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Mrs. Margaret Ewing (Moray): It is obvious that the Minister is running out of material with which to respond to the debate. I have a basic question. There have been consistent references to decommissioning and to how we can reach the multi-annual guidance programme. Can the Minister state the exact UK tonnage, because three different figures have been published in the past month?
Mr. Robertson: Obviously, there is confusion about that, and so that there is no ambiguity, my hon. Friend the Minister of State will write to the hon. Lady and to other hon. Members.
Some hon. Members mentioned a decommissioning scheme specifically for quota hoppers. There are 150 quota hoppers in the UK fleet, representing one fifth of the tonnage of our offshore fleet.
Mrs. Helen Liddell (Monklands, East):
I should like to intervene before the Minister moves too far from his response to the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald), who made a valid point about the early retirement scheme and the Government's opposition to it. Will the Minister assure the House that the Government will look again at introducing the scheme, in view of the considerable hardship faced by some fishermen?
Mr. Robertson:
As I am sure the hon. Lady is aware, there is a variety of other schemes, such as FIFG and PESCA. As she presses me to have a second look at the matter, I am happy to assure her that I shall do so.
Mr. Robertson:
I have already given way to the hon. Lady.
Clearly, if we were able to decommission the 150 quota hoppers, it would go a long way towards meeting any targets for capacity reductions. Of course, there is nothing to prevent quota hopper owners from applying for decommissioning grants under the scheme before the House. Some quota hoppers were decommissioned under previous schemes. A special scheme targeting them would
be quite different, and I am not sure that fishermen would take kindly to our spending large sums of public money to buy them out.
Even if it were possible to devise such a scheme, some difficult issues would need to be resolved. Should arrangements be voluntary or compulsory, and what steps should be taken to prevent the owners of decommissioned vessels buying back into the UK fleet? How could we be sure that the quota that was released by the decommissioning of such vessels benefited UK vessels and interests? Those and other matters would have to be carefully considered.
Mr. Salmond:
If I were the Minister, I would not burn my bridges about buying out quota hoppers. I would introduce some flexibility. The Minister said that the Scottish Fishermen's Federation supported days at sea measures. Will he make it clear that they would not be an addition but in exchange for a relaxation of the quota regime?
Mr. Robertson:
Of course they are not. I am not ruling out the idea of buying out quota hoppers--far from it--but our fishermen would want satisfactory answers to a series of technical and important questions before we went down that road. I am trying to flag up some of the questions and issues that would have to be discussed with the industry and sorted out. I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands that. Although we have no plans for a scheme at present, I am not willing to rule it out. Indeed, I am willing to look at it with our industry.
The measure will, I hope, make a valuable contribution to improving the operation of the UK fleet. As the Minister of State said, there have been a number of changes in the criteria compared with the 1995 scheme, and they are all designed to make it more effective. I am glad that the House has been able to welcome the widening of the scheme, which will allow more vessel owners to apply.
We have had a full and useful debate. The proposed scheme will make a modest but valuable contribution towards restructuring the UK fishing fleet and safeguarding its future and that of the fish stocks on which it depends. I have no hesitation in commending the scheme to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton):
I beg to move,
I shall begin by explaining why, to his great regret, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is unable to be present. As my right hon. Friend is not here, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones) will reply to the debate. I know that that will be understood by Welsh Members, but I thought that I should put it on the record because the same problem has led to the leading party spokesmen for other parties in Wales being unable to be here.
They have a good reason. The Secretary of State and the hon. Members for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) and for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) are tonight taking part in a long-arranged public debate in Wales, probably in English, on constitutional issues affecting Wales. It is clearly an important occasion and they all felt that they should be present. We all understand that, and I am sorry that we were not able to arrange parliamentary business in a more convenient way for them. I can testify from my conversations with the Secretary of State for Wales that he has asked me to make clear his strong personal support for the proposal.
The House will recall that, on 11 March, we agreed seven new Standing Orders enabling the Welsh Grand Committee to play an enhanced role in the parliamentary consideration of Welsh affairs by dealing with a wider range of business and holding meetings in Wales. During consultation on the draft Standing Orders and in the debate, representations were made that the use of the Welsh language should be allowed in the proceedings of the Welsh Grand Committee when it met in Wales.
I made it clear to the House in, I hope, a characteristically conciliatory way during the earlier debate that the Government did not think that those representations could be dismissed. After all, we are the Administration who carried through the Welsh Language Act 1993, which established the principle that, in the conduct of public business in Wales, the English and Welsh languages should be treated equally.
