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Mr. Gill: I am sure that, with his great experience in these matters, my right hon. Friend recognises that there is a fundamental dilemma. How on earth can one preserve relative stability which is discriminatory in the context of regulation 101/76, which will apply from 1 January 2003 and which spells out clearly that we cannot have a discriminatory policy? Will my right hon. Friend pose the same question to the Parliamentary Secretary that I posed? Will he ask what evidence there is that relative stability will continue after 2002?
Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend has posed his question with such force that he hardly needs me to second it, especially as I have some questions of my own.
My thesis is that in the European Union the probability of a pragmatic solution being found with which everybody can live and about which nobody is particularly happy has such a long history that there is a sporting chance that that will occur again this time.
I want to address a broader issue in a deliberately speculative way because this is a wide-ranging debate. The present policy, based on total allowable catches and quotas, is massively dependent on control, regulation and intervention. It is applied, in theory, across the European Union. It means that the enormous interventionist and regulatory machine, which as the Parliamentary Secretary said, tells people what their annual catch ought to be, at least in theory, is applied to a traditionally freebooting industry--we might as well be honest about that. It applies at massive public cost and it does not work.
The policy is not delivering conservation and is not resting on any real consensus in the fishing industry. It is not a system of regulation and control that is willingly applied and observed by the industry. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to make it work. We all know that evasion, fraud and cheating are well nigh universal. The fishing industry would say that there is no real choice and no real way of making a livelihood, except by cheating. Other people might argue that the industry has not always broken its neck to apply regulatory methods and has not submitted itself to the necessary surveillance. That all adds up to an immensely complex system of control which is not delivering the goods.
What worries me is that the thrust of policy is to go even further down the same road. The Prime Minister came back from Amsterdam with various measures designed to address the quota-hopping issue. Whichever one of the three measures is chosen, it will be yet another element in the fabric of control. The Prime Minister has also proposed that we might have, for example, designated ports of landing. I remember talking eight years ago about the possibility of designated ports of landing as a way of getting round black fish, and so on.
The thrust of the policy is to multiply controls even further against an industry that is deeply unwilling to see them operate effectively. That means escalating costs and costs to the taxpayer. The costs deliver a poor rate of return if the investment in enforcement is set off against the achievement of sustainable fishing opportunities, and still less if it is set off against the development of the stocks.
We are all waiting for the next big stock crash. Will it be North sea cod? What will be the next big stock to crash? We all know that the spawning stock biomass is at a critical level. We talk about it every year. Every year, the Council of Ministers receives advice about the sustainable fishing quotas and there is a process of negotiation and barter which winches up all the quotas to reach a politically acceptable settlement. I know exactly how it works, because I have taken part in it. It will continue to operate, but it will not work. It will continue to be the method used to achieve some sort of deal.
The question is whether we can continue tightening the screws on a policy that is demonstrably not working efficiently enough. What are the costs of the policy? I intend to give some figures, but I readily admit that they are not all on enforcement. Significant elements may be on other matters; none the less, they show the total envelope of support for the fishing industry. The figures
are startling and they all come from the annual reports of the various Government Departments. I remember compiling such reports and wondering whether anybody ever read them. I now have an answer, because I have read them. In fact, I have some advice on how they could be made more readily understandable.
On page 215 of the report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the figure for the conservation of sea fish stocks, which is mainly the British contribution to the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, is about £5.75 million. The figure for fisheries structures and markets is more than £12 million and for fisheries management and enforcement about £13.5 million. That latter figure embraces the six Royal Navy vessels in the protection squadron.
I remember having detailed discussions with the Royal Navy about the costs of that protection, because the Navy regards it as an important training mechanism as well. Whether those costs are distributed actuarially is a matter for debate between the two Departments. There is also aerial surveillance of fisheries and those aircraft can be used for other purposes. None the less, if we add all that together, we have already got about £31 million of MAFF spending. There may also be odds and ends from sea fisheries committees and European Union structural funds which have to be added to that total.
We now come to the Scottish Office: in 1997-98, the Scottish Office spent £27 million on fisheries and another £12 million on the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency, which I believe uses a mixture of Royal Navy and private vessels.
Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian):
The Scottish Office does not use Royal Navy fishery protection services.
Mr. Curry:
It is interesting that the Scots should use private vessels, which probably have a longer life at sea and fewer requirements to put into port for weekend leave than Royal Navy vessels. Those two together add up to £39 million.
It is interesting that, according to the Scottish Office, the value of landings of fish in Scotland by UK vessels in 1995 was about £295 million. In that year--I am comparing like with like--the Scottish Office spend, including capital expenditure on a new fisheries research vessel, was about £35 million; in other words, the financial effort from the taxpayer was equivalent to about 12 per cent. of the value of the legal landings, which is an enormously high proportion.
Mr. Gill:
May I point out to my right hon. Friend that the title of this debate is "British fishing policy after 2002"? Will he address the issue of what happens on31 December 2002 and what will be different after that date? All he has said so far is that there is a sporting chance that we will get our way on relative stability. I do not think that it is sufficient, either for Parliament or for my party within Parliament, to say that to the fishing community at this time. The fishing community must have something more positive. What is my right hon. Friend going to propose?
Mr. Curry:
If my hon. Friend can wait a little, I am busy demonstrating that simply to roll the policy forward
I was about to point out that £5.2 million was spent in Northern Ireland. There was also £12 million for fisheries from the European Union for the single programme document from 1994 to 1999. The value of landings in Northern Ireland is put at £17 million for about 20,000 tonnes of fish, so the ratio of public expenditure to the value of the catch is even higher in Northern Ireland.
Add together the amounts spent by those three Departments and the total is about £75 million of public expenditure supporting the fisheries industry. I would guess the value of legal landings in 1997 to be about£500 million, although that is only a ballpark figure. Public expenditure of £75 million applied to landings worth £500 million shows that the ratio of support is about 15 per cent. I cannot think of another industry where there is that commitment to sustaining a policy that does not work. That is the heart of the problem. While we operate fisheries on the basis of a universal system of tax and quotas, it is difficult to see how to get off that treadmill.
I am not attacking the Government--we have all been on that treadmill and we are seeking a way off. I suspect that there may be two routes down which we will necessarily be driven, or which we will at least have to explore. At this point in my speech, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) will, no doubt, feel moved to revisit an indignation that is already familiar to us.
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