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6.29 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): I congratulate the hon. Member for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler) on her maiden speech. When she rose to speak, I and the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) hastily compared notes to find out where Castle Point was. We need not have bothered, because in her excellent speech she gave us a tour d'horizon of her constituency. Those in the Chamber who did not know where Castle Point was, should now be very familiar with it because of the hon. Lady's eloquent speech about her constituency.
It is fair to say that fishing is not the dominant concern in the hon. Lady's constituency--but having achieved a 17 per cent. swing at the election, she is obviously excellent at fishing for votes. If she turns in more performances like this evening's, I am sure that her constituents will reward her with continuing and even more comfortable majorities.
I thank the Minister for his kind remarks about the loss of the Sapphire. I have said some deservedly harsh things about two of his Government colleagues because of their
attitude to my constituents in this tragedy--but they would not apply to the Minister, who has a tremendous depth of knowledge of and is sincere about the fishing industry. His remarks were gratefully received and appreciated, and I will relay them to my constituents.
I suspect that the Minister has argued for a decent amount of time for this debate, so it is important that Front and Back Benchers show some restraint, to ensure that everyone who wants to speak gets the opportunity. I shall quickly run through a number of the points made in the debate and then raise two main points of concern, which I am sure the Minister will want to answer.
First, in an intervention in the Minister's speech, I raised the issue of the cod and haddock quotas. There is a clear inconsistency in the scientific treatment of those species. It is vital for the confidence that working fishermen have in scientific advice that the Minister clarifies the matter. From his quite sympathetic response, I take it that he will work to secure some improvement in the North sea haddock quota. A number of devices are available to him in the negotiations, so I send him off to them with the plea that he seriously considers the matter, as there appears to be a virtually inexplicable difference in the treatment of those species in the North sea.
Secondly, I hope that the Minister will confirm that there are a number of species in the North sea--whiting--and off the west coast where the Hague preference could be invoked. It is vital that it is invoked. That concession was won for the United Kingdom by the then Irish Foreign Minister, later Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald in 1976--if my memory serves me right. It has been extremely useful with a number of species over the years, so it should be well oiled and kept in use. I hope that it will be invoked in the negotiations for the relevant stocks.
Mr. Morley:
On the hon. Gentleman's question about North sea haddock and the scientific difference in the treatment of cod and haddock, my information is that the increase in the North sea cod TAC reflects the considerable reduction in cod fishing in recent years. There has been an increase for haddock, and the TAC is now 115,000 tonnes, which is 5,000 tonnes more than the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management suggested. There has also been agreement on an increased quota transfer with Norway for haddock. On the hon. Gentleman's point about adjusting the quota by further adjusting industrial by-catch assumptions, that is something that we will do in the Council. I hope that that answers his points.
Mr. Salmond:
I welcome that information, and I will leave the matter to the Minister, given his sympathetic response.
A number of issues have not been mentioned in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) has been pursuing the question of the exclusion order that affected the Moray firth fishery. The difficulty appears to be that, although we have always had the principle of the polluter pays, in this case it has become impossible to identify the polluter. As a result, the fishing industry has had great difficulty with its compensations claims.
Mrs. Margaret Ewing (Moray):
This is a matter of deep concern, which must be dealt with by the Government.
Mr. Salmond:
I shall relay my hon. Friend's question to the Minister; I am sure that he will answer it when he replies to the debate. I rely on my hon. Friend's ingenuity in these matters to get her point across.
Another point that I wish to raise cropped up earlier in the debate, in the remarkable, amnesiac speech of the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). The Conservative party has got a grip on the fact that the Government have been in office for seven months, but it seems to have forgotten the 18 preceding years. The claim is that the UK has been taken to the cleaners over the Atlanto-Scandian herring distribution--and that is correct. However, as I pointed out earlier, it was a Conservative Government who were first taken to the cleaners.
I want to raise with the Minister the obvious point that it was the efforts of the Scottish pelagic fleet--which, on the basis of the Minister's remarks, will be under great pressure--that secured 30 per cent. of the whole European quota of the new stock coming into use. Therefore, to get only 19 per cent. of the quota allocation seems a considerable gap. Perhaps the Minister will use his good offices to argue that point strongly, especially given the pressures on the pelagic fleet.
I could raise a whole range of other issues, but they have already been dealt with by other hon. Members. I want to concentrate on two main issues, one of which arises directly from the Minister's statement. The other relates to the UK presidency, European representation and the way forward.
