Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am sorry the hon. Lady is disappointed. Within two days of taking office I had a meeting with Otto Thoresen, the head of the Association of British Insurers. We are engaged in detailed discussions, which I obviously cannot reveal, because we do not negotiate in public. However, I reassure the hon. Lady that the Government take this matter very seriously. We know that the statement of principles runs out next year and that it must be replaced—I hope by something that is more comprehensive and effective.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

About 450,000 homes and properties in the country are at risk of flooding. People will find it increasingly difficult to obtain flood insurance, particularly for properties that are built on functional floodplains. Will the Secretary of State take a lead, with his colleague the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to end house building in totally inappropriate areas? Builders leave, developers go away and home owners are left with no insurance.

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[Sir Tony Baldry]

In fairness, I think that the House of Bishops recognises that, and when it met last it amended the Measure in a way that should commend support. Indeed, the bishops took a lead on that from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in the same article, made it clear that he thought the ordination or consecration of women as bishops was good for the whole world. He said:

“It is good news for the world we live in, which needs the unequivocal affirmation of a dignity given equally to all by God in creation and redemption—and can now, we hope, see more clearly that the Church is not speaking a language completely remote from its own most generous and just instincts.”

There is clear leadership from the House of Bishops and from the archbishops that we now need to consecrate women bishops.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I say how much Sir Stuart Bell will be missed by all in the House?

I hope that a strong message will go out from this House that we support women bishops and that the next Archbishop of Canterbury will be drawn from the widest possible church in this regard.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am sure that that message will be heard by the General Synod.

Badger Cull

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on initiating this debate so eloquently, and it is an honour to follow her. Although I note that the petition has 150,000 signatures, I firmly and passionately believe that a silent majority in the countryside care strongly about controlling bovine TB and believe in the need for an eventual cull, as well as in other measures such as those called for by the hon. Lady. I am not convinced of the need for Team Badger or a team cattle; I believe there should be one team, one nation and one countryside. I hope that the House will send a message this afternoon that we are convinced there can be both a healthy badger population and healthy livestock.

I will restrict my remarks to the positive role that I believe the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee can play. Only two hon. Members who served on that Committee during the previous Parliament remain—my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and myself—[Interruption.] And, indeed, another survivor, my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). The Committee stated:

“We also recognised that under certain well-defined circumstances it was possible that badger culling could make a contribution towards the reduction in incidence of the disease in hot spot areas. However, we acknowledged that badger culling alone would never provide a universal solution to the problem of cattle TB.”

The point is this: we will never eradicate or control the spread of TB by vaccination alone; we need a controlled cull.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that if the vaccine were available, there would be no need for a cull? I think some Government Members want the cull regardless.

[Miss McIntosh]

The hon. Gentleman will hear what my right hon. and hon. Friends say when they speak on this issue with some passion.

May I commend the work of the Food and Environment Research Agency, based in Ryedale in my constituency of Thirsk and Malton and, in particular, its work on progressing vaccinations for badgers? I note that it is already undertaking badger vaccines. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) asked about the cost of those individual vaccines, and it would be helpful if the Minister would confirm that.

In the pause before an eventual cull, I believe that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee can make a major contribution precisely on the vexed issue of vaccination, which was raised by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion. Not only do we have the cost and difficulty of vaccinating badgers, but there is currently no effective test to tell the difference between vaccinated and infected cattle—the wider issue raised by the hon. Lady. It is, therefore, impossible to identify clean animals from infected animals for the purpose of export.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sorry to intervene so soon, but that is not correct. The test to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals—the DIVA test—exists and is ready to be used once we get permission from the EU. The obstacle to the problem is getting that permission—there has not been much effort on that—not that the test does not exist.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am afraid that is a point of disagreement, which is why I believe there is a role for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee to examine the state of the science. Members of that Committee can use their role to encourage the Government to use good relations with the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, and colleagues in the European Parliament who have co-decision, to make plans to lift the ban on exports. That raises the wider issue of how we can encourage FERA to develop the badger vaccine, and encourage the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency to look fully at developing the efficiency of a cattle vaccination.

