| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
7 pm
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): I declare an interest as the unpaid chairman of the Marine Stewardship Council and as the Member for a constituency with 74 miles of coastline and many small fishermen. I welcome the opportunity that the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward) creates to consider sustainable fishing.
I congratulate the Minister on the tough stance that he has taken several times in fighting for the sustainability of our fish stocks. I recognise that his job--I did it longer than anyone--is not easy because the fishing industry is self-destructive in that every section finds reasons to defend its practices against those of other nations or other parts of the nation.
I well remember fishermen on the west of Scotland telling me that if only those on the east of Scotland behaved as they did, everything would be all right. Fishermen in the south-west explained that if only the Scots behaved like them, it would all be all right. The British said that if only the rest of Europe behaved like us, it would all be all right. Exactly the same is said in Holland, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal; it is always someone else who is at fault.
The House has a responsibility, as far as possible, to support measures, albeit unpopular ones, that a Government of any sort seek to take to protect the future of our fishing industry. Having congratulated them, we must press the Government to move further. I have some practical suggestions that the Minister might like to accept.
First, the Minister is right to realise that the answers cannot be found nationally. Fish do not carry any flag on their fins; they swim where they wish. There is no such thing as a Scottish, English, French or German fish. We have always shared fishing grounds and argued about them. There is nothing wrong with a common fisheries policy. It is the policy, not the commonness, that is wrong. We must find a common answer for a common stock in a common resource. That has always been true.
The Minister must find the answers within the common fisheries policy, which has given the UK defence of an amount of fish in line with our historic position. If one looks back over the matter, it has been rather more
generous than many would have thought. I have looked back very carefully because of the sort of criticisms that are made. He is right to work within the Community, but I hope that he will take a series of clear stands. I hope that all hon. Members will support him if he does.
Mr. Gill:
I know that my right hon. Friend is a staunch defender of the common fisheries policy. Does he recognise that that which everyone owns, no one owns? There is no incentive for fishermen to protect or conserve stocks when they know that what they conserve benefits someone else. "Someone else" in the context of the European Union is another member state. When my right hon. Friend gave examples of countries that were dissatisfied with the present arrangements, he listed only members of the EU. Has it not occurred to him that some countries are satisfied with their fisheries regime? Some feel that conservation activities are conducted in a much more satisfactory way under the present arrangements and that they have satisfactory fisheries. I instance Norway, Iceland, the Falkland Islands and even Namibia.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. The hon. Gentleman is exceeding his licence.
Mr. Gummer:
My hon. Friend is fiercely opposed to the EU, and I understand that, but fisheries are a common resource because we all own them. The only way in which the Icelanders could introduce their system was by stealing a resource that they previously shared. They decided that what was previously a shared resource was theirs. If my hon. Friend thinks that we are going to say to the French, "That which we have shared with you for ever we are going to take into our control", he is talking nonsense. There is no possibility of managing our fisheries except together.
It is a terribly sad view of the world to suggest that we cannot co-operate with our neighbours; that we can deal only with stuff that we own in a narrow, partisan way. That is not the way forward for the future. That is not what is happening throughout the EU. It is not what is happening in the rest of the world. It is not what the Canadians have discovered in dealing with the Americans over Atlantic salmon. That is not what any country is discovering. The only way in which we can manage our fisheries other than according to present arrangements is to return to the old practice of bashing the fishermen over the head with a marlin spike because people took what they said was theirs.
That practice was all right when we had so much fish that we could all fish it, but now that we have so little and we have equipment that enables us to find fish so easily, we must operate in common. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) has the advantage of representing a landlocked constituency. Unlike me, he is not subject to the daily influence of fishermen. He does the fishing industry a grave disservice by suggesting that there is an alternative way forward. We must make the system work. I want to suggest some tough measures to the Minister to make it work.
Mr. Gill:
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Gummer:
I really must not. I have been asked to finish in time for the Minister to answer.
Will the Minister return to a policy that I reached and continued to pursue for the last three years of my time as fisheries Minister? Will he maintain the United Kingdom's opposition in principle to any kind of industrial fishing? Will he support the European Union in its desire to ensure that fish-meal is no longer used in a range of products for which it is clearly unsuitable when the requirements for fish rejuvenation are borne in mind?
Will the Minister recognise that, however tough the quotas and the total allowable catches may be, if they are all that the fish stocks can sustain, he needs to appeal to men and women of good will to support him in holding out for them? It is no longer any good saying, "We want a bit more ourselves, so we will give them a bit more." If that happens, in the end the figures just do not stand up.
Will the Minister press the EU to say in negotiations with countries beyond the Union, especially African countries, that no agreements to fish in their waters will be entertained without the EU paying for and running proper policing mechanisms? That will show that what we have promised to do, we will do and that what we have promised that we will not take, we will not take. It is no good asking Namibia, Togo or Senegal to police those fisheries. If we want to fish in their waters and zones, we must provide proper restrictions on our own fishermen and pay that cost; otherwise, we shall contribute to the unsustainability of their waters, as we already have to our own.
Mr. Gill:
Will my right hon. Friend explain why, in answer to my previous question, he referred to the waters of Iceland and the British Isles as a common resource, whereas he is now talking about African countries having their own waters? He is getting his argument terribly confused.
Mr. Gummer:
The fact is that we are part of the European Union and we have signed up to sharing the waters that we happen to have shared, in different ways, for many centuries. That is not true of Senegal, which does not have shared waters. Its geography means that it is a long way across the Atlantic before any other country is reached with which its waters could be shared. In addition, Senegal cannot exploit its waters within its sustainable commitments, so it properly makes use of its waters by doing deals with others who want to exploit them. Under those deals, others agree to certain restrictions and my point is that, although those restrictions cannot be properly policed by Senegal, they can be policed by the countries with which Senegal does those deals, and I want us, within the European Union, to set an example of doing so. I am sure my hon. Friend recognises the clear distinction between those two cases.
Next, I want the Minister to recognise that, in the end, we shall have to change the methods of control, away from those that encourage the discarding of fish, both juvenile and larger fish. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow was right to say that the problem is not only one of juvenile fish being discarded.
We in Britain suffer significantly because we failed to carry through the days-at-sea measures that we should have taken. I have hard words for the Scottish nationalists, who are generally in favour of conservation, but who always vote against any particular conservation measure that they think might be electorally unpopular. Should the
Scottish nationalists acquire more power--I understand that such an eventuality might arise in Scotland--I hope that they will act with greater responsibility. Scottish nationalism has done more than any other factor to stop the sort of conservation measures that we need. The nationalists constantly deploy in Scottish constituencies the argument that one can have conservation without any restriction on the activity of fishermen, but that is not possible.
I hope that the Minister accepts that we need a days-at-sea system. We have to introduce really tough measures and to insist that others carry those measures through when common stock is involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow is right: my fishermen in Suffolk will not accept restrictions on their activities if the men of Lowestoft are not similarly restricted; likewise, the men of Lowestoft will not accept restrictions if the men of Holland, Scotland, Germany or any other place within the UK or the EU are not subject to the same restrictions and to the same policing.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |