Mr.
MacNeil: I am glad that the Minister mentioned and is
agreeable in principle to the point about milestones for the CFP.
However, he talks about the CFP being coherent, but I would argue that
it has been far from coherent over the past few
years. I
would like to raise two further points with the Minister. This may be
an illustrative point on discards. There has been some evidence, or
some argument, that the increase in bonxie numbers at sea has been due
to discards, and that discards have been affecting the animal
kingdom. Finally,
perhaps boats that catch less than 1.5 per cent. of cod should be
exempted from the cod recovery scheme. My colleague in Scotland,
Mr. Lochhead, has raised that with Mr.
Borg.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman is suggesting a
priority for the autumn negotiations. I hear what he says, and I will
ensure that we take on board his point and others from throughout the
UK, so that when we go into the negotiations, which are critical to the
immediate future of the UK fleet, we adequately represent all parts of
the
UK. I
shall briefly remind the hon. Gentleman of where we were with the west
coast of Scotland last year. When we argued against a proposal that
would have shut down fishing off the west coast of Scotland, we did so
for good reasons—for those communities. We will continue to
focus on the viability of the fleet and the people who live in those
coastal
communities. Mr.
Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con): I was
encouraged by the Minister’s opening comments. He referred to
current failures in the system, and the document before us states that
fisheries control has been generally weak. Does he accept that the
UK, in complying with the elimination of landing
black fish, has been efficient—some fishermen would
say ruthlessly efficient—in interpreting and applying
the rules? Is there any appetite among our colleagues in other member
states for adopting the same approach? We hear stories about undersized
fish being actively displayed in markets and so on. Will those states
tackle the problem as we do?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I would say, as the Minister with
responsibility for UK fisheries, that we are good at enforcing,
monitoring and controlling, but we could always do better. The
Department is sometimes criticised for the robustness with which it
deals with infringements, but the corollary is that we are robust
because we want to reward good, efficient, sustainable
fisheries. The
hon. Gentleman raises a good point about other European member states,
and I was pleased at the last meeting in October to be one of the 27
nations that signed off the control measures, which will mean,
importantly, a level playing field across Europe on enforcement and
penalties. There is willingness to underpin CFP reform by having
effective monitoring and controls in
place.
Mr.
Goodwill: The Minister referred to a regionalised
approach, which should be applauded, but much of the UK’s quota
has been traded and is in the hands of foreign skippers. How will
foreign skippers who hold English or Scottish quota engage in a
regionalised system? Will they be
involved?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: Again, that is a good point. I draw the
hon. Gentleman’s attention to a possible embryonic model of a
regionalisation approach—the North sea regional advisory
council. It includes not only English, Scottish and other EU member
states, but Norway and other coastal nations. There are ways in which
the regionalisation agenda can bind all those who have collective
fishing rights and collective responsibility for looking after the sea.
We must decide how that would work, investigate the legal issues, and
persuade other member nations, but that is the right way
forward. Mr.
Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): May I
probe the Minister on the Commission’s assertion, which he
seemed to endorse, that the fundamental problem with the CFP is
over-capacity? There are so many problems with the CFP that it is
difficult to know that there is a fundamental problem. That assertion
does not take sufficient account of the radical restructuring procedure
that we went through with the Scottish whitefish fleet three or four
years ago. Will he assure me that the massive efforts that have been
undertaken by the Scottish whitefish fleet will not result in its
operating at the same baseline as other parts of the industry in other
parts of the EU that have not suffered similar
pain?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I can honestly tell the hon. Gentleman
that the part of the fleet to which he referred and other parts of the
UK fleet that have been through painful restructuring will be firmly
part of the debate on CFP reform. As I said in my opening comments, at
this point we should rule nothing in and nothing out. It would be the
end of negotiations if member nations started bolting down the hatches
and saying, “We have done our bit. There is nothing more to
do.” However, he is right to say that we must remind other
member nations of the pain we have already been through to reduce
capacity in the
fleet.
Mr.