There is one issue that I regret the hon. Lady and Team Badger do not accept. Government Members recognise the issue of badger welfare, but I would like to see the whole House rise up and agree that it is unacceptable that almost 60,000 cows in calf—they were carrying an unborn calf—were slaughtered in 2010 and 2011. My hon. Friends have already alluded to the human grief suffered by farmers, and this year everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. We have seen a rise in fuel costs for transporting animals, and in the cost of feed. There has been bad weather; the potato crop is going wrong and pig farming is going wrong—everything is going wrong and farmers are battling with the elements.

We are talking about herds of cattle that have been raised by generations of farmers, and when a herd is slaughtered, that lifeline can never be regained. The contribution of such herds to the rural economy should not be underestimated, and they will be lost and gone for ever. I would like the House to unite to show that we care for the loss suffered by farmers, and that we recognise that this broader wildlife and countryside issue goes to the heart of the rural economy and farming in this country.

I have the honour of representing two livestock marts—that in Thirsk is the largest, or joint-largest, fatstock mart in the country. Farmers who produce those animals live in fear of one rogue beast coming into the herd.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to stress the human effects of the difficulties in which farmers now find themselves. Robert Davies, a farmer in my constituency, is an owner-occupier who has a closed herd on one farm. Over the past few years it has been shut for months on the trot, and nearly 400 animals have been tested every 60 days. Let us imagine the pain, suffering and difficulty experienced by him and his family, and the welfare of those animals.

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[Miss McIntosh]

I could not have put that better myself, and I hope the House will unite and recognise the contributions that farmers make to the economy. In terms of health and diet, nothing could be more nutritious than milk, dairy produce, beef and other meat products that are the lifeline of hill farmers in the north, and lowland farmers across the country.

No other country in the world has been able to control the spread of and incidence of TB in cattle without a controlled, limited cull. I bitterly regret the circumstances in which the NFU, Natural England, FERA and particularly the Government, have found themselves by postponing the cull. Farmers in my area and across the country will look for a controlled cull, and we should examine the results of that. Let us use this pause to examine the science—including the vaccination of badgers—and establish the cost and efficacy of that. Most importantly, we should look for a vaccination that will not only control levels of infection in cattle, but allow our meat and dairy products to be accepted across the EU and the world. Let us rise as one nation, one team, and one countryside.

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[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley), who made a very thoughtful speech and showed that just as there is no one opinion on this question in farming there is no one opinion on the Government Benches.

I speak as a former Minister of State at DEFRA who tried to address the issue in 2009-10. I saw at first hand the emotional and financial effect on farmers and their families and the pain inflicted by bovine TB. For most people in the country, except to those who watch the BBC’s excellent “Countryfile”, that is invisible. In the Adam’s farm section of the programme, viewers will have heard Adam Henson’s vet confirm that his prize beasts were infected with TB. They will have seen the pain that he felt and how that announcement affected his family. I am sure that that brought the issue home to millions more people than would otherwise have been the case.

[Miss McIntosh]

Does the hon. Gentleman remember that he had the opportunity to respond to the Select Committee’s 2008 report on the incentives and financing that the Government of whom he was a member were giving to farmers for biosecurity measures? We received no answer. Does he regret that now?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I will come on to what the previous Government did at DEFRA when I was Minister of State. The hon. Lady will forgive me, but I do not have the record for 2008. I know that her Committee did sterling work on the subject and I respect the activity in which it was involved.

My former boss at DEFRA, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), states in an article to be published today:

“Some of the facts are agreed. Bovine TB is a terrible disease. It has a huge impact on the farmers affected and they are understandably desperate to find their way out of this nightmare.”

He goes on to say:

“But we all have a responsibility to take action that will work.”

That is the starting point for our disagreement with the Government.

The forced delay to Government plans announced this week shows how difficult the subject is. There is no easy answer and that is why I want to refer to comments made by the Secretary of State on Tuesday. He said in his statement:

“The previous Government took forward the RBCT in a whole series of trials and then stopped and decided to do nothing.”

