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8.36 pm
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): In his opening speech, my hon. Friend the Minister said that I had expressed my concerns about the six and 12-mile limits. Although that is true, I should tell the House that those concerns pale into insignificance compared with my concern about the regime that we are now debating. There is no doubt that the common fisheries regime is both evil and corrupting. It is evil because of its devastating effect on the marine environment; it is corrupting because, among other things, it obliges otherwise honest men to become criminals.
That fact is well demonstrated by the words spoken in court by a Shetland fisherman, as reported in the Fishing News of 13 December 1996. He said:
The problem of discards and quotas is well known; perhaps less well known is the amount of fish that is destroyed onshore. In Peterhead harbour in June, and in Scalloway harbour in the Shetlands in August, colleagues and I saw prime fresh fish covered with red paint which was to be destroyed because it did not fetch the minimum landing price decreed by the European Community. How can we possibly claim that such policies--all of which were introduced in the name of conservation--are having their intended effect when thousands upon thousands of tonnes of fish are dumped at sea and when prime fresh fish is being destroyed ashore?
The common fisheries policy is not a practical policy. On the contrary, it is a political policy in which a vital British national interest is subjugated in the quest for European hegemony. It offends against common sense; it lacks credibility and any notion of morality; and its only principle--that of European integration--is one that I and thousands of fishermen cannot possibly support.
The principle that I do support is that of defending a vital national interest. I respectfully suggest that the Government should not talk about national interests unless they are prepared to defend them, which they are at present failing to do in British waters around Guernsey where the perception is that the United Kingdom has not deployed the Royal Navy for fear of upsetting the French.
I met Guernsey fishermen in the Palace of Westminster last Thursday. They complained of harassment, intimidation, blackmail and of being set up for prosecution, all of which the Government have apparently not seen fit to counter. My hon. Friend the Minister has repeatedly stated that the six and 12-mile limits are not negotiable. Will he therefore tell the House why armed French naval vessels of the Affaires Maritimes have sailed into the six to 12-mile limits off Guernsey in support of French fishing vessels?
I deal now with some other aspects of the common fisheries policy. The House must not portray Jacques Santer, Emma Bonino and the other Commissioners as bogeymen and women; we should see them for what they are--Commissioners of the European Union, spelling out, often with disarming honesty and clarity, what we in the United Kingdom have already signed up to in three solemn and binding treaties leading inexorably to European integration.
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I should like to say a word or two about fishing permits. In answer to a parliamentary question, my hon. Friend the Minister said:
I do not argue with the basic premise of permits. If one accepts the principle of a common fisheries policy, a permit system is entirely logical, but neither I nor a substantial--and growing--number of people in the fishing industry any longer want a common fisheries policy. I support the aims and objectives of the Save Britain's Fish campaign. I support the repatriation of powers and the establishment of a 200-mile exclusive fishing zone for this country.
The common fisheries policy is fundamentally flawed and quite incapable of sensible reform. On that point, we should perhaps remind ourselves of the words of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. In a press release dated February 1995, he said:
As for the immediate import of this debate, we shall soon vote on these important issues. I repeat now what I have said on previous occasions: this vote, whether the Government win or lose, will not change one jot or tittle of the common fisheries policy. It is quite bogus and, to use the phrase of my hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body), it is humbug for the Opposition parties to pretend that they have grounds for opposing the Government tonight.
When I intervened on him, the Opposition spokesman confirmed what we have long known--that the Labour party is committed to the common fisheries policy. It is committed to the principle of equal access to the common resource. Unless it changes its mind on that question, it has no locus to criticise or vote against what the Government are trying to do. The reality is that even if Labour were to form the Government tomorrow, it would still be bound by the common fisheries policy.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan):
If the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) will forgive me, I have to say that it is his argument that is bogus and humbug. He made a case for not supporting the Labour party's amendment; he most certainly does not have an argument for supporting the Government, which is what he said he was going to do.