As I said in our earlier debate on the matter, it was clear that a decision to allow the use of Welsh in parliamentary proceedings would be a major change in practice on which the House ought to take a view when the issues of principle and practicality had been thoroughly investigated. Accordingly, I invited the Procedure Committee whose distinguished Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) is in his place and who was slightly taken by surprise when he read the report of our earlier debate, to consider the matter and to report to the House as soon as possible.
My right hon. Friend and his colleagues kindly accepted that unexpected and unannounced remit and have discharged it with admirable speed although they
were engaged in several other inquiries at the same time. It is appropriate to express on behalf of the House, and not only Welsh Members, our gratitude to my right hon. Friend and the members of the Committee for that. I am moving the motion to give the House an opportunity to decide on the Committee's recommendations.
First, English is the language in which the proceedings of this House are conducted, as it is the only language that all hon. Members are assumed to understand. The Procedure Committee rested firmly on that principle for proceedings here, and recommended that the House should affirm that principle in a resolution.
In that connection, I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) for his courtesy in giving me notice of some points that he wanted me to cover on the possible uses of languages other than English. This may be an appropriate time for me to pick them up. He asked about the appropriateness or, indeed, orderliness of using Latin and Greek and Chaucerian English. The advice that I have on that is that it would be for the Speaker--or you, Mr. Deputy Speaker--to decide whether to allow an hon. Member to use a quotation in Latin, Greek or Chaucerian English during a speech in the House without providing a translation.
I gather that, unfortunately, no hon. Members of the present House--certainly not me--heard Lord Palmerston get himself out of a tight corner in the "Don Pacifico" debate in 1850, which I remember learning about in my boyhood, with a peroration that included the phrase:
I move rapidly from Latin, Greek and Chaucerian English to the second question raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West, who noticed, no doubt, that I mentioned during the debate in March that Norman French was still used in the other place when Royal Assent is signified to Acts of Parliament by Commission. The formula used--I have heard it many times--is "La Reyne le veult".
Norman French is also used by the Clerks, I am told--I did not know this before--in the endorsements that are written on Bills as they pass from one House to the other. I see the Clerk nodding--[Interruption.] Is he not nodding? Perhaps he is not allowed to nod, but I am sure that I saw him nodding first. Norman French, although spoken in that one instance in the other place, is never spoken in the House. I hope that that is sufficient guidance for what has been the practice.
The last point that the hon. Gentleman raised with me can best be illustrated by referring to the speech that was made to a joint gathering of both Houses of Parliament
by President Chirac recently, which many hon. Members present will have heard, and which was, of course, delivered in French. The point is that it is quite usual for visiting Heads of State and Heads of Government to deliver such addresses in their own language, but these are ceremonial occasions that do not form part of the proceedings of the House, so the normal rules do not apply. I hope that that is sufficient comment on the points that the hon. Gentleman raised.
I return to the main purpose of the motion, which asks us to reaffirm that English is the language used for the proceedings of the House. The Procedure Committee was none the less satisfied that the Welsh language enjoys a special status in Wales, already recognised in law through the Welsh Language Act 1993, which provides a sound basis for agreeing a narrow derogation from the general rule concerning English to allow the use of Welsh in parliamentary proceedings in Wales. The motion gives effect to that recommendation.
Finally, the motion approves the conditions for the use of Welsh, which the Procedure Committee has recommended. The principal condition is that facilities for simultaneous interpretation from Welsh into English should be provided for the benefit of non-Welsh speakers. The Committee's advice is that such facilities can be hired at relatively modest cost; indeed, a number of the venues that might be used for meetings of the Welsh Grand Committee are already appropriately equipped, as one would expect, particularly since the passage of the Welsh Language Act.
That the Fishing Vessels (Decommissioning) Scheme 1996 (S.I., 1996, No. 1242), dated 7th May 1996, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th May, be approved.
7.25 pm
That, whilst English is and should remain the language of this House, the use of Welsh be permitted in parliamentary proceedings held in Wales, subject to the conditions set out in the Third Report from the Select Committee on Procedure, Session 1995-96 (House of Commons Paper No. 387).
We have emptied the Chamber of Scotsmen and filled it with Welshmen.
"Civis Britannicus sum",
which I hasten to translate, to be sure that I am in order, as:
"I am a British citizen".
I do not think that anyone would take exception to the use of Latin in that case, but as a general rule we might do well to follow the practice of Sir Winston Churchill, who on one occasion, when he had made a telling point in a speech with a Latin quotation, followed it up instantly with a translation into English. I suspect, however, that his purpose was not to keep in order but rather to make a different point, because in introducing the English version he said that it was "for the benefit of any Etonians who may be present".
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