He went on to say that

“after the trials, the Labour Government stopped dead.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 839-44.]

With the greatest of respect to the Secretary of State, that is entirely wrong. Yes, we decided against a further or widespread cull, but our decisions were based on the evidence of the science presented to the Department and to Ministers at the time. Moreover, my right hon. Friend, who is in the Chamber, implemented the findings of the independent scientific group after the Krebs trials of the 10-year randomised badger cull. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) mentioned, John Bourne’s recommendation was not to cull but to tighten cattle controls. That is the answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, and that is what was done.

We went further. We set up the TB eradication group, which comprised members of the British Veterinary Association, the NFU, Government scientists, individual farmers, DEFRA officials and others. For the Secretary of State to say on Tuesday that we stopped dead is insulting to the dedicated work done by those people on the issue of bovine TB and that was grossly unfair of him.

We also lobbied the Treasury for every penny we could get for compensation for farmers afflicted by the disease and, critically, we kept up support for the search for vaccines for badgers and cattle. In contrast, one of the first things the coalition did at DEFRA, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), was cancel five of the six vaccine pilot trials. That looks like an even poorer decision today than it did then, and it looked pretty awful when it was announced.

For the Secretary of State to say that we stopped dead was plain wrong. If badger culling was proven scientifically to have worked, I am convinced that the Labour Government, having supported the trials with appropriate controls, would have pulled that trigger to protect cattle, to protect badgers and to protect other wildlife. It did not work then, however, and despite the coalition’s changes, such as harder boundaries and so on, we do not think that it will work now.

Sir John Beddington was quoted by the Secretary of State on Tuesday. He was reported as having said that

“we might expect a 12 to 16% reduction in bovine TB…after nine years”.—[Official Report, 23 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 839.]

That is hardly a vote of confidence. Those figures have been put in perspective in a number of speeches, as well as during DEFRA questions earlier today. I can understand that farmers, some Government Members and others want to be seen to be doing something—anything—and to be doing it now. As we heard in the statement, however, nothing will happen until next year, if then.

As the new Secretary of State has found out, there is no easy solution, no quick fix and no silver bullet. Vaccines and vaccination for badgers and cattle are the way forward. If there is a vote tonight, I will support the motion and I hope that the majority of Members will do the same.

Bovine TB and Badger Control

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question. It will be helpful if I explain the chronology. In September this year Natural England first determined that there were deficiencies in the sett data. Shortly after I took up my post, it set about a detailed sett survey and came up with these very significantly large numbers. We have to respect the science. It is most important that everyone understands this. The simple facts are that with these increased numbers the NFU did not believe that in the later weeks of this year, as it gets more difficult to get out on the ground, it could deliver the 70% figure. The responsible thing to do is to postpone; the easy thing to do would have been to thunder on and not deliver. We have to respect the science; we are being very clear about that. Over the past few days we have discussed this in great depth with the NFU and it is quite clear that despite a big effort in recruiting and a big increase in resources it cannot deliver the 70% figure. It is therefore right not to go ahead for the time being, and we will go ahead next year.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that farmers in the hotspots will be given all the available legal protection over the coming months, given the uncertainty before the cull can proceed? I welcome the fact that he has confirmed that the science is that of the independent scientific group in 2008. Will he use this pause to make the strongest possible argument within the European Union that the produce of any vaccinated animal, whether vaccinated with the badger bovine TB vaccine or the foot and mouth vaccine, will be legal trade with our European partners?

Dairy Industry

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), and to see so many colleagues from the Select Committee here. I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Walker, and I give heartfelt congratulations to the hon. Members who secured the debate, the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). They have thereby given the issue an audience wider than just those of us who have the honour of serving on the Select Committee.

I draw your attention, Mr Walker, to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. May I also mention, hesitantly, another interest: I am half Danish, although I shudder to declare it before this afternoon’s audience. Perhaps I can use my language skills to make representations beyond these four walls.

