee ; 23 June 1992, c. 44.]
I regard the Bill as more of a dog's breakfast than an a la carte meal, but we are certainly due some explanaiton of whether a vessel going to or from a home port, or to a port elsewhere for repairs, counts as a day's fishing.
The Bill says :
"A licence containing a condition restricting the time which a vessel may spend at sea may make provision as to the circumstances in which time is, or is not, to count as time spent at sea." The amendment specifies that time spent by a vessel sailing to or from a home port or going in for repairs would not constitute time spent at sea.
Those who follow the affairs of the fishing industry will recall that a similar argument occurred during the debate
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on the eight-day continuous tie-up. I pointed out then that a vessel sailing the short distance from Whitehills to MacDuff, a major port, for repairs, would be counted as breaching the tie-up regulations. Would a vessel making the same journey be counted under the Bill as taking another day at sea, or does the Minister intend to discount time spent in that way?In Committee, the Minister's response to those questions, which it is legitimate to ask of a Minister who is seeking such extensive powers, was that everything would be flexible. He said that everything would depend on individual circumstances and that he intended to consult the industry and see what came out of that consultation. We need to know more about what progress he has made since then, and whether he is clear in his own mind whether a vessel undergoing such trips will or will not be counted as taking a day at sea.
The Minister will recall that much concern was expressed about this question in respect of the continuous eight-day tie-up in Scotland. Implicit in what I am saying is the fear of discrimination between ports. Clearly, if fishing boats land in a port away from their home port, and if a trip to the home port for repairs is to be counted against fishing time, they will tend to stay at that port. On 7 March last year, I presented a petition from the Fraserburgh harbour traders expressing precisely that concern. Yesterday I received a charming note from the Clerk of Public Petitions, telling me, pursuant to Standing Order No. 135, that, having had the petition for 16 months, the Scottish Office had no observations to make on its contents. Even by Scottish Office standards, 16 months is a long time to take to say nothing. I repeat that we are due some explanation from the Minister on this important matter.
The Minister cannot have drafted the Bill without having a clear view on whether time spent at sea that is not spent fishing will or will not be counted as a day spent at sea. In Committee, he argued that the present provisions were quite different from the prescriptive "dirigiste" continuous tie-up proposal. If he is to honour that, he must give us some idea of how the flexibility that he promised will be implemented. The fishing industry would greatly appreciate a straight answer to a straight question : is time spent going to and from a home port or for repairs in another port to be counted as a day at sea?
Mr. Harris : I shall direct my remarks to the amendments intended to ensure that some control is exercised over the so-called quota hoppers or flag-of-convenience vessels, to which I might apply even stronger terms. I have been trying to fight these wretched vessels for a dozen years or more, both in this place and, before that, in the European Parliament, because I believe that they have posed and continue to pose a tremendous threat to our own fishing industry, particularly in Cornwall.
One of the worst aspects of the Bill so far--again, I look to my hon. Friend the Minister to table amendments or give reassurance--is that it is clear that the tie-up measures cannot be applied to quota hoppers under the existing arrangements. Technically, the boats are British boats and appear on our register, although in reality they are nothing of the sort. Many of them are Spanish boats. If the Minister gets a holiday this summer, perhaps he should spend part of it in northern Spain--in Coruna, for
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example. Much to my wife's annoyance, I went there one Sunday morning last summer while I was on holiday. Numerous boats had British registration numbers painted on them. There were boats from Penzance, Plymouth, the east coast of England and Scotland.Mr. Harris : Yes, it is a farce. They are no more British boats than are Spanish or French boats that carry the registration of their true home port in Spain or France. In reality, because they operate mainly from Spanish ports, there is no way that we shall be able to exercise effective control over them under the tie-up arrangements. In a letter to The Western Morning News last week, my hon. Friend the Minister said that the Bill applied to such vessels. Of course it applies, but, at present, its application is only theoretical because the Minister and his officials cannot enforce it. They do not know how many days a particular boat spends tied up in a Spanish port, and they have no power to go there and demand to know.
I hope that the Minister will go some way towards meeting our objections. I have had some discussions with him and I believe that he has some proposals that may help. I look forward to hearing what they are. If my hon. Friend feels that I have been hard on him today--and perhaps I have--let me pay tribute to him and to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. No two Ministers could have worked harder to try to rid us of the plague of quota hoppers. They have both worked extremely hard.
