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Mr. Raymond S. Robertson: I am sorry that that technicality has arisen so late, but I shall ask my officials to discuss it with the banks concerned as a matter of urgency.
Mr. Gallie: I thank my hon. Friend. That is the assurance I sought, and I shall now sit down.
7.6 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): I welcome the co-operation that is allowing all hon. Members with fishing interests to participate in the debate. Every fishing debate is controversial, and an hour and a half is not sufficient time for such a debate.
I want to make three points. We all agree that the common fisheries policy is a busted flush and should be changed fundamentally. There are three areas that destabilise the CFP. The first is the flag of convenience vessels, and that point has been mentioned many times. I remember the Merchant Shipping Bill back in 1988, when the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and I proposed amendments to toughen the conditions placed on flag of convenience vessels. At that time, despite the fact that that legislation was their fourth attempt to deal with the issue, the Government told us that everything was in order and that they had the matter in hand. They told us that our amendments were no good. Whether the amendments were good or bad, they could not have been any worse than the Government's attempts in that Bill.
The issue is now to go before the intergovernmental conference. There is a point that I want the Minister to think about. As I understand the policy of non-co-operation, everything is to be vetoed regardless of whether it is good or bad. Even if treaty changes on flags of convenience vessels were achievable, am I correct in believing that they would be vetoed by the United Kingdom? The Minister seems to be shaking his head, but as I understand the policy, everything is to be vetoed regardless of whether the United Kingdom supports it. The Minister should address that.
The second issue that destabilised the CFP was Spanish access to western waters six years before it was provided for in Spain's treaty of accession. This morning, The Times said:
Mr. Baldry:
I have absolutely no idea where that story came from, and it bears no relation to the truth. Spain changed its view because it saw our eradication document, and it was able to support us on that basis.
Mr. Salmond:
I look forward to the Minister's letter to The Times, in which he will doubtless give us the details of the dirty deal that was done with Spain three years ago, which gave it accelerated access. The Minister shakes his head, but I have heard the same point made by Conservative Members.
The third factor that has destabilised the common fisheries policy is the quota allocation. The Minister, rightly, in his short term of office has been directed to technical conservation, square-mesh panels and industrial fishing as alternative methods of conservation. We all accept that quota allocation is fine at times of abundant
fishery, but when the fishery becomes tight, the quota allocation becomes perverse as a conservation policy. Many Opposition Members have put the arguments for square-mesh panels and industrial fishing to many of the Minister's predecessors for many years, but we have yet to see effective action pursued and taken.
I know that the Minister has been engaged in the dramatic consultation process in the past few months. I wish him well, but I hope that his declarations on and interest in questions of technical conservation are carried through into serious argument in the Council of Ministers.
I, too, welcome the Minister's tough talk on fishing this evening, but I have seen his predecessors come and go. They all, including the UK Fisheries Minister--as the Minister described himself--said that they would act tough and change their ways on the common fisheries policy. Yet they all went to the Council of Ministers and did not talk tough there. If they did, that did not have any effect because they acted like lambs.
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry):
The statutory instrument covers the period up to the end of this year, but the decommissioning will not stop there and further proposals are in the pipeline. The debate has revolved not around the instrument but around those further proposals.
The social and economic structure of the areas affected by fleet reductions has been well explored in the past and needs no repetition, other than to say that if the Irish sea fleet had to cut its catch by 40 per cent., the present onshore infrastructure simply could not be sustained, because the throughput of fish would be so low as to make the whole operation uneconomic. I am sure that that also applies elsewhere.
The fishermen in Northern Ireland are astonished by the latest proposals, because they know that some species are abundant in the fishery at present, including haddock, herring and prawns. That was apparently also the view of the scientists until the turn of the year, but those early opinions seem to have been set aside despite the fact that the prawn fishery was increased by some 3,000 tonnes.
It now seems that a massive cut is being demanded because the Community has taken a global view of all EC fisheries and has made cuts on that basis instead of considering individual species or fishing areas. That is not acceptable to the fishing industry, those who represent it in the House or the country at large. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that it was not acceptable to the Government. I hope that the Government will reject the cuts that have been demanded and opt for a policy tailored to each area and species.
It is clear that the UK has suffered disproportionately from the changes made over the years, and there has been a huge reduction in the fleet in Northern Ireland already. We shall now be asked to give still more. It is time for a
radical change of policy, because the Northern Ireland fleet and those elsewhere in the United Kingdom have shrunk far enough.
Something must be done about quota hopping. Much has been said about quota hopping, but something must also be done about the privileged position created for the Irish Republic by the Hague preference system, which has not been mentioned so far. I shall not go into details, but the facts will be well known to fishermen and all those who represent fishing constituencies. Those problems need immediate resolution and even more immediate is the need to fulfil the Government's pledge that the Irish sea Hague preference losses would be made good by international quota swaps.