I welcome the new Minister to his place. It is a pleasure to see him there. I know that he will build on the excellent work done by the outgoing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice). It is poignant that the ink was hardly dry on the dairy industry voluntary code before my right hon. Friend was moved.

Many hon. Members have already described the problem: the volatility of the market and the imbalance in the supply chain, which the voluntary code is intended to address, between producers and purchasers of milk. I yield to no one in my admiration of those who work in the dairy sector—not least those in the hills and uplands of the UK, especially in the inclement weather that we often suffer in North Yorkshire. The hon. Member for South Down alluded to the poor weather pushing the cost of feedstuffs up dramatically, and the cost of keeping cattle indoors for longer this year has increased production costs. We are all aware of the other debate today, on fuel prices and the general cost of living. I acknowledge that production in the uplands has been reduced to the bare bones, and those now working on farms, particularly in the uplands, are strictly family members.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the Select Committee report of July 2011, on what should be included in the EU proposals for the dairy sector contract. We noted that, despite having one of the most efficient production systems in the world, UK dairy farmers are unable to recover their costs, and dairy producers are out-competed by imported products. We recommended that

“raw milk contracts should include the four elements specified by the Commission—price, volume, timing of deliveries, and duration.”

I am delighted that under the voluntary code, contracts between producers and purchasers must set out either a clear price or a clear pricing mechanism.

It is unacceptable that every time we deal with the issue, the purchasers add another 2p, and, when our backs are turned, or we take our eyes off the ball, prices are reduced. Even at 29p per litre, the price of producing the milk is not being covered. What is the result? As recently as the Farndale show at the end of August, I met yet another dairy producer who was selling his dairy and his sheep, for that reason.

The elephant in the room, to which I hope the Minister will turn his attention early, is the push for large units. The Government should say what their view is on large dairy units. They should acknowledge the public concern. There are welfare issues about dairy cattle being kept indoors with no access to fresh air and no room for exercise; and there are large-scale environmental issues concerning how to dispose of the slurry. That is a separate debate, which must happen. However, it is unacceptable and unsustainable that purchasers of milk continue to offer dairy producers less per litre than the cost of production. That cannot continue.

A cheese producer has brought to my attention a worrying development in North Yorkshire, which is that local suppliers are threatening not to provide cheese producers and others with the milk they need. The Government must tackle that.

I congratulate the outgoing Minister on securing the dairy package. We must recognise the fact that many dairy farmers are being pressed to abandon milk production, because they cannot secure a break-even price. That must be tackled. I urge the Government to respond to our earlier report on upland farming. We welcomed the rural statement this week, but in addition to that I want the Government to present an uplands action plan, setting out the policy area and retaining farming as the primary activity in the UK’s uplands.

We need to know where the £5 million that the Government are allocating to producers will be sent. We want contracts awarded to dairy farmers that cover their production costs. I hope that the Select Committee recommendations on the groceries code adjudicator will ensure that the adjudicator has the power to investigate on his or her own initiative, and to impose fines.

Let the message go out today that we will not accept the behaviour that has been shown towards dairy producers. I welcome this debate in that spirit.

department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend’s point is properly made and is an important one.

I will concentrate on the issues that need to be addressed. I fully recognise that what matters to the dairy farmer is the price that they are paid. However, as several hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have said, it is not simply a matter of reversing the price cuts, although that is what the producers want. We need something more substantial and more permanent than that.

As I say frequently outside this place, we have an obsession in this country with the liquid market and with the desire of our processors to gain bottling contracts for supermarkets. They keep undercutting each other to keep their bottling plants at full capacity. When, as has happened on this occasion, cream prices collapse and they face major problems, the only way in which they can recoup any income is by cutting the price for their producers to below the cost of production. That is a direct consequence of the obsession with bottling for supermarkets.

As several hon. Members have said, and as is abundantly clear, there are ample other opportunities for investment. Some 20% of our total dairy consumption is imported. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) talked about imports. We do not import liquid milk. All the imports are dairy products, but they nevertheless make up a significant part of our total consumption.