Carmichael: I am mildly concerned by the Minister’s
answer. It is difficult to know what further reductions there could be
in the Scottish whitefish fleet without removing the economic base from
fishing-dependent communities such as Shetland, which I
represent.
On the use of
structural funds, can the Minister expand his thoughts on the
structural policy and public financial support? The assertion of the
Commission is that financial support for fisheries at community and
national level is substantial. Where is that support going in the UK?
Not many fishermen in my constituency would recognise that
description.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I concur with the Commission’s view
that there is substantial support. However, it is not necessarily being
given for decommissioning schemes any longer. It is being used to drive
towards a more efficient and sustainable fleet. For example, it might
involve the type of gear that is
used. The
European fisheries fund provides in excess of £100 million to UK
fisheries. As well as being the UK Minister, I am the England Minister
and we lever in additional funding on the back of that. Coupled with
match funding, the £40 million for England contributes to
£67 million for English projects. The Scottish Executive take
the same approach to levering in additional funding. There is money,
but it is used to incentivise sustainable fisheries. Under the old
approach of decommissioning, it was known that capacity was not being
taken out, but would reappear
elsewhere.
Mr.
Carmichael: The major difference in many European
countries is the use of structural funds to subsidise fuel for the
fleet. What assurance can the Minister give that in future, the CFP
will be common to all nations on such
assistance?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman hits on a pertinent
point about the use of the European fisheries fund and European Union
funding for fisheries. We face challenging circumstances off coastal
areas in his constituency such as issues with petrol from year to year,
the abundance of landings that drive prices down and imports. The
question is whether European funding should be used to pick up that
shortfall, which occurs from season to season, or to drive towards a
more sustainable and efficient fleet. I argue strongly for the latter
so that we put the fleet on a long-term footing rather than respond to
short-term market fluctuations or petrol variations. Difficult as such
problems are, the long-term viability of the fleet is a bigger
issue.
Mr.
Benyon: I have three quick questions, the first of which
leads on from what has been said. Does the Minister agree that we must
learn from the difficulties facing the Scottish fleet? The law of
unintended consequences seems to have kicked in. In order to stay in
business, many skippers in Scotland have transferred from targeting fin
fish stocks to targeting nephrops. That has created overcapacity,
which, coupled with the recession, has caused a fall in the price of
the product. How can we avoid similar problems in other parts of the UK
and other
fisheries?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman touches on one failure
of the current common fisheries policy, which is that it goes from
dealing with one stock that is under threat one year to another the
next. That creates another problem that has to be rectified at the next
annual negotiations. The way through this is to have not
only multi-annual plans, but multi-species plans, so that we can take
that region of the seas and devise a proper, coherent recovery or
management plan for a variety of species. Otherwise, we will simply
displace activity. Activity might be displaced just in that area from
one species to another, or vessels might actually be sent around the
coast to, as I say, Cardigan bay or the north-east of England. A whole
new batch of problems will then have been created. We can resolve that
problem through CFP
reform.
Mr.
Benyon: To what extent does the Minister believe that
overcapacity exists in the UK fleet? Does he recognise the abject
failure of the decommissioning scheme? Instead of effectively reducing
capacity, the scheme has actually contributed to the problem as
some skippers decommissioned old boats and
reinvested in newer, more efficient ones. If just a fraction of the
money—I think that out of the £5 million put
into the scheme, £2.5 million or so was provided by his
Department—had been put into addressing the imbalance that
exists between the larger, more commercial fleets and the inshore
fleet, it would have made a huge difference to their
productivity.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I hate to do this, but I fundamentally
disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The decommissioning scheme that we
have just had was not a decommissioning scheme on its own; the scheme
related to decommissioning and the capping of licences—I am
assuming that he is referring to the under-10 fleet decommissioning.
The scheme was over-subscribed and the vessels that participated in it
were taken out because they were scrapped. Other vessels were not free
to come into the pool because their licences were capped. I think that
the hon. Gentleman had the interesting idea of using that £5
million to buy a quota off the over-10s to give to the
under-10s.
Mr.
