[back to previous text]

Andrew George: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Members for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) and for Newbury. Following the characteristic contribution from the hon. Member for Luton, North, I know that the Minister will be dealing with some of the points that were raised.
It is always worth while reflecting on the CFP’s effectiveness, even though its future is not the matter under debate today. I am as critical as anyone of its ineffectiveness and failure, and it still needs major and radical reform. There are a number of problems with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Luton, North. First, there are the legal difficulties associated with being able to do what he proposes. Another problem is that a lot of the stocks we are talking about—even some of those mentioned today—are highly migratory and do not necessarily respect national borders, particularly on the median line.
Kelvin Hopkins: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Andrew George: Yes, I will happily give way. I wish I had not gone into this now.
Kelvin Hopkins: The point has been made that fish can swim across borders; they are no respecters of 200-mile zones. On the other hand, there are still large fish stocks around countries. It is a fact that our fish stocks can be fished out to a much greater extent than, say, Norway’s. If they know they are less likely to be caught in Norwegian waters, they might swim in that direction.
Andrew George: I have said before that fish may not be that bright, but at least they are intelligent enough not to have hang-ups about their nationality.
I will mention two other issues and then ask a couple of questions. First, in the past I have strongly opposed the general direction of travel of the Community Fisheries Control Agency. The Minister may know that I have argued with his predecessors in this regard. We should have been pursuing a more bilateral approach in Europe, rather than a Eurocentric one, which is effectively what we have now, with a central monitoring and enforcement agency operating under the EU. Rather than elaborating at great length on that point, I urge the Minister to reflect on it.
I also urge the Minister to reflect on the great strength it would provide and the reassurance it would give to fishermen in this country if the co-operation that he talked about—on monitoring and enforcement at sea between the UK and other fishing nations—could be extended and even formalised. Ultimately, perhaps we could agree to foreign inspectors coming over to any UK port and, equally, to our going to any French or Spanish port, for example, to carry out spot checks on the effectiveness of our undertakings. Being able to welcome them here, in the same way as they would welcome us there, would establish a far greater degree of confidence in each other.
Since early this year, the licensing of under 10-metre vessels has been enforced, and I will certainly welcome the Minister’s reflections on that. The measure is not a direct consequence of the provisions in the papers before us today, but he will know that this has been a highly contentious issue. For example, it is argued that there has always been a significant latent capacity in the under-10 metre sector—a point is not possible to argue against. The Minister needed to reflect on the fact that it may remain latent for many years to come before implementing the measure. Given the large number of protests and appeals made by many vessel owners following the regulation’s implementation, how does he think it has gone so far? Is he satisfied that it is having the intended impact?
Is the Minister also satisfied that genuine full-time fishermen who have under 10-metre vessels have secured the under 10-metre licence? Have there been circumstances in which part-time and hobby fishermen who happened to be lucky in obtaining the over 300-kg catch record within the reference period were able to register, whereas—for reasons I will not bore the Committee with today—full-time fishermen, who earn their livelihood from fishing, were unable to secure a licence and, therefore, a livelihood for the future?
My last question concerns the Committee’s conclusions. The first issue is the cost of the measures and how they are to be met. The second, which I am sure the Minister is aware of if he has read the papers, is the Committee’s concern that bringing in a wide range of new measures by 1 January next year is a tall order. It is a most challenging undertaking. I would be interested to know how the Minister thinks the measures can be implemented to that timetable.
6 pm
Huw Irranca-Davies: I thank Committee members for the very detailed and stimulating debate; I have been encouraged by the incisive and pertinent questions. I shall try to cover any outstanding points and those just raised in contributions, including those of the hon. Member for Newbury, because they relate to the closing remarks from the hon. Member for St. Ives on the roll-out of the measures.
As I mentioned, within the proposals there are already provisions allowing for the phased introduction of some measures. In fact, some cannot be introduced until further detailed rules have been agreed on the back of the proposals. One example is that vessel monitoring systems, which we use extensively in our fleet already, will not be extended to 12 to 15-metre vessels until 2012, so we have some transition time to work with the fleet and make things happen. There are other examples as well. That issue has been worked into the proposals.
I return to the important issue of recreational fisheries. As the Committee will know, we were extremely sympathetic to the views expressed by the recreational fisheries fraternity and sorority in the UK, which raised a lot of valid concerns over the definition of recreational sea-anglers and so on. We made clear from the outset that we had difficulties not only with the definition but with the workability of the proposals. It may help if I clarify where we have got to: the revised text defines recreational fishing as non-commercial fishing activity for recreation, tourism or sport. It is further clarified in the text of article 47 as fishing practice from vessels flying the flag of a member state. That is a technical detail, but there we are. There are no controls or restrictions on recreational fishing or information on catch levels collected currently.
