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7.21 pm
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby): It is wonderful to see so many Labour Members representing fishing ports and speaking up eloquently and articulately in defence of their local fishing industries--particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler),
who made her maiden speech and raised another voice for the fishing industry. It is even more exciting after 18 years to see in this annual December debate my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) as the Minister at the Dispatch Box. I congratulate him on having made himself such a master of the industry so quickly and on winning its respect and support in the way he has.
I do not want to say anything about total allowable catches because there is not much time. I want to make only two points. First, the cod quota, especially in the North sea, is up due to huge juvenile stocks. What proposals does the Minister have to conserve and protect those juvenile stocks so that they can grow into marketable fish? Secondly, will the Minister put off setting an allocation for horse mackerel? The record is incomplete and inadequate and it would be premature to do so.
On quotas, I shall make only two points. First, there is a great need to smooth out allocations, because scientific advice tends to work like a switch-back, a roller-coaster, amplifying trends. It is good at describing historical record but bad at predicting and dealing year by year on a single-species basis. We therefore need to smooth out fluctuations. I suggest adjustments of no more than 10 per cent. up or down. The economic viability of the industry and the impact on communities has to be taken into account as well as conservation. We need to take account of and do more to control discards. It is a simple fact of life that when quotas go down, discards go up, especially in mixed fishing, where there is an horrendous problem of discards. There are all sorts of ways of attempting to deal with such problems. The Canadians are making effective use of square-mesh panels, which gives them more selectivity in catching. We must approach the issue through mixed quotas. All such ways need to be considered because discards are becoming quite a serious problem.
Secondly, it is good to know that now that the multi-annual guidance programme IV has been in force for about a year we have some details of what it involves. It is good to know that there will be no reduction in the demersal fleet, although I must warn the Minister that reductions in the pelagic fleet and beam trawlers will be quite substantial and have a serious effect on the industry--too big to be handled on the basis of co-operative concession, particularly since many involved are not quota hoppers and will not give up just because the British Minister pleads with them to do so.
MAPG IV is not simple, clear and transparent. It is opaque because different countries use different methods to reach the target. It will be very difficult to compare and contrast who succeeds in reaching the targets, yet a good deal depends on it--allocations from Europe, for instance.
I thought that it was ominous when the Minister mentioned the strict financial review that is taking place. Decommissioning money will be necessary; there is no doubt about it. If we are to reduce effort, there is no other effective way of doing so. We cannot go back to the days-at-sea approach. Many of us, especially my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, have held too many verbal hostages to fortune over days-at-sea limitations. The only alternative, therefore, is money. That means money to modernise the fleet. Our fleet is very old in comparison with others, which have had European money to
modernise. The average age of our fishing vessels is 25 years, in total contrast with fishing industries in other countries.
I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) and for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) on the need to maintain industry in ports such as theirs and mine at a critical mass which will sustain facilities and prevent the industry imploding. Most of the decommissioning in the previous round--in fact, 80 per cent. of it--was of English vessels. That is reducing our fleet to such a level that there has to be some means of allowing the producer organisation to purchase quota and track record in order to keep the industry local. Highlands and islands finance in Scotland has been a key element in allowing the purchase of quotas, so why cannot the regional development agencies that we are setting up allocate money through the producer organisation to keep the industry viable locally? There must be some financial basis for allocations.
I express only disappointment at the proposals on quota hoppers. While it is important to do something, what is proposed will be an annoyance to sections of the English industry without closing the door, penalising or controlling quota hoppers.
I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has worked hard to give the industry a stable prospect and a base for expansion and development, and I congratulate him on that. He has taken that purpose very seriously. However, we also committed ourselves in the manifesto to a fundamental review of the common fisheries policy. The presidency offers great opportunities. I hope that my hon. Friend will not merely use it to be an impartial defender of other people's interests or to concentrate on environmental matters, which are so close to his heart. It is right to deal with drift nets, and so on--I am absolutely 100 per cent. with him on that--but to concentrate on environmental matters and ignore the national interest would be dangerous.
I agree with the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) that there can be no prospect of a fishing industry for this country inside the CFP. I want to pull out, but there is an intermediate, transitional stage. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister should work to move the CFP away from equal access to one of a common resource, under greater national control and influence, allowing Europe--perhaps--to set measures of the lowest common denominator but giving coastal states more control over their own catches and waters, with a more focused control rather than the broad, sweeping, simple, lowest common denominator measures that Europe goes in for.
The common fisheries policy is the worst fishing policy in the world because it is not effectively enforced, it pits fishermen against each other in a competition to decimate stocks, and there is no incentive to conserve stocks. Any fisherman who adopts practical conservation measures immediately sees the fish looted and pillaged by fishermen from other countries. Fishermen are also not stakeholders in the policy, which is the only way that we shall see effective conservation in the industry.
It was nice of my hon. Friend the Minister to make jokes about policy no longer being dictated by Euro-sceptic rumps. I did not take it personally, even though I offer more Euro-scepticism and more rump than most of the Tories do. However, the Minister's comment
is not an effective debating point. The fishing industry has been weakened because it has been sacrificed so often and for so long to Euro-enthusiasm.
Mr. Michael Jabez Foster (Hastings and Rye):
My constituency contains the historic ports of Hastings and Rye, where the fishing industry in recent years has experienced, in common with those elsewhere, a decline in its fortunes. Perhaps worse still, it has felt that the Government have not been listening. It is probably true to say that my very presence in the House is connected with the wrath felt by the fishing community towards the previous Government. It may also be connected with the visit by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) to my constituency during the election campaign. The leader of the Liberal Democrats also visited, but my hon. Friend must have had more effect.
Because of the limits on time, I shall immediately raise the single issue that most affects my constituents. The resolution refers to
Two issues have arisen in the past few years that have caused my constituents some dismay and concern. First, fishermen from other areas around the United Kingdom are taking advantage of decommissioning grants, destroying their larger boats, purchasing 10 m licences--pocketing the difference on the way--and re-entering the industry, often in area VII, to take a share of that area's limited resources. Secondly, others have sold their licences for larger vessels and physically shortened their boats to less than 10 m. They are also coming to area VII and depleting still further the fish available to my constituents, who have historically fished there. I am told that at least eight boats from those two categories have entered the area in the past few months.
Within the past three years, the number of vessels sharing the spoils in area VII has virtually doubled. I am delighted that the overall quota remains the same for the coming year, but, with double the number of vessels, simple arithmetic shows that the catch for each vessel is effectively halved. In short, we have our own home- grown quota hopping, which is unfair and which, if allowed to go unchallenged, will risk the stability of the industry and communities such as those of the ports of Hastings and Rye.
There is a simple solution to the problem. If craft under 10 m were licensed to a particular area--to area VII in the case of Hastings and Rye fishermen--the number of
area licences could be limited to those boats currently fishing in the area. If UK licences were exchanged for area licences, their numbers could be limited.
"the need to ensure that the regional differences of fisheries and their communities are fully recognised."
I wish to relate that point to area VII, which covers my constituency. My constituents fish from vessels under 10 m and are limited to the locality of their port. With those smaller vessels, the quota for the area is allocated to the area and not to the boats. Therefore, the fish that the boats may take is dependent on the total number of similar small craft fishing in the area.
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