People in the fishing industry will hear that the Eurosceptics, who say that they support the industry, are now going to support the Government. Those people will cast their minds back to the voting behaviour of some of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues during the days-at-sea controversy, for example, where again those hon. Members' support for the fishing industry and opposition to the Government were found wanting. The hon. Member for Ludlow may quarrel with the Labour party, with me and with the Liberal party, but according to the argument that he has advanced he does not have a shred of credibility if he is not prepared to oppose the Government.
The Minister said that he disliked the Scottish National party. I am afraid that that does not cause me any anxiety whatsoever. I have to tell him that the fishing industry dislikes the Government. It dislikes the Government not because of the 10-point plan that the Minister has introduced, but because of the past 10 years of inaction and failure to defend the industry's interests. The broken water of the do-nothing years, as one of the fishing industry's leaders so memorably put it only a while ago, is the reason why the fishing industry does not trust the Government.
There is no doubt that the Labour party's amendment is flawed, but it has the virtue of going over the record of the past 17 years and detailing some of the failures, the betrayals and the sell-outs in which the Government have engaged vis-a-vis the fishing industry. It would be enormously helpful if the Labour party would discuss its amendment with the other six Opposition parties, all of which have an interest in the fishing industry. It would not only be useful for the Labour party to show some humility in recognising that every Opposition party vote is necessary to defeat the Government, but the combined wisdom of the Social Democratic and Labour party, the Unionist parties, the Liberals and the Scottish National party might improve Labour's amendment. Judging from its document charting the road to the manifesto, which does not mention the subject, the Labour party's commitment to the fishing industry is minimal. Nevertheless, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru will support the Labour amendment and, if it comes to a vote, will oppose the Government motion as an indictment of the Government's track record on the industry.
I want to raise three specific fishing issues with the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland before turning to some more general points. First, I reinforce the point made about sprat by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace). There is a difficulty with the by-catch in the pelagic sector. I hope that the Minister will deal with that when he sums up.
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Secondly, on the haddock quota on the west coast and in the North sea, it is vital to contest the argument that because the area is a mixed fishery, if there is a decline in the cod quota, the haddock quota must also decline. We can still have a clean fishery for haddock in a mixed fishery. On the west coast, cod fishing takes place in February, March and April and not in the rest of the year. It does not follow that haddock and cod quotas should go down in sequence. I hope that the Minister will assure us that he will devote the same amount of energy to the haddock quota in the North sea as was devoted to the plaice quota last year and that the decline of the haddock quota on the west coast will be visited before the final decisions are made.
Thirdly, I want to raise the issue of the Hague preference. I want at least one voice this evening to speak in support of the Hague preference, which is important for the Scottish industry. I hope that that will be acknowledged by the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland when he sums up. The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who introduced the debate, told us that all the fishing representatives had agreed that the Hague preference should be reconsidered. I consulted the Scottish Fishermen's Federation and found that it had not agreed; it had just been told that the issue would be reconsidered. The Minister then told us that the representatives had not agreed, but they had not objected when he had told them. He then told us--the record will confirm this--that there were differing views across the United Kingdom.
As a Member of Parliament representing Scottish fishermen, I shall obviously defend the Hague preference because it has played an important role in defending the Scottish fishing industry, particularly the haddock quota. However, one point about the Hague preference should not go unsaid. Negotiated in the mid-1970s by Garret Fitzgerald, then Irish Foreign Minister, it is the one part of the common fisheries policy that relates to fishing dependency. It may do that imperfectly, but that is a valuable principle to defend. Apart from the point that Ireland's great success in formulating and defending the Hague preference shows how a small nation in Europe can gain results by making one issue a priority, the Hague preference is worth defending in principle. I have a little advice for Labour Front Benchers. Perhaps they should address the concerns of hon. Members from Northern Ireland by saying that their interests will be defended in the swaps arrangements and that, unlike last year, the commitments will be delivered this year, whatever party is in power.
