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5.57 pm
Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay): A proportion of those who still work in what survives of the fishing industry in the south-west live in my constituency and work out of Brixham. They tell me that there are more MAFF inspectors than police officers there. That is a sad indictment of what has gone so terribly wrong in our industry.
There is an overwhelming recognition by everyone in the industry of the need for conservation. People understand it because it represents their future and their children's future. At any rate, that is what they believed. There is no fisherman in the country who does not understand the need for conservation. Despite the gloom cast over the House by the Secretary of State's predictions of likely future quota cuts, the fishermen to whom I have spoken are all perfectly willing to accept those cuts-- if they are limited to what they would refer to as the British fishing fleet. That is where the real problem lies, because around 28 per cent. of the tonnage of the British fishing fleet is not British at all, but Spanish. If we could get over that problem, many of our difficulties would disappear.
Two quite separate problems face the Government. The first is conservation and the need to reduce our fishing effort. Everyone accepts and understands the arguments for that all too well. We can do something about that, perhaps, in a common fisheries policy.
The second problem exposes the impotence of the Government. Following the judgment in the European Court of Justice, the Government cannot insist that British vessels are precisely that: British owned, British registered and with British flags. The real problem is that 30 per cent. of those vessels are owned by foreigners who are quota hoppers and who are living off the backs of our fishermen and destroying our industry.
The first problem is one with which my hon. Friend the Minister is well qualified to deal. I wish him well on Thursday when he goes to Europe. He has a difficult task, but, like his predecessors, he has done a good job for the industry in fighting our corner. The real problem lies with the quota hoppers.
As I voted with the Opposition on the last occasion when the matter was before the House, I listened carefully to the Labour party's proposals. It seemed to me that the
hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) proposed, first, that total allowable catches should be based entirely on scientific evidence. The second plank of his argument was that scientists should be given more resources so that they can understand precisely what the problems are and make accurate assessments. The third part of the argument was that we should ignore the scientists on socio-economic grounds.
Many Conservative Members wanted to understand what firm proposals the Opposition had to get us out of the dilemma, but there was nothing there. For those of us who in the past had tried to get some comfort from Opposition proposals on this difficult issue, there was none to be had.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's speech could be summarised as, "Brace yourself because there is bad news to come." He tempered this with the slightly good news that harbour improvement grants would be restored. I welcome that, but I would like my hon. Friend the Minister of State in his winding-up speech to say that he will take another look at the way in which the Spanish and the Dutch in the North sea have been exploiting our quotas. That is the key to the problem.
I accept that the lawyers say that we lost last time and that the law is against us. Fine--but I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of man to find a way around that conundrum. I judge that the compromises that have been made in the past, to the detriment of the industry, were made by the Foreign Office because it does not regard the industry as significant or important. Invariably, compromises have been reached and the industry handicapped because the Foreign Office has decided that other issues are more important. When it comes to qualified majority voting, it believes that the fishing industry is dead and buried and insignificant, so we abstain on fishing to get Spanish support on some more important topic. That is unacceptable.
I urge hon. Members who do not have fishermen in their constituencies to accept that there can be nothing more distressing than to see a fishermen having to go down to his boat, not with a net and a lifejacket but with a chainsaw, to destroy it. That is what the Spanish and Dutch are forcing our industry to do. It is distressing, wrong and short-termist. That is why my hon. Friends and I have tabled an amendment.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield):
Can my hon. Friend say whether there is any other country in the European Union whose fishing industry has been dealt with in such a devastating and damaging way as has the UK fishing industry?
Mr. Allason:
My hon. Friend puts his finger on the point. Not only have we been handicapped in that way, but it appears that it is our money that has been spent on improving the Spanish fleets. There is nothing more upsetting for our fishermen than to know that funds paid by them through their taxes have gone to our competitors. They may be our partners in the European Union, but they are competitors and they are putting us out of business with our own taxpayer's money.
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry):
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) said that this was the most important fishing debate of the year. If the Labour party thinks so much of the subject, why on earth did it not get a full day's debate out of the Government, rather than a half-day? That does not say much for its negotiating skills. I am sorry to have to start on that note, because there was much in what the hon. Gentleman said with which I agreed. If the matter is important, let us have a full day's debate next time.
If it were possible that the Government might be cajoled into following the course of action suggested in the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), I would urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to support them. That is no secret. However, that will not happen--or at least, not yet. Our fallback position will be that set out by the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris)--with, of course, particular reference to the interests of Northern Ireland.
Every year on this issue, there is nothing more or less than a further instalment of crisis management. Far too much catch capacity is chasing too few fish. Allied to that is a lack of accurate information about the quantity of fish present in the sea. We have to expect that the efficiency of the vessels will continue to increase. There will be fewer and fewer vessels chasing the same number of fish.
If I have a quibble with what the hon. Member for St. Ives said, it is on his comment about firm scientific advice. Experience has shown that scientists' assessments can be wildly astray. It may well be that a large margin of error is always involved, but if, on top of that, the sort of, cheating to which the hon. Gentleman referred is added in, it is no wonder that the assessments go astray. In fact, it would be a miracle if the scientists got it right. Unless everybody is prepared to play by the rules of the game, there is no chance whatsoever of coming up with firm estimates of the numbers of a species in an area at a given time.
For instance, last year, the advice was that cod and whiting in the Irish sea were in a parlous state. This year, the advice is optimistic, but only the status quo for catches is being allowed. I hope that my remarks will be read in conjunction with those of the hon. Members for South Down (Mr. McGrady) and for North Antrim, (Dr. Paisley), who touched on aspects of what I am trying to put across to the House.
We need to be willing to reassess the situation as fishing returns demonstrate the abundance or scarcity of a particular species in a given fishery.
As the United Kingdom Minister can argue for only three species at a time, although there are 18, his ability to debate the entire range is somewhat limited. Is the information that has been given in that respect correct? For instance, we are told that this year the Irish sea contains a huge amount of haddock. The hon. Member for South Down referred to that matter in detail. We know from the returns that the fish are there, but we are not allowed to catch them. The figure mentioned is 600 tonnes, but the scientists say, "Well, perhaps we could catch up to 2,000." So why should not Northern Ireland fishermen catch them?
So long as we proceed with short-term, ad hoc, arrangements, we shall get nowhere. Short-term changes must be measured against the general framework of total allowable catches and quotas, which are out of tune with the real position in the Irish sea.
Despite what the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) said, much of the United Kingdom's problem stems from its failure to defend its interests when we entered the EEC. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman rejecting that argument, which was put rather brutally by one of his right hon. Friends. I have been told that, although the principle was agreed, embodied within the principle was the whole concept of qualified majority voting. If that is so, whatever case the United Kingdom put forward, it would never have been accepted. It had not a snowball's chance of getting anywhere.
Whenever we return to the position in the Irish sea, we find that the Irish Republic never catches the high quotas that it is allowed for cod and whiting, for instance. The reason for that is simple: it was given twice its true entitlement on historic fishing returns. That seems to me and the fishermen in Northern Ireland to be mad, and something needs to be done about it. If we do not catch the quota, the uncaught fish will act as a magnet to other nations looking for fish. That is unavoidable. We must have sufficient swaps to ensure that those quota are caught.
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