Let us get down to the nitty-gritty. What does the proposal mean for recreational anglers? In the majority of cases there will be no change whatever in practice, but the regulation will mean, quite rightly, that authorities will need to undertake sampling to look at the effects of recreational fishing on stocks. We think that that is a responsible way forward. Do not put the cart before the horse; let us go out and do the sampling and see what the impact is, if there is any at all.
Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): Do I understand from what the Minister has said that recreational sea-angling is defined as only angling from boats, so excludes beach casting or fishing from piers or jetties?
Turning to article 52, we have discussed auctions, sales notes and exemptions a little. As I mentioned earlier, although it was raised by the hon. Member for Newbury in his remarks, article 52 has been amended, so the Committee can be assured that current UK practice will be able to continue. Combining article 52, article 54 on electronic sales notes and article 56 on exemptions means that the new provisions mirror current requirements for member states to operate the scheme of registration for buyers and sellers of first-sale fish. Currently, sales notes are submitted within 48 hours of completion of sale, as a paper or e-mailed document, and then those documents are manually inputted to the UK fisheries administration system.
Article 52, however, provides an exemption for direct purchases from fishing vessels of up to 30 kilograms if the fish is intended for private consumption and not for resale. It is an additional clarification. Currently the UK operates a system that mirrors that provision, but limits such sales to 25 kilograms. That limit was discussed and agreed with the industry when the UK scheme of buyers and sellers of first-sale fish was first implemented in 2005. The new limit therefore should not cause any problems in the operation of the UK scheme.
Turning to the issue of margins of tolerance, which has exercised sea-fisheries representatives and individual skippers, it is worth pointing out that the current proposal of marginal tolerance is, in our view, unhelpful. We are seeking something more workable. However, we cannot ignore the reality: 20 per cent. is simply too high. The real problem is with small quantities, so we are seeking to address that. At the moment, we have a Commission response to concerns about the margins that proposes a reduced general margin of tolerance of 10 per cent., but retaining the lower margin of 8 per cent. for recovery stocks. The Commission has also proposed a lower threshold of 15 kilograms for recording quantities of recovery stocks in the logbook.
Following the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisation request in 2007, DEFRA established a research project to establish what sort of margin of tolerance might be achievable and workable. The study—and I know that there are criticisms as to whether it is conclusive or not—showed that with the exception of small quantities of particular species, skippers can generally estimate the quantities of fish on board with a much greater degree of accuracy than that permitted with the existing 20 per cent. tolerance. It comes back to the issue of sustainability of fisheries as well. The results of that study suggested that catch estimations of the 8 per cent. tolerance level became more accurate and reliable around the 150 kilogram level. Instead we have argued that there is no logic behind the dual approach suggested by the Commission. There should be a single margin of tolerance. We have advocated 10 per cent. for all stocks, but that the limit for recording species in the logbook should be increased, to 100 kilograms, to take account of the difficulty of estimating those small quantities. However, we are alert to concerns and are continuing to work hard on the issue of margins, but we have to recognise the reality as well—20 per cent. is certainly no way to proceed.
Turning to the salient points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North, I do not disregard his comments because he has made them before, but there is a window of opportunity here. The only fundamental difference that I would have with him is about the way forward. We do not need to look for derogation; I think that there are other ways. I would be happy to discuss with him further on the back of the Committee—other hon. Members will come to the debate in future, I am sure—what we are proposing in the CFP reform, because it is radical. It means tearing down what we have now and putting forward a whole new approach—not incrementally, but in a step change, if we get it right. We have support to do that.
The reason why we do not need to argue for derogation and so on is that the proposals we have are based on the following premises. First, we fish within safe biological limits. Can we define that? Yes; we can do it through maximum sustainable yields and so on.
Secondly, and importantly—I believe this comes to the nub of my hon. Friend’s point—we are arguing strongly that there should be an element of CFP reform that involves regionalisation or even localisation. There are legal issues as to how we proceed, but I think that that is a way forward. We are working with the Commission actively on that, and its lawyers are looking at how to do it.
There are two possibilities for how such change might happen; there might be others, but we are already aware of two. First, we build on the success of the models that were achieved under the 2002 reforms, limited as they were. One of the great things that came out of them were regional advisory councils, and I always hold up the North sea RAC as one of the leading ones. It involves member nations of that whole strip of sea—not just the UK, but the UK alongside other EU members, Norway, scientists and other stakeholders, who are expert and have more to contribute. We could be looking at ways in which they become more the managers of that sea.