Benyon: I just plucked that example out of the air but,
with that sort of money around, there was an opportunity to rebalance
the whole industry in a way that would have kept a few more people in
business. The fact that 96 per cent. of the quota is held by the
over-10 fleet and 3 per cent. is held by the under-10 fleet must surely
mean there is something wrong, whatever way we look at
it.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I think that when people read
Hansard, they will be fascinated to see the proposal, if I
understand it correctly, to have a long-term rebalancing—not a
one-off waste of £5 million of taxpayers’ money to buy it
for this year—of the quota between the under-10 and the over-10
sectors. The hon. Gentleman might think that that is a worthy use of
taxpayers’ money—bearing in mind that there is a fixed
quota pool and would be taking from one to give to the other—but
the over-10 fleet will be fascinated by the idea that he proposes to
take quota from
them.
The
Chairman: Order. We will have the debate shortly. We are
on questions and answers at the
moment.
Mr.
Benyon: The Minister is concentrating on that issue, but I
was actually asking him about the decommissioning scheme. I was making
the point that I do not believe that the £5 million
spent on the
decommissioning scheme was well used and that the element that DEFRA put
in could have been used to support coastal communities in a variety of
ways. He has sought to complicate the issue by saying it was some
remarkably intricate scheme for transferring quota from the over-10s to
the under-10s—I just use that as an example—but I was
simply saying that there must be a more efficient use of £5
million than putting it into a decommissioning scheme that did not
reduce overcapacity and has led a lot of fishermen, some of whom I have
met, to reinvest the money they got from the scheme into new, more
efficient
boats.
The
Chairman: I call the Minister—we will come to the
debate
shortly.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: The result of the decommissioning, capping
and testing of engine power was that 500 tonnes of fish were
released into the under-10s pool permanently —for
ever—because we capped the other licences. That is a good use of
taxpayers’ money when we have also taken capacity out, because
it means there are fewer ships fishing for a larger pool for the
under-10s. However, I hesitate to follow the hon. Gentleman down the
line of taking from the over-10s to give to the
under-10s.
Andrew
George: On the priorities that the Minister set out
earlier, and that he believes are broadly contained in the green paper
from the European Commission, will he give us his own expectations of
objectives such as the broad prioritisation in the centre and
micro-management at a more local level, the long-termism that is
implicit in his approach, the idea of more state control of coastal
areas, particularly within the 12-mile limit, and the retention of
relative stability? Which objective is the most likely to succeed and
which will he fight a battle to
retain?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: I think that I am being asked to look into
a crystal ball. We are still at the early stages of this debate. I say
quite honestly that our ambition is to deliver on all those aspects
that we said, and that includes less micro-management and more
regionalisation, melding the marine environment with fisheries and
pursuing long-term science rather than annual haggling. All such
ambitions can be achieved, but to do that we must—collectively
as the UK, and as an industry—work with other European member
nations to persuade them of the radical case that we are putting
forward.
Andrew
George: We would all benefit from further comment on the
matter. In particular, will the Minister indicate which ambition will
be the most difficult to achieve? To be specific, I am talking about
within the 12-mile or even the six-mile zone. We have just completed
all the work in the Commons on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill,
which has cross-party support. I just wonder what ambitions the
Minister has as far as such negotiations are concerned, and what he
thinks are his chances of success of broadening the obvious limits
under which the Marine and Coastal Access Bill can operate to the
six-mile zone. Furthermore, does he believe that, under this reform
package, he can extend that further to 12 miles or even to the median
line?
Huw
Irranca-Davies: Again, there is an element of speculation
here. We would be arguing the case that we want to ensure that we have
a coherent approach to the way in which we manage our fisheries from
the nought-to-six zone, the six to 12, and out further. All I can say
now is that that is what we are driving at. When we get down to the
detail, we have to consider getting to the situation in which we also
bind in other nations. Within the six-to-12 zone, we have historical
fishing rights, but what will happen to those under CFP reform? Beyond
12 nautical miles, the situation gets more complex. At the moment, all
options are on the table, but we have to try to achieve a coherent
approach within our
seas.
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