Late in the day, urged by the industry and several hon. Members, including me, the Government introduced the Merchant Shipping Act 1988. I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, monitor these matters carefully from your constituency. No doubt you will recall that section 2 of that Act set up a fishing register, giving us a chance to start again and get rid of those wretched boats, which should never have been on our original all-vessel register in the first place. We all knew what would happen then : part of that Act was challenged in our own courts and, perhaps more important, in the European court.
I read the vitriolic comments of a certain columnist in The Sunday Telegraph, who tried to imply that, in recent years, my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department have been lax in allowing the boats on to our register, and almost that they welcomed them on to our register. That is completely untrue. The ships were able to get back on to the register because of the diabolical decision of the European Court of Justice, and that is why the Bill has been introduced. I am convinced that the Government were hoping for a reduction in the size of our fleet by removing the quota hoppers from our register under the 1988 Act. That would have gone a long way towards meeting the target that the Commission will eventually set for a reduction in catch capacity.
We face difficult problems tonight because of the decision of the European Court and the return of some of those quota hoppers to our register. If the Government want to enforce tying up on our boats, it is incumbent on them to make serious and effective efforts to ensure that the Dutch and Spanish boats, which are technically ours, but which really have nothing to do with us, are subjected to the same tying-up regulations. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend how he intends to bring that about.
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Mr. Ainger : I want to refer to amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 17, which do not address the issue of the controls that should be placed on quota hoppers. I will refer to amendment No. 20 later in relation to shellfish fishing.
As the hon. Member who represents Milford Haven, which has the largest number of quota hoppers in Britain, I am aware that the quota hoppers from Milford Haven, Penzance and Plymouth may well be able to form their own fish producers organisation. I am sure that hon. Members recognise that the people in the south-west and on the west coast of Wales face an extremely serious problem.
The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) said that he saw fish being landed in north Spanish ports such as Coruna and Vigo. We could perhaps stick a label on that fish stating, "This is British fish, but untouched by British hands." Even when quota hoppers land fish in ports like Milford Haven, that fish is not touched by British workers. It provides no benefits to the local economy. The fish literally passes from a Spanish vessel--for that is what they are--into the back of a Spanish lorry. The fish is then driven on to a ferry and off to markets in Spain.
That is the main reason why we should insist on every possible legal restriction on quota hoppers. It is not just a matter of jobs being lost at sea and unfair competition. More importantly, what should be a British product loses its value because it is not being landed or processed in our ports.
Current legislation requires the quota hoppers to make only four visits in every six months which last a minimum of 12 hours. That is the only time that they have to be in a British port by law. Amendments Nos. 2 and 17 provide that, when days-at-sea restrictions are imposed on those so-called British vessels, they should be applied and monitored in a British port. That is the only possible way that those cowboys or pirates will abide by the law.
As the hon. Member for St. Ives said, the issue has caused an awful amount of friction in my part of the country and in his. Having tried the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 and been knocked back by the European Court, we can use the amendments to offer one of the few opportunities to impose restrictions and control on those pirates. However, the Minister refuses to take the opportunity. Perhaps he will respond differently, particularly after his apparent concession earlier.
8.45 pm
In many of the small ports, and in some that we certainly would not call ports, the shellfish fishermen who work crabs and lobsters off the west coast of Wales are absolutely staggered that the Government are proposing to impose days-at-sea limits on them. They cannot see the logic in that. The South Wales Shellfish Fishermen's Association, together with other shellfish fishermen's associations, has offered proposals to the Government to increase the minimum landing size of crabs and lobsters. They have pointed out to the Minister that the new EC regulations on measurements of lobsters will mean that smaller lobsters will be landed. Those organisations have told the Minister that he should get hold of Mr. Marin and sort the problem out. I am glad to learn from a parliamentary reply that the Minister appears to be doing just that.
The fishermen's associations claim, quite sensibly, that there are far easier ways to limit effort and thereby increase conservation. For example, the number of pots that a boat
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is allowed to work could be limited. The size of pots could also be limited. In relation to shellfish fishermen, the gear option, not days at sea, is the right way to increase conservation.As I said earlier, the number of days that shellfish fishermen can spend at sea may be limited if the Minister has his way. However, they will maximise the time that they spend at sea by working the pots for 24 hours a day in two runs, instead of for 12 hours a day in one run. However, in that respect, they will still comply with the days-at-sea regulation.