I do not think that we should go to individual member nations. I say that because even in our own waters, the challenges that west coast of Scotland fishermen face mean that when they are under pressure, they move around the coast. They go to the north-east or off to Ireland. Northern Ireland fishermen share the same waters as west coast of Scotland fishermen. We need some mechanism whereby fishermen take responsibility and share the ownership of the challenges of managing fisheries within their seas, and we are arguing strongly for that.
There might be another way, which is to give enhanced powers to member nations to get on with things, within the current legality of where we are in the EU, and put a duty on them to collaborate within a particular sea area.
Kelvin Hopkins: I am most interested in what the Minister has to say on this matter, but is it not a fact that British waters are massive net losers because other nations fish more in British waters than we fish in theirs? The tonnage involved is substantial.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I regret that I will have to take issue with my hon. Friend on this point because I know about the reliance that many of our fishermen—Scottish, English and others—have on fishing in other waters, and that there is a large market in trading quotas with other nations. The ability to fish in other waters is used by us as well as them. We also have jointly owned Spanish and UK vessels sailing out of our ports, as exist in Spain and elsewhere. There is much more of an interplay between nations.
We have highly pressurised waters, but we do not want to go back to the old fisheries wars that we saw in the past, which involved patrolling waters and keeping other vessels out. We need to manage the seas more effectively. There is a way forward that would achieve what my hon. Friend is looking for and would be to the advantage of the UK fleet, both in our domestic waters and internationally, but it would also work to the advantage of any sustainable, responsible fishery operator.
It is interesting to look at the landings that come into Grimsby. Yes, UK vessels sail into that port, but the 2,500 jobs in Grimsby are extensively reliant on not only UK fishing boats but boats coming in from Norway, Iceland and so on. There is real international interplay.
The other thing I wish to touch on briefly is long-term management, and getting away from annual haggling. We need to get into multi-annual species recovery and management plans that are based on good evidence and good science. Sound science is the other aspect. We are getting better. We have fisheries science partnerships that involve fishermen working alongside scientists to get real-time better science, but we need to do more. That is a good basis for reform, and it is fundamental reform that would give real ownership to people, if we get there.
I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Newbury. I keep saying that, ultimately, the stewardship of our seas, how we introduce control measures and what we do for long-term sustainability are in the hands of our own fishermen, but we need to give them that responsibility and say to them that the buck then stops there. We need to ensure that it does and that we get on with things. There is a way forward.
The hon. Member for St. Ives asked about the CFCA. It is not an enforcement body; that is the Commission’s role. However, the measures that we are discussing, tallied to the CFCA’s role to get a more harmonised approach and facilitate member states working together, which was a key theme in the hon. Gentleman’s points, will assist with the control measures. We support that approach wholeheartedly.
With regard to the under-10s, the scheme was not just one of decommissioning. I have to say clearly that, as a Minister, I do not believe in decommissioning as we did it previously, when we tended to decommission ships and boats that would be scrapped but would then reappear in another form—as another vessel—a few months down the line. The taxpayers’ money went out and did not do anything to address supply and demand within fisheries. We are talking about a decommissioning package that was also tallied to the capping scheme, which I accept was highly controversial but which also made it a success. We know that it has been a success because of the level of applications and the quota that it has released back into the under 10-metre pool. So the quota from those people who went out has been put back into that pool. We also know that it was a success because we anticipated that there would be appeals and there were appeals.
Some three quarters of those appeals, or a little bit more, were successful. We set the scheme up to do that, so that people who did not have a three-year track record, but had a genuine, valid reason because they had been ill or their boat had been in dry dock, could appeal and stand a good chance of success—and they did, and most of them were successful. I acknowledge that some were not successful and were disappointed. However, we gave them the opportunity to appeal.
Through the capping and decommissioning scheme, we have released more than 500 tonnes of quota back into the under-10 pool—historically, a relatively small pool—and that is significant. I do not have the details to hand on St. Ives, but I could find out and write to the hon. Gentleman who represents the constituency. The key issue is that this should not be seen as a one-off issue. This is part of the wider reform of the under-10s and it links into what we are doing with the sustainable access to inshore fisheries project, which is looking not at fisheries on their own, in respect of the under-10s, but at how they tie into local regeneration and regional development, how they market, brand and produce their products and how they own more of their whole chain of supply and get the value that comes from that, so that they are not just dealing with the raw produce. That is how we need to look at the under-10s. It has been a huge disadvantage to them that we have parked them and always regarded them as a vulnerable fleet that is in decline. Actually, we should be talking about a viable future for them. But that will be done by bringing them right into the mainstream of regional development.
 
Previous Contents Continue
House of Commons 
home page Parliament home page House of 
Lords home page search page enquiries ordering index

©Parliamentary copyright 2009
Prepared 14 October 2009