What are our processors doing to combat that? One or two are trying to do something. Dairy Crest has gained back some of the cheese market with one of its products and it should be congratulated on that, but there is still much to do. Where do the supermarkets with aligned dairy groups, which pay a premium for their liquid milk, get their own-label brands? Where are their other dairy products, such as their yoghurt, produced? Do they use British milk? In many cases, they do not. There is therefore a great opportunity for import substitution.

There is an even greater opportunity for exports. The world is crying out for increased dairy products. Yes, global prices have fallen back and that is part of the immediate problem that we face. However, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) that if I was asked whether I would encourage a young person to go into dairy farming, my unequivocal answer would be yes, because I am convinced that there is a long-term future beyond today’s crisis.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Paice]

No, I am sorry, I need to press on.

Hon. Members also raised the issue of supermarket power. As has been said, we are introducing the groceries code adjudicator. I have always tried to be honest with farmers and say that on its own it will not increase the price of milk, but that it should increase fairness and transparency.

The big problem that we face, which has been mentioned this afternoon, is what I view as the absurd level of price cutting by some retailers, particularly those in what is known as the middle ground. One retailer is openly selling milk at 99p for four pints.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, DEFRA Ministers have visited each part of the country severely affected in the sequence of heavy rain that we have had. I went to Gateshead last Saturday. A number of Government Departments can be engaged in providing help. Most importantly, the Department for Communities and Local Government has a formula—the Bellwin formula—that I urge local authorities to apply to for funds. Before the recess, I shall give hon. Members the opportunity for a briefing on how we can provide further assistance.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I commend the report on the water White Paper published today by the departmental Select Committee? We stand ready to assist the Secretary of State in reaching a deal. Will she give the House an assurance that the cohort of tenants on low incomes will be granted affordable insurance where they are at risk of flooding?

[Mrs Spelman]

Yes, I can give that assurance, which is very important. The deal that we are in the process of negotiating with the insurance industry tackles for the first time the question of affordability, which the statement of principles—the previous scheme—did not.

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[Sir Tony Baldry]

We are at cross purposes. The answer that I gave to the hon. Gentleman was very clear: I am not aware of any redundant or former churches having been turned into a bar or a casino. If he has details of any such instances, will he please let me have them so that I can investigate?

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

2. What the average number of parishes is per Church of England priest in rural areas; and if he will make a statement.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The Church does not calculate an average figure for the number of parishes per priest in rural areas, because different dioceses take varying approaches to pastoral organisation.

[Miss McIntosh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I wonder whether we could urge the Church Commissioners to undertake such an exercise. I should like to praise the work of rural priests. In North Yorkshire, they are being asked to spread themselves extremely thinly, and any support that they could be given would be most welcome.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My hon. Friend is quite correct to draw our attention to the fantastic work being done by priests in rural areas. We will collect statistics on rural priests, and I will ensure that they are shared with her.

Fish Discards

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If I am to accommodate colleagues, I need short questions and short answers.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he has delivered and the progress that was made, particularly on regionalisation, which is music to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s ears. Will he update the House on the question of a register for UK fishermen so that we can tackle the problem of slipper skippers, which will also help with discards? Will he confirm that it will be fish caught against quota on which we will proceed, not just fish landed, as that is one of the main issues with discards? Will he confirm that there will be support for fishermen to invest in the selective gear that has been successful in Denmark and Sweden?

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. It is a priority quickly to overcome the absurd position that we do not know who holds quota in this country. We want to work with devolved Governments to make sure that we have that register as quickly possible to ensure that we know and perhaps to slay some of the urban myths that football clubs and celebrities own quota. I have never managed to find out the facts about this.

