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12.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Alan Meale): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on securing this debate. It is a very important debate not only because of the
importance of the United Kingdom fishing and food processing industries, but because of the importance of the communities in the areas represented by my hon. Friend and other colleagues in the Chamber.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, but also to other Labour Members for attending the debate. It is noticeable that only Labour Members have attended this very important debate on an issue affecting not only Grimsby but many other fishing communities across Britain. I am sad that Opposition Members have not bothered even to be here.
My hon. Friend has a long history of supporting and expressing the concerns of the fishing industries. I remember that, long before I was elected to the House--even before my hon. Friend was a Member of Parliament--in the mid-1970s, he was campaigning on issues affecting the fishing industries. Similarly, some of my other Friends in the Chamber, in their short time in the House, have expressed in the House concerns about food processing and fishing companies in their constituencies. My hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn), for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) and for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) persistently raise their concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) also raises matters of concern frequently, but fishing is a devolved matter in Scotland, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), who deals with these matters in Scotland, is present in the Chamber.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. I ought to point out to the Minister, as the Chair has frequently had to do to hon. Members, that half-hour Adjournment debates are the property of the hon. Member who introduces them. They are not wide-ranging debates, and the absence or presence of other hon. Members has no significance for them. The debate is a matter between the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and the Minister.
Mr. Meale:
I appreciate that point, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I referred to my hon. Friends because of the enormous number of representations made to me before the debate. I realise that the debate is narrow and time limited, but I recognise the concerns of many of my hon. Members.
This is a serious matter, but I must disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby by saying that the Government do not have the power to intervene in the charges set by Anglian Water this year. Under the law, we cannot tell Anglian Water what to charge. Neither Ministers nor Ofwat have the power to control charges, provided companies do not discriminate unduly and remain within price limits. Our only power--we have used it as best we can--is to encourage all parties to search for an agreed solution.
My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment recently met a delegation led by my hon. Friend. We have not been able to achieve an agreement, but I am more than willing to meet my hon. Friend, and others, to discuss their concerns. We shall use our best endeavours to gain some movement.
The Government value the fishing industry, and substantial grants for a range of improvements have been made to fish processors under the European Union fish processing and marketing scheme. Since the processing
and marketing and port facilities teams were launched in 1996, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has made grant awards totalling more than £8 million to English fish processors, markets and fishing ports. The Sea Fish Industry Authority, which is sponsored by that Ministry, recently produced a 50-page guidance note on water and effluent minimisation, which has been sent free of charge to fish processors. The document contains guidance to fish processors on how to identify areas of wastage and minimise increases in costs.
We support the determination of our fishing industries to be fully competitive internationally. My hon. Friend suggested that we should do more than other countries to improve the environment, and he said that firms abroad receive financial help for environmental improvements. Each EU country supports its industries in different ways to suit local arrangements, but there are legal limits on assisting industries financially without falling foul of competition rules.
If my hon. Friend has any evidence that other EU states have supported their fishing industries beyond the limits of competition rules, it would be a matter for the European Commission to investigate. Other member states have different priorities and contribute different shares to the EU budget. Their fishing industries are in different stages of development and vary in their relative importance to national economies. It would not be appropriate to seek to match the spending of other countries in these areas. Spain, for example, receives a much larger allocation than anyone else, because of the size of the Spanish fishing fleet and the relative poverty of the areas concerned.
To provide decent services and to protect the environment, it is reasonable to expect all users of services to pay their way. In particular, charges should broadly follow the principle that the polluter pays. Producers--including the fish processing industry--of trade effluent hitherto discharged with little or no treatment have benefited for many years from relatively low charges.
Mr. Frank Doran (Aberdeen, Central):
My hon. Friend mentions the polluter pays principle, but one of our major difficulties is that different water authorities apply the rules differently. The industry is highly competitive, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) talks of possible job losses in Grimsby, I have to hope that some of those jobs might come to Aberdeen, but the playing field is not level.
Mr. Meale:
I take that point, and I sympathise on the points made about the introduction of new charges. That is why I have offered to broker a deal.
