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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): What tripe!
Mr. Salmond: Tripe, is it? I saw more action after the Government's defeat last year in the fisheries debate than I had seen in my previous eight years in the House. Nothing has concentrated the Government's mind more wonderfully than being defeated in the House last year. We have had 30 points from the fisheries review group and a 10-point plan from the Minister. Why? Fishing has at last become a key political issue because the Government know that they face defeat in the Chamber. It is the prospect of defeat that has concentrated the Government's mind. It is the prospect of defeat that has stopped fishing being traded off, as it has so often been before, in pursuit of other objectives.
Mr. David Porter (Waveney): Every year, we have this pre-quota debate on fisheries, and every year we face huge cuts in the quota, the fleet or both. Every year the Minister, like his predecessors, goes off to Europe and returns waving a piece of paper and saying, "The cuts are less than first thought: that must be a triumph." Every year, in spite of and because of this ritual, the fleet gets smaller and the job gets harder.
Visitors to Lowestoft fish market are often shocked at the low level of activity when they have heard from people who recall walking from deck to deck across the harbour not so many years ago. The fishing boats were wedged in because there were so many of them. Anyone who looks at what is happening is shocked. Even those of us who have watched it happening are shocked at what has been done. The industry has not been calling wolf all these years. The warnings have been sounded and now we really are at the point of no return in so many aspects of fishing.
It is bad enough that coastal communities are being devastated, but the biggest tragedy of all is that fishing, managed properly, is a renewable resource. If gas, oil or coal is harvested to extinction, that is it and everybody understands that, but if fishing is wiped out, it is a failure of the regime that regulates it. The CFP and all that is done in its name is that regime. It is a monument to the nightmare world of bureaucracy where, in pursuit of a misguided ideal of a common European policy for something as diverse and varied as the whole European fishery, a British industry is in danger of being sacrificed. Everything comes back to that policy.
If cuts and restrictions to save the industry were being presented now as a make-or-break deal, the industry would accept them. It might have accepted this year's
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I am encouraged--vindicated even--to find that no one now defends the CFP, although not enough people are yet arguing for our removal from it. As has been said, and as needs to be said again and again, the CFP is flawed from top to bottom. There is no incentive in it to conserve and manage the renewable resource because any savings in catch effort go back into the pool for the greedy Mediterranean fishermen to grab. There is the added problem in terms of conservation, which was mentioned earlier, of discarding dead fish over and above quota. Can there be a more bizarre, crazy and ludicrous political idea than the CFP, which does the precise opposite of what is intended?
Every year, more and more people are waking up to this madness. As the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) has said, fishing has risen up the political agenda. This year, the Government have given almost a full day to the debate, which is very welcome. Every year, the media get into a frenzy about the chances of the Government being defeated. Last year, the Government were defeated; I abstained on that occasion, although I had voted against the Government previously.
The point is that defeat made no difference. The Minister still went off to Europe, still spent a weekend arguing with our alleged partners and still came back with permission to catch fewer British fish than before. If the Government are defeated tonight, it will again make no difference at all. The Minister will still go off and the 1997 quotas will still be set. Tonight I shall vote with the Government: the time to vote against is afterwards, when the Minister comes back with a deal that is too poor to accept.
Furthermore--[Interruption.] Labour Front-Bench Members laugh. Furthermore, to vote against the Government means voting with the Opposition, and their views on fisheries policy are muddled at best, as we heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang). I cannot stomach voting tonight with a party that has said that it will never be isolated in Europe and whose leader has ruled out leaving the CFP.
In addition, my hon. Friend the Minister has made a lot of the right noises. He has visited and made himself available to the industry around the country. He has understood the essential problems of trying to run an industry by agreement with other countries whose market tastes, cultural attitudes to rules and political agendas are all totally alien to ours.
The Minister has talked about and promised action on quota hoppers and he is looking at the regional management of separate waters. A dose of benefit of the doubt is due in the Division Lobby tonight. However, the Minister knows, as we all know, that talk of the reform of the CFP and of there being no IGC agreement until details such as quota hoppers and flagship piracy are sorted may be a further part of the con.
The future after the year 2002 is surely already settled. The treaties and regulations now in place and those that will be enforced if no new deals are stitched up in or
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If and when more countries enter the bizarre lunacy of the European Union for no other reason than that they will get something out of it at our expense, our position will become worse. We shall have little or no fishing grounds as large fleets are allowed access in return for a slice of equal access to the common resource, which appears to be open to every Tom, Dick and Harry except, of course, the British.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) referred to the European Union special fishing permit. It is based on the 1976 article setting out the CFP, which introduced the repulsive Soviet-style principle of equal access to a common resource. It gives Brussels ultimate power to control numbers of vessels, fishing times, catches and mesh and gear sizes and types. It also sets out fines, including seizure and withdrawal of permits.
The Commission tried to introduce the permit system during the negotiations on Spanish accession to the EU, but it was opposed. When Finland and Sweden joined, they were obliged to sign a treaty to the effect that access arrangements would apply for a transitional period ending by the date of implementation of the Community fishing permit system--not later than 31 December 2002. Treaties must be agreed unanimously, so all Governments of member states knew about the permit system and agreed to it. That leads me to ask whether talk of reform is a cover and whether a single Brussels-controlled fleet has not already been agreed for 2002 or 2003.
I wish my hon. Friend the Minister luck at the Council of Ministers meeting. Let him go to Europe and argue for the British fishing industry, which he knows is in a bad way. Let him go, knowing that that industry could have a bright future with good, lasting jobs and a steady supply of wholesome food. However, if he cuts the quotas or reduces the fleet at Lowestoft any further through the ludicrous decommissioning scheme, which compensates boat owners but not those who are put on the dole when the boats are scrapped, or if the cuts are greater than those of previous years, there will be no fishing left. At Lowestoft, a 40 per cent. cut could mean a 100 per cent. cut because the remaining 60 per cent. would not be viable.
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry):
When I first saw today's Order Paper, I was greatly cheered. We all thought that we would have a full day's debate, but when we arrived here, we realised that there were two long statements. No less than one hour and 55 minutes disappeared, so we have ended up with little more than the half day that we had last year for one of the most important debates of the year on a topic that is vital to the welfare of fishing communities throughout the
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Reference has been made to quota hopping. When we first entered the quota system, I wonder why nobody had the wit to ring-fence fish quotas in the same way as we ring-fence milk quotas and sheep quotas--which are distributed among the four countries of the United Kingdom and, for sheep, between lowland and upland flocks. If that had been done, we would not be facing the current problems with quota hopping. We are in our current predicament simply because there was not enough forethought when we put our name to the policy in the past.
When I examine the position in Northern Ireland, I am absolutely astonished to find that the Northern Ireland quota has reduced while that of the Irish Republic has increased. In last year's debate, the Minister said:
I was told by the Minister in a letter on 12 December:
We are all disappointed that the swaps that the Minister promised last year did not materialise. Towards the end of the fishing season, we pretty well ran out of whiting. Some were eventually procured from elsewhere, but that had more to do with good fortune than with Government action.
Although I welcome the Minister's remarks today about the Hague preference and revisiting, more needs to be done than that. Inequities must be resolved, but not at the expense of Scottish fishermen. Many communities in Scotland depend on fishing and would disappear if it is not kept up to scratch. Similarly, there are communities in Northern Ireland that are entirely dependent on fishing. We must realise that there is no alternative for those folk.
It would be a great blessing and enlightenment to us all if the Hague preference was published, as well as the appendices to it which, I believe, were never signed. We should all like to read them and see what we signed up to, or put our hand to.
The fish stocks of cod, herring, whiting and haddock in the Irish sea are in good shape or better. In the case of cod, there has been a reduction in fishing effort, which might account for the decrease in landings. Herring and whiting stocks seem to fishermen to be adequate;
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At one time, haddock were scarce in the Irish sea. There is now a haddock stock off the coast of Down, and there is evidence that they are spawning there. I hope that that reflects the attitude of the Northern Ireland fishermen towards conservation, and the gear that they use. Those fish, however, are not being caught; we are not allowed to catch them, because area VIIa of the Irish sea is part of the larger area VII, which extends far beyond the confines of the Irish sea. Although haddock are scarce in the overall area, they are locally abundant. Surely it is time that we considered carefully a more localised fishing policy to deal with the changes over the years in the abundance or scarcity of particular species of fish.
Scientists often seem to get matters wrong. Would it not be a good idea for them to go out on the fishing boats, so that they could see what the fishermen are catching, and whether fish are abundant or scarce, rather than the scientists being taken round once or twice a year to take quick samples here and there? In theory, that could be accurate, but to be sure of accuracy, scientists should make many more stops than they can under the present system. If they were out on the boats, as they used to be, we would have a more accurate idea of stocks.
"I assure hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies that I shall be pressing the Fisheries Council for increases in the quotas proposed for the Irish sea. We fully appreciate the concerns of the Northern Irish industry about the Hague preference and of course we shall continue to seek to reduce the disadvantage to Northern Ireland resulting from the Hague preference"--
which, of course, has the opposite effect on Scotland--
"by carrying out international quota swaps."--[Official Report, 19 December 1995; Vol. 268, c. 1398-99.]
However, that never materialised.
"These frustrations arise not because of the action by the UK in applying Hague Preference, but because of the approach taken by the Republic and I will be taking this up again with the Irish Minister at the December Fisheries Council."
I hope that he will take it up with a great deal more success this year than was the case last year, when we got nowt, which was not much help to the fishermen in Northern Ireland.
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