The important point on discards is that we know how to make this work. We begin with a really good experience of working with the fishing industry. Catch quota schemes will result in 0.2% of discards of cod for vessels in those schemes. We want to incentivise fishermen not to catch fish that they would otherwise discard. We want to make sure, too, that where there is a land-all obligation there are supply chains that ensure that those fish are eaten or go into other systems. We should not just transfer a problem out at sea to landfill. The most important thing is that we have time and a clear direction to ensure that we can use all the work that we have done with the industry to make this effective and to stop the problem in a practical sense.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Organisations such as Battersea Dogs Home have a terrible problem on their hands. Dogs homes are full to capacity with dogs that have had to be taken from the streets—100,000 strays a year and, tragically, 6,000 of those have to be put down. I am sure Battersea Dogs Home would agree that the measures that we have put in place, giving discretion to the police in relation to impounding a dog, and measures to educate irresponsible owners, as well as the resources that I have given the Battersea Dogs Home to help us tackle this problem, will all be welcomed.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome the review and consultation. Will the Secretary of State extend the review to the Local Government Act 2010 to see whether the number of stray dogs has gone up since control passed to local authorities? Will she take the opportunity to close the current loophole with respect to attacks by dogs on other dogs and other animals, and extend the livestock provisions on worrying dogs to these other categories?

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee, makes some excellent points. Perhaps they are topics that the Select Committee might be interested in. The worrying of sheep, which is an understatement—it is often the death of sheep as a result of lack of control by the owners of dogs—is a very serious problem. I undertake to look at those issues.

National Policy Statement (Waste Water)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker). I, too, welcome the debate this evening and the waste water national policy statement. In these debates, I feel as though I have died and gone to heaven when the Minister and the Opposition spokesman both say what a good piece of work the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has done. It was a privilege to carry out such a substantial body of work on the national policy statement, and we took our responsibilities seriously. I am grateful to the Committee, to those who advised us and to those who gave evidence.

I shall give the House some background information. In April 2011, the Committee published the report on our inquiry into the Department’s draft waste water national policy statement, in which we made a number of recommendations for what we viewed as the improvement of the NPS. Some time later, on 9 February this year, the Government published their response to the Committee’s report and laid a revised version of the NPS before the House. I am delighted that the Government have been able to find time for this debate tonight.

The hon. Member for Luton South mentioned the fact that we had to comply with, among other things, the European urban waste water treatment directive. May I just say, as a personal comment, that I hope that we can learn from this whole exercise—and from the essence of the Macdonald review of regulations from Europe—and that we must engage at the earliest possible stage and in the most constructive, positive manner? It will be a great step forward if we can learn from this exercise.

As the Minister said earlier, the national policy statement is critical to the new planning system. It will help developers to bring forward waste water projects of national significance without facing unnecessary delays, while ensuring that local people have an opportunity to have their say about how their communities are developed and about how the decisions are made in an accountable way by elected Ministers.

Following on from the Minister’s comments, I would be interested to know whether at this stage he has had sight of the final version of the national planning policy framework, which I understand may be revealed to the world at large later this week. Is he in a position to tell us this evening, given that this issue was raised in our evidence sessions, what the impact will be on the waste water national policy statement and the two projects falling under it?

The Minister referred to the application for planning consents. He may be interested to know that some time, regrettably, after we had taken evidence and reported, we were still receiving representations from those who had not realised that the scrutiny was taking place in the EFRA Committee. The matter of how to bring such scrutiny to the attention of the wider community is important if this were to arise again, as I understand it might if the Minister proceeds with his review. I shall return to that later.

The Committee was pleased to have the opportunity to scrutinise the draft water national policy statement last year, and we welcome the Government’s response. Although, as I alluded, it took the Department some time to publish the revised version, we were pleased that the time was used well to improve the national policy statement by incorporating many of our recommended changes. We believe that the now revised PPS broadly does a good job in setting out the framework for decision makers. Given the importance of the issue, however, we welcome the Government’s debate on it today.

Many other hon. Members will have issues to raise, particularly those whose constituencies are in the catchment area for the billing of the project, such as my hon. Friend the Minister, and perhaps also those whose constituencies lie along its route. I shall focus my remarks both on areas where the Government have incorporated our comments and on those where they did not.