I come now to the issues at the heart of the problems with the common fisheries policy. I remind the fisheries Minister who opened the debate that I have been criticising the common fisheries policy since long before he became the Minister responsible for fisheries. Having seen fisheries Ministers come and go with depressing regularity, I fully expect to be criticising it long after he has stopped being the Minister.
The Government wonder why I doubt their commitment on flags of convenience. It is partly because of their record. Back in 1988, the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and I argued in Committee on the Merchant Shipping Bill that the Government's measures were likely to fail in the European Court and we put forward an alternative proposal for residential requirements for the crews of such vessels.
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My real concern about flags of convenience vessels relates to the Government's recent record. I refer to the challenge made by my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) to the President of the Board of Trade on 12 November, when he made a statement on the Government's objections to the 48-hour directive. My hon. Friend said:
My second issue is relative stability. That is the rock on which the common fisheries policy becomes tolerable or intolerable. Many of us had our confidence in the future of the policy severely damaged when the Government--together with other Governments--conceded early access to western waters for the Spanish. That was a staggering achievement by the Spanish. They had to revisit and reinterpret their treaty of accession, achieve unanimity across all member states and win legal opinion. Having started with indefensible arguments, the Spanish managed to achieve early access against all the odds because they had it as a top priority.
The European Parliament fisheries committee elected as its rapporteur Ms Carmen Fraga Estevez--a Spanish Member of the European Parliament who is known to be a hard-line supporter of free access to all fisheries. That is depressing for the future of the policy. The House may be interested to learn that the British Conservatives in the European Parliament were among her sponsors for that post: they put forward a hard-line Spanish federalist as rapporteur for that crucial fisheries committee. It is little wonder the fishing industry has scant confidence in many of the Conservative party's statements.
"We can't help what we catch . . . I had dumped 400 boxes of saithe . . . Who has committed the biggest crime--me, who landed 25 boxes, or a system which made me dump 400 boxes?"
That is why I say that the regime is totally unacceptable.
"Council regulations 3760/92 and 1627/94 provide the framework for the Community's licensing and permit systems to enable member states to regulate fishing activities . . . They do not entail a European fleet run from Brussels."--[Official Report, 11 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 73.]
I have just two points to make about that. First, the permits represent days at sea by another name. Secondly, they are aspects of European policy, and while member states may administer them, they will do so only as the designated agent of the central authority in Brussels. As I shall show in a moment, neither the UK nor any other member state of the European Community has competence in these matters.
"There is no prospect of a unanimous agreement among the 15 Member States to amend the Treaties which provide the legal basis of the CFP . . . The fact is that the UK has accepted, by Treaty, that Fisheries lie within the competence of the European Community".
The principle of equal access and the prospect of the permit system is wholly unacceptable both to this nation, which recognises it as a loss of sovereignty, and to the fishing industry, which sees it as a sell-out of British waters and as a giving away of the substantial fish stocks in them, not to mention the livelihood of British fishermen.
I say again that it is bogus for the Opposition parties to pretend that they could have any policy other than the common fisheries policy unless and until that policy is scrapped.
8.46 pm
"Despite its flexibility, the time scale for implementation and the existing derogations, will that issue now take priority over discussions about matters such as the common fisheries policy . . . ?"
The President of the Board of Trade replied:
"There are other important issues to be addressed at the intergovernmental conference, but it is this issue"--
the 48-hour directive--
"that matters to the Government and we intend to insist upon it."--[Official Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 163.]
I do not think that it is unfair for me to ask the Government what would happen if agreement were reached on flags of convenience vessels but not on the 48-hour directive. Would the Government block their own achievement on fishing in pursuit of their opposition to the 48-hour directive? As the Amsterdam summit comes conveniently after the general election, the question can also be addressed to those on the Labour Front Bench. Presumably they can apply their minds directly to flags of convenience vessels because they do not oppose the 48-hour directive. After so many years of betrayal, we are entitled to ask about the priority being given to this long-running sore for the fishing industry.
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