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Mr. Salmond: I am glad to see the Minister nod his assent to that point.
In the interests of brevity, I shall make four quick references to points that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland might mention in his summing up. There is a serious danger that the decline in the quota for North sea haddock will re-ignite the problem that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) rightly said had been almost eradicated--discards and the black fish. If we press too hard on North sea haddock, particularly on the precautionary principle, there is a danger of the re-emergence of that problem, which we have worked hard to eliminate. Can the Minister tell us whether he will invoke the Hague preference to its full extent so that we can at least get some compensation in relation to the North sea haddock allocation?
Secondly, the Minister may wish to enlarge on points made about the working time directive. The Parliamentary Secretary spoke reassuringly on those points earlier.
Thirdly, the pelagic fleet has commissioned an excellent report by the Marine Resources Assessment Group, which I read today. Will both Ministers read the report carefully as it makes some excellent points about capacity in the pelagic industry? It is worth careful study.
Finally, I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, Central about the damage that water charges could do to the economically fragile processing industry.
Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring):
I hope that both Ministers will note the number of hon. Members who have been unable to speak, and that we shall be allowed a longer time for a future debate.
We must ask why we have the annual debate on total allowable catches. There are two reasons. First, we require conservation of a vital national resource. Secondly, we
require an economically viable fishing industry. Several questions must therefore be asked annually: how do we achieve those two objectives; what are the current problems of the common fisheries policy; what improvements are necessary, and how can they be made; what is the least we will accept; and what can we do if we cannot achieve that minimum?
Conservation is the first point to consider. The Parliamentary Secretary was quite right to say that conservation is dependent on scientific advice. He said that the precautionary approach was hard to fault in principle, and we agree with that. There are costs, however. That approach may mean that more fish are dumped at sea, and it may be anti-conservationist, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) said. Under current policy, the dumping of prime fish continues apace, which is killing fish unnecessarily and polluting the sea bed. Worse still, further reductions in the already proposed minimum landing sizes--to below the size at which fish can breed--must have a dramatic effect on conservation. The policy is failing in one of its main aims.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Townend) raised industrial fishing, an issue that I am sure many other hon. Members would have brought up had they been able to speak. The latest TAC of 1 million tonnes for sandeels and pout gives only 5 per cent. to the United Kingdom, but it is the base of the marine food chain. Can the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland tell us how how that will be controlled, as it is vital to conservation?
Many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), mentioned the aging fleet. We heard that money needed to be made available to help. The Government's defence is that other EU countries get access to money because they have met their multi-annual guidance programme requirements, but the Government know that they question the Commission's reliability on estimates of compliance as much as we did. Do they intend repeatedly to challenge the Commission's estimates and what is to be done about them?
In agriculture, we have seen the Government's unwillingness to claim agrimonetary compensation, yet the United Kingdom is substantially behind France, Spain, Italy and Portugal as a recipient of the financial instrument of fisheries grant--FIFG. It is a question of priorities. The Treasury line is that 71p out of every pound has to come from the Treasury, which I have always thought of as a bizarre way of saying that one gets 30 per cent. back for everything that one spends on a particular programme. It depends whether one is the Treasury, trying to withhold the money, or the Departments, which want it. The Minister said that the money available would not be best used to modernise the fishing fleet, yet our European partners, who get that money, are also our competitors. We must bear that in mind if our fishing industry is to remain viable.
I hope that the Minister will take up the safety argument in his response, and deal with the modernisation of an aging fleet. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations has said:
After the ridiculous throwing out of the Merchant Shipping Act 1998, which was overturned by the European Court of Justice, we were left with the Government's agreement with Jacques Santer, which is utterly meaningless in effect because quota hoppers need meet only one of the following criteria. At least 50 per cent. of the quota, by weight, must be landed in the UK, but that allows for fish to be landed and immediately placed on refrigerated lorries for transport abroad. Normally, 50 per cent. of the crew would be resident in a UK coastal area, but the definition could be said to omit klondikers from associated vessels--I look forward to hearing the Minister's views on that--while residency itself remains unsatisfactorily defined. Therefore, many fishermen could still effectively be resident abroad.
Another criterion is that the owner would incur
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) could not speak in the debate, as he would have loved to say a few things about compliance costs, which are ever growing. The NFFO has said:
My hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire mentioned tonnage measurements. There again, extra costs are being imposed on the industry, and for what? Perhaps worst of all is the working time directive. Including the industry in it would ignore the factors that are specific to fishing. It is seasonal and entirely dependent on the weather. Furthermore, share fishing, resulting in what one might call co-operative earnings, makes up a considerable part of the industry. That is better classed as self-employment--if there is no cash, there is no pay.
The Government have opened the floodgates to all those rules by agreeing to the social chapter, and it is simply not good enough for them to attempt to wash their hands of the damage that will ultimately be done to fishing and other industries.
I want to give the Minister reasonable time to reply to the many points raised in the debate, but when the Parliamentary Secretary opened the debate, he painted an optimistic longer-term picture for the industry. What will happen in 2002? The derogation may be renewed, but at what cost? If it has to be done by unanimity, what legal challenges may lie ahead?
"Regrettably, the Government's approach to the issue so far has combined a sanctimonious high moral tone with a failure to focus on the age of the fleet as a central factor in the high casualty rate."
15 Dec 1998 : Column 865
I hope that the Government will tackle that.
On quota hoppers, my hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire made some powerful points. They make up only 2 per cent. of the fleet but, because the boats are typically more powerful and larger, they account for perhaps one quarter of the total national tonnage.
"a given level of operating expenditure"
in UK coastal areas for goods and services, but that ignores the reality, which is that some quota hoppers also own, or are associated with, food processing companies. Those are the real impacts of what was agreed. The policy has not created jobs or solved the problem.
"the ever growing battery of regulations to which the fishing industry is subject, are now spiralling out of control, posing a threat to vessels whose viability is marginal and imposing a massive burden on the industry as a whole. There appears to be no sensitivity within Government to this or even any attempt at an overview of the costs imposed by different departments."
The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) said how much he appreciated satellite monitoring, but the UK declines to part-fund it for all vessels over 24 m in length, thereby blocking the EU side of the grant. Our industry is being put at a disadvantage to its competitors.
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