The Government’s response sets out a number of areas in respect of which DEFRA has accepted the recommendations in the Committee’s report and amended the NPS consequentially. On the definition of need, I welcome the fact that in the revised NPS, the inclusion of a project in Ofwat’s asset management plan has been removed, in line with the Committee’s recommendation, as a criterion of proof of a project’s need. It was not logical to use that as a basis of proof, because its inclusion did not in itself mean that Ofwat had approved the individual plan for how it should be carried out. Indeed, Ofwat’s evidence on how it would review and consider each plan was quite compelling, so the removal of the asset management plan is a sensible approach, with retention of inclusion in the Environment Agency’s national environment plan as proof of a project’s need providing a workable criterion. I thus welcome the Minister’s comments this evening.

Some of the site-specific material in the NPS has been moved to an annexe, which is part of the document that is not to be relied on by the decision maker in reaching a decision on a project. That meets to some extent the Committee’s criticism about the inclusion of weak material on the Thames tunnel and Deephams sewage treatment works in the main NPS. In our view, the remaining site-specific sections have been improved, and the Committee welcomes these amendments because the focus of the NPS should be on establishing generic criteria that are applicable to any project falling within the threshold of a nationally significant infrastructure project set out in the Planning Act 2008, as amended.

As regards the inclusion of the Thames tunnel in the nationally significant infrastructure project planning regime, may I say that the Government have also moved to change the Planning Act definitions, as recommended by the Committee, to include sewage transfers and storage projects such as the Thames tunnel within the process for deciding applications of nationally significant infrastructure projects? We welcome that move, which is in the intended spirit of the Planning Act regime and reflects the inclusion of the Thames tunnel in the Government’s major infrastructure plans. The inclusion of sewage transfer and storage projects of a significant size, such as the Thames tunnel project, is clearly both logical and pragmatic.

Recommendation 9 deals with the approval of costs. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) mentioned the importance of keeping the costs of the Thames tunnel under scrutiny, and it is vital for Ofwat to be rigorous in scrutinising those costs, which, according to the evidence given to our Committee, are escalating. The Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, which we debated last week, contains necessary provisions enabling Thames Water to ensure that it can finance the project in the most cost-effective manner, but I should welcome an assurance from the Minister about the intended use of those powers, and a reassurance for Thames Water customers that the costs will not continue to increase. It would be helpful if he also told us how Ofwat has strengthened its in-house capacity to focus on the Thames tunnel, and what advice the company is receiving on how to limit the cost of the projects referred to in the Government’s response to our report.

I am sure that Members will not be disappointed if I now turn to my personal pet subject, sustainable drainage. In recommendation 6, we

“recommend that Defra undertakes within 12 months a full assessment of the potential national impact of widespread adoption of SUDs”

—sustainable drainage systems—

“and water efficiency programmes for existing as well as new housing stock on future waste water infrastructure needs and that this be taken into account in any future revisions of the Waste Water NPS.”

I realise that there are a number of strands in DEFRA’s work on sustainable drainage, but it is disappointing that the water White Paper does not focus more on SUDS, and that more progress has not been made towards an agreement on funding for them. According to the Government’s response,

“The Planning Act allows for the partial or full review of an NPS. We aim to review the Waste Water NPS in five years time”

—perhaps the Minister will confirm that that is the case—

“or before that time should there be a significant need to do so.”

Obviously, my question is what would constitute a significant need. The Government’s response continues:

“This will take account of any changes to appropriate policy since the development of the original Waste Water NPS.”

I am not disagreeing with the Minister, but we need more information this evening.

The Government’s response also refers to schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, a large part of which has still to come into effect. They say

“We intend to implement Schedule 3 as soon as possible and dates are being explored”

—this is exciting stuff, Mr Deputy Speaker—

“in the consultation on implementation of Schedule 3 which we launched on 20 December. The Act also requires local authorities to adopt those sustainable drainage systems which serve more than one property. In the short term”

—it must be quite a short term, Mr Deputy Speaker—

“Defra will fund the maintenance of adopted sustainable drainage systems whilst we explore long-term funding options.”

Will the Minister tell us what the procedure and timetable will be for the adoption—finally—of sustainable drainage systems? The last Government could have done