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Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gill: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, we are limited to 10-minute speeches and I am anxious to make several points. I hope that he will have an opportunity to make his contribution to the debate.
Whatever the Government may say about the Spanish accession, a deal was done at the time of the later accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the European Community whereby full membership of the CFP for the Spanish and Portuguese was accelerated by six years. At no stage were right hon. and hon. Members informed that that was being done, nor the reasons for doing it.
My hon. Friend the Minister of State's assertion that Members of Parliament were fully aware of the ramifications of the United Kingdom's entry into the CFP is questionable. Furthermore, I question whether hon. Members were able to follow the Government's more recent footwork in accelerating the full entry of Spain and Portugal into the CFP. I wonder how many parliamentarians, even today, are aware that the CFP is not spelt out in treaty form, but exists only by dint of EC regulations.
I turn now to the Minister's statement that it is not practically possible to withdraw from the CFP. Indeed, he addressed that problem in an earlier debate. He is on record as saying:
We get what can only be described as a raw deal, notwithstanding the fact that this country contributes more than 60 per cent. of the European Union's fishing stocks. My hon. Friend the Minister recognises that, under qualified majority voting, it is practically impossible to
obtain any redress for Great Britain. Those who believe that the application of a veto will alter that situation are deluding themselves and misleading the people whom they represent.
On the subject of the legal obstacles to withdrawal from the CFP, I remind my hon. Friend that the political reality is that, at the next general election, the electorate will not stop to consider the legal niceties, but will simply vote in accordance with their perception of what is right or wrong.
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby):
An interesting paradox of these debates is the fact that the stronger the opposition in the fishing industry to the common fisheries policy grows, the more vigorously Ministers come here to defend it--inadequately and disingenuously--and the less they can deliver. They busily defend it in the Chamber while obtaining little that will benefit the fishing industry in the United Kingdom.
Today the Government are putting the squeeze on their supporters and telling them not to rock the boat or damage relations with Europe. Their line is that if we rock the boat on the common fisheries policy it could endanger our whole relationship with Europe. Meanwhile the Conservatives' leader, the Prime Minister, goes to European Councils, rocks the boat and damages our relations with Europe. In other words, the Government are telling their Back Benchers not to behave like the Prime Minister.
Instead of coming here to deliver their laboured defences of the common fisheries policy--as witness the Minister's opening speech--Ministers would be better employed getting some achievements for the British fishing industry. They should be as virile in Europe in obtaining something for our fishermen as they are in the House when defending the CFP to their own Back Benchers. I do not want to pursue that path today, but most of the debate has centred on it.
Our fishing industry is in crisis, and nowhere more so than in Grimsby, whose fleet, as the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) suggested, has shrunk below the limits of viability. The same is happening all over the country. As British vessels go out of business, their track records are bought up by quota hoppers. Most of the fishing done in excess of our targets is done by foreign companies which arrive and buy up British quotas because they are over target in their own countries. So they escape their targets by buying up the British quotas, and if flagship vessels went out of business we would find ourselves below target.
Ministers are imposing a double whammy on the industry. First, it is hit by the common fisheries policy. That is inevitable; our fishing grounds are the richest in the world, so we shall face intense competition if we turn a larger European fishing effort loose on them. If the CFP
were effective in terms of conservation, we would not be holding today's debate because the industry would not be facing the problems of over-fishing and shrinking stocks.
Ministers have not defended British interests at all. When it comes to negotiations, something else is always more important so they give way on fishing--on Spanish access to our fishing grounds, for instance, to get Norway into the European Community. Always the higher aim results in fishing being sacrificed. To that extent, Ministers do not defend British fishing interests in Europe.
At the same time as the CFP is damaging our industry, Ministers are failing to provide it with the sort of backing and support which our competitor countries give their industries. They are our competitors, not our partners. The French fishing industry still gets the fuel subsidy to which Ministers have been objecting. That subsidy helps with the fuel costs of French fishing boats which come to fish in our fishing grounds--and it comes from the French Government. No such support is forthcoming from our Government.
Other industries such as the Spanish receive Government support for modernising their fleets, which then compete with our aging fleet which receives no Government support of that kind. Nor does our industry have the benefit of ports of landing facilities, which are provided as a local government service to the Danish and Dutch fleets. We pay heavy landing charges for which there is no Government help.
The industry might be able to put up with one or other--with the depredations of the CFP on the one hand or the lack of Government support on the other. The ports of landing in Europe are inadequately policed, so that there is no real control over the catches taken from our waters. The fishing industry might be able to cope with the slow anorexia that the Government are imposing on it, but it cannot cope with both problems at once.
It is wrong for Ministers to come here and vigorously defend the CFP when that defence is no more than a cloak for their inactivity and inadequate support for the industry. The industry cannot support the double whammy being imposed on it. When we lament the coming cuts in quotas, Ministers always tell us in these debates that they intend to go to Europe and get a good deal for our interests. They then come back after Christmas and apologise, saying that they were outvoted and could not get their way--they could not get the deal that we had been led to expect. The same will happen again this time.
We are being asked to accept substantial reductions in the total allowable catch of plaice; that will be disastrous for Grimsby, which relies mainly on cod but also on plaice. The problem would be compounded if the Minister engaged in the yearly swap agreed with the Dutch on plaice quotas. If plaice quotas are to be reduced, we cannot agree to any further such swaps with the Dutch. I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will not go ahead with it this year.
"It is politically unrealistic to imagine that a new deal can be done that will result in other countries in the European Union giving away fishing opportunities to the United Kingdom."--[Official Report, 22 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 591.]
Precisely. It is inconceivable that any other member of the European Union would vote for any substantial change in the present arrangements, under which the majority of European Union countries get a bargain at the expense of the United Kingdom.
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