The shellfish fishermen's organisations constantly provide the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, local officers and local committees with suggestions for ways in which more conservation can be built into the way in which they operate. It would be a significant concession if the Minister were prepared to sit down with the relevant organisations that want to talk seriously about conservation of shellfish.
I remind the Minister that, in the latest EC document about the multi- annual guidance programmes for the period 1993-96 for fishing fleets, the suggested base for fishing methods should, for static gear fisheries including shellfish, mean no reduction of effort. However, the Minister insists on imposing reduction in effort and restrictions on days at sea on the shellfishery.
I urge the Minister to think again, particularly about quota hoppers. The Minister would receive unanimous support in the House if he were to impose restrictions on the quota hoppers. I am sure that the House would welcome any movement that would improve conservation in our shellfishery without imposing restrictions on days at sea.
Mr. John Townend (Bridlington) : Although the Bridlington fishermen welcome some of the proposals in the Bill, particularly in respect of licensing for smaller boats and the one-net rule, they have great reservations about the effect that the days-at-sea proposal will have on their livelihoods.
While, by and large, they are not affected by quota hoppers, I support the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) about what I believe is an abuse of the common fisheries policy. That is not the Government's fault. They legislated, but unfortunately we were overruled in the European Court.
It is strange that we proposed legislation on restricting days at sea when we had a quota system. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) that quotas are not working. That is absolutely true. If quotas had been working, we would have been able to increase them rather than reduce them every year. If we had quotas, it would be nonsense to bring in regulations that prevented our fishermen from fishing their quota while fishermen from other EC countries were free to fish their quotas. I took up that matter with my hon. Friend the Minister and he assured me that that was not the intention, and that, if it became clear that our fishermen would not be able to catch enough fish to cover quotas, he would take action and extend their days at sea. I thought that that was a reasonable reply, and naturally I conveyed it to Bridlington fishermen. I regret to say that it did not pacify them. They said :
"It is therefore our view that the answers being given by the Minister cannot be given and will never come to fruition. Firstly, the EEC has a condition for compliance with its multi
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annual guidance programme is currently suggesting fleet reduction in capacity and net terms of 40 per cent. for our time of vessel"-- that is, commercial trawlers. They go on :"The Ministry in its wisdom, as an alternative to a decommissioning scheme has argued that the prime element of the policy be directed at effort limitation, namely, by means of day-at-sea restrictions. As the MAGP will be cast in stone"
That is what my fishermen fear--
"and will not relate directly to quota uptake, you will see that there will be very little room for quota manoeuvrability. While a counter assurance may be given to that effect which also from past experience with the north sea tie-up provisions for quota industries, I would suggest that the previous conditions were implicit on the quota regulations and as such could be relaxed."
If my fishermen have got it wrong, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to repeat, so that it is on the record, that, if the regulations that are being brought in by the Bill prevent our fishermen from catching their quota, he will take action to see that that quota may be fished. If he can give that undertaking, it would certainly help to reduce my reservations about the Bill.
Our fishermen are very worried about weather and what effect it will have on days at sea. We suffer from much bad weather in the North sea around the coast of Bridlington and Scarborough. We are particularly vulnerable to winds from the east to the south-west, which make predictions of tie-up days almost impossible at times. This year, many Bridlington vessels which are caught by the EC's tie-up restrictions have found that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has been singularly inflexible in relation to sudden changes in weather conditions, preferring to accept a morass of paper work from our fishermen for nine hours in advance of the tie-up date. The system is, in short, a bureaucratic nightmare and singularly inflexible to our fishermen, and does not take account of sudden changes in the weather.
Those are relevant points. Again, I ask my hon. Friend to give an assurance that will satisfy me and the Bridlington fishermen whom I represent that adequate note will be taken of the weather and that he will investigate the bureaucratic snarl-ups that have occurred in his Ministry in the past. Those points should be dealt with, because there is a great danger of misunderstanding. I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware of the fishermen's concern and of the financial pressures that they are under. I should like to add my thanks to those of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives for the concessions that the Minister has already made in respect of the Bill. I trust that the undertakings that I ask the Minister to give will produce a Bill that we will be able to support.
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