In the longer term, we need to clarify whether the Government accept the draft report of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee on fisheries, issued in early May, which discussed decommissioning and reducing activity and catchability. In short, the question the document raises is whether the EC should have a small fishing fleet with a high catch capacity per vessel and utilise it fully--apparently that would be technically easy, because many vessels are tied up--or whether it should be satisfied with many more but less efficient vessels that would keep more people at work at sea and also more small fishing ports open. That needs careful consideration, because the smaller one-rig boats that fish for prawns ensure a steady year-round supply of prawns and steady employment. The larger, more efficient boats provide more seasonal supply and employment.
The report states:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson):
I am grateful to hon. Members for their wide-ranging contributions to what has once again, and rightly, turned out to be an impassioned debate. The fishing industry is a vital part of our national life and is at the heart of the constituencies of many hon. Members who have spoken today. I am proud to include myself among them.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) said, and whatever the difference in views, I believe that the whole House yearns to see a viable and profitable UK fishing industry that husbands the natural resources surrounding these islands and harvests those natural resources on a sustainable basis. The fish stocks on which our fishing industry relies are heavily over-exploited. Failure to tackle overfishing exposes the fishing industry to an increasing risk that those stocks will simply disappear, and that must never be allowed to happen.
On the subject of the multi-annual guidance programme, the House has shown its real concern about the scale of the possible capacity reductions that the Commission is now seeking to achieve by 2002. I shall
repeat the comments made by my hon. Friend the Minister of State and make it clear to all hon. Members that there is no prospect of our decommissioning a third of the UK trawler fleet over the next three years, as Mrs. Bonino has suggested, but there is still a need for us to help remove from the fleet those vessels that are becoming increasingly unviable. Only in that way can we safeguard the future of the remaining fleet, place it on a more viable footing and reduce the incentive to overfish. That is why the Government propose to spend a further £13 million under the scheme before the House.
There is no doubt that we need to reduce fishing effort for the future of the industry. The question is not whether, but how and to what extent different parts of the European Community fishing fleets should reduce their fishing activity. Of course, as the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) said, we do not need to proceed by decommissioning alone. The fleet can be reduced in other ways.
For example, although there is not much agreement in the industry, I know that the Scottish Fishermen's Federation is increasingly willing to contemplate restrictions on time at sea. I commend that thinking and I look forward to the UK industry acting responsibly and making known its detailed considerations of the Commission's proposals as we discuss them in the months ahead. I stress again that, in their present form, the proposals are unacceptable to the industry and to the Government.
Many hon. Members mentioned quota hopping, especially my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives(Mr. Harris). Of course, there is no point in spending UK taxpayers' money to decommission fishing vessels if other member states can continue to export their own surplus capacity on to our fishing register. It is vital that action is taken to close that loophole, which is exploited by quota hoppers. It would be intolerable if we were to scrap UK vessels, for them simply to be replaced by flag boats from other member states fishing against UK quotas. Although we took action to try to remedy that problem in 1989, our action was struck down by the European Court--the same European Court that many Opposition Front Benchers would sell their souls to serve.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear the Government's resolve to tackle the quota hopping problem at the intergovernmental conference. He made that point forcefully in his useful meeting with the Scottish Fishermen's Federation in Aberdeen last month. We envisage that our proposals will take the form of a protocol to the treaty, which recognises that national quotas allocated under the common fisheries policy are to be used for the benefit of national fishing communities. The protocol will be designed to allow individual member states to adopt measures to ensure that there are real economic links between their fishing communities and the vessels that fish their quotas.
As my hon Friend the Minister of State said, the European Commission cannot be surprised that the UK fishing industry and the Government are unwilling to contemplate any further programmes of reductions in the UK fleet as long as the problem of quota hoppers remains to be solved.
Under the common fisheries policy, UK quotas are for the benefit of UK fishing communities, not for the benefit of fishermen from other member states. Fishing makes a vital contribution to the wealth of fishery-dependent areas, which are often in remote parts of our country where the scope for diversification is limited. It is our job to ensure that that contribution is properly safeguarded and secured.
"Spain's unexpected decision to vote in favour of lifting the embargo on British bovine by-products may have been taken in the hope of a future quid pro quo with Britain on fishing rights."
We have been here before. There have been Council meetings at which Spain suddenly decided to vote for the United Kingdom's position on qualified majority voting. We then found out that the fishing industry had been sold down the river as part of that bargain. Would the Minister care to deny the report in The Times this morning that Spain's decision to side with the United Kingdom might have something to do with its interest in fishing matters?
"Measures to reduce activity and catchability will improve the willingness of fishermen to leave the industry".
If applied, that would lead to a policy that squeezed the individual fisherman financially to the point at which he was not able to catch sufficient fish to keep his operation viable and would therefore be forced to take a small sum in compensation and leave the industry. Is that unacceptable policy precisely the result that the demand for a further 40 per cent. cut is intended to achieve?
7.15 pm
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