Although the average bills of fish firms have been lower than average household bills, the firms produce much more effluent than households do. Consequently, their bills per cubic metre have been lower on average. According to Anglian Water, the previous charges to fish firms in the Grimsby area were about 25p per cubic metre. The increased charges work out at about 66p per cubic metre--just over half the volumetric price that domestic customers pay. Given the volume of fish firms' effluent, it is remarkable that previous trade effluent charges for some firms were as low as £112 when the average household sewerage bill in Anglian Water's area was £164 in 1998-99.
A few fish firms have claimed, as a reason for continuing to pay low charges, that they produce natural waste. However, fish processing includes processes such as battering and crumbing. It also produces discharges with a high content of putrescible solid waste. By its very nature, the industry is dirty, and effluent can contain blood, offal, oil, flour and other residues. The effluent is comparatively polluting and expensive to treat.
In England and Wales, since before privatisation, trade effluent charges have been calculated according to the Mogden formula, under which charges are set partly according to the nature of the effluent and partly according to the level of treatment undertaken. That is in line with the polluter pays principle, which we fully endorse.
Fish firms are being asked to meet the higher costs of treating their effluent to at least secondary standards, as is required by the urban waste water treatment directive. We support the directive's main aims, and I shall outline some of the main improvements that it requires. There should at least be minimum requirements for the treatment of all significant discharges of urban waste water from the sewerage network to fresh waters, coastal waters and estuaries. Secondary treatment--that is, treatment by a biological process--is required as the norm for urban waste water discharges.
The directive requires that the most potentially polluting urban waste water discharges--in other words, those into sensitive areas--should have been treated by the end of 1998. Those serving communities of 15,000 people or more must be treated to secondary standard or higher by the end of 2000, but treatment of smaller discharges can be deferred until the end of 2005. We consider that all of that is right, and we want improvements to be introduced as quickly as possible--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. We must now begin the next debate.
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay):
I am tempted to move to the Dispatch Box, given the absence of Conservative Members, but--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. This is the second time I have had to intervene. These half-hour Adjournment debates are the personal property of the hon. Member introducing them. The relevance of any other hon. Member attending them is not at issue; they are a matter only for the hon. Member introducing the debate and the Minister replying.
Mr. Sanders:
The south-west region suffers from an outdated conception of its prosperity that is based either on an old-fashioned view of current conditions--often resulting from people's childhood experience of pleasant summer holidays--or a view that the east of the region, which is prosperous, is somehow typical of the entire region. In a sense, we are the victims of our own marketing strategy. We spend thousands of pounds marketing the area to the rest of the nation and overseas as a place that is good to visit, with a high-quality environment, good standards of accommodation and plenty of attractions. That tends to hide some of the social problems that lie behind the facade of the marketing strategy.
Cornwall's designation as an objective 1 region demonstrates that there are substantial problems in the west of the region, but those problems do not end at the Tamar bridge. My Cornish colleagues may even agree with me when I say as a Devonian that parts of my county are indistinguishable from the county of Cornwall: the tin mine ruins of west Devon, the chapels of north Devon, the fishing port of Brixham and, linking both counties as a main centre of education and employment, the city of Plymouth, which provides thousands of jobs, as well as education and health services, for people who live in Cornwall.
The Plymouth-Torbay-Devon arc essentially represents a dividing line between the prosperity of the main south-west region and the Cornwall-Devon periphery, where unemployment is significantly higher and GDP per capita considerably lower than the national, regional or European averages. Indeed, 56.5 per cent. of people in the arc area are economically active compared with 62.6 per cent. of people in the south-west generally, and 16 per cent. are recipients of income support, compared with just 12 per cent. in the rest of the region. Average earnings are 84 per cent. of the UK figure and our GDP per capita figure is 82 per cent. of the European average. The figure for my constituency of Torbay is equivalent to that for Cornwall, at 71 per cent.
The area's historic economic rationale and its recent problems derive from its natural environment. Inland, the importance of agriculture and the natural environment dominates, while, on the coast, the traditional industries of tourism, fishing, defence and support services have been in decline for some time.
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