On the question of MAGP IV, apart from saying, as other Ministers have, that Tory spending plans have left this Government in a straitjacket, the Minister did not quite make an argument that this part of the Opposition could accept--or, I suspect, many of the Government's Back Benchers. The good news for the white fish fleet in the near-achievement of MAGP IV targets is that that should open the door once again to structural funding.
Scotland is at the cutting edge of the UK fishing fleet in its capital mobilisation and renewability, but on average the fleet is 25 years old. It has to compete with fleets across Europe that are much more modern and have had reinvestment in the industry, which many sectors of our fishing fleet have not had for some considerable time. There is a safety issue which should be recognised. Older boats and younger skippers are going to ever deeper waters, and that raises major safety questions.
There is also an economic aspect. I hope that the Minister will at least say that, despite the self-imposed spending straitjacket, the whole question of structural funding, which could be opened up in the Community, and the possibility of a scrap-and-build approach, which has been used successfully in other European countries--something which the Minister mentioned often when he was in opposition--could form part of the strategy for the white fish fleet now that the structural aspect opens the door to reinvestment.
Mr. Morley:
I understand exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. We have looked into the issue
Mr. Salmond:
I understand that point. It bring me neatly on to the pressure on the pelagic sector. I can understand the encouragement that the Minister takes from the fact that he can lift the threat of a further-days-at-sea policy or other unpopular effort restrictions on the white fish fleet.
However, I have a tiny suspicion that the very small number of pelagic boats will be convenient whipping boys to carry the burden of capacity reduction. If my quick calculations are correct--and they may be wrong--and if I follow the Minister's logic, we are talking about capacity reductions of a third or more over the four years remaining in the MAGP target. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that point.
As has been pointed out, in the North sea, herring quotas are up by 60 per cent. and western mackerel quotas are up by 20 per cent. People who work in the pelagic sector will find it virtually impossible to understand the huge capacity reduction in their fleet if the quota assessment is moving in the opposite direction.
I return to this important point. Considering the nature of the pelagic fleet and of the herring and mackerel species, and the wide fluctuations in those species, is it at all sensible to use the blunt instrument of MAPG targets? Is a more sophisticated approach possible?
If the Minister can find the ingenuity almost to spirit away the target shortfall in relation to the white fish fleet, I am sure that, if he examines how other countries in Europe address the question, he will not find it beyond the bounds of possibility to avoid the severe disablement of our pelagic fleet and its capacity to compete with other pelagic fleets at the cutting edge of the European Union fishing market.
This is very much a Scottish matter. Eighty-five per cent. of pelagic capacity is in the tank ship Scottish fleet. I would not like to think that this Scottish matter was being placed in the firing line because it squares circles elsewhere. Although the number of its boats is limited, the pelagic fleet is hugely important for a growing onshore industry, as processing has replaced the capacity that used to be taken up by klondykers and other processors.
We have at last been building an impressive home pelagic processing industry. If it cannot be guaranteed the supplies--much of the industry uses dedicated supplies--not hundreds of boats and hundreds of jobs in the pelagic catching sector, but thousands of jobs in the pelagic processing sector, might be at risk. I will leave it there, except to say that the pelagic fleet seems to be in the firing line. I hope that a way can be found to avoid the blunt instrument of widespread capacity reductions. On the face of it, if quotas were properly implemented, the fleet's capacity could perhaps be well sustained.
One thing was slightly missing from the Minister's speech. I understand that this debate has to go through the detail of quota assessments, but--this is not too harsh a criticism of the Minister--I was looking for a bit more vision in relation to the direction of Community policy. The Minister and I agree that, in 1992, during the last United Kingdom presidency, a magnificent opportunity
was lost to tackle some of the fundamental underlying issues in the fishing industry. I would hate to think that hopes and opportunities are going to be lost again.
It is not comforting that one of my European colleagues has told me that the United Kingdom representation documents for the presidency apparently contain no mention of fishing as a substantive issue. That does not give me confidence that the Minister has succeeded in persuading his colleagues of the critical nature of the industry and of the fact that, in the run-up to 2002, the presidency should be used to try to shape policy.
I should have liked to hear a bit more about progress on quota hopping. I have spoken to the Minister about the suggestions from the Mallaig and North-West Fishing Association on whether the Marine Safety Agency and safety aspects could be brought into play in relation to quota hoppers.
I should also like to have heard a lot more about coastal states management--the decentralisation of fisheries policy--which many of us believe offers great hope for a much more sensible ordering of our affairs in termsof European fisheries. Other European countries substantially support that approach. I should like to hear a bit more about the Minister's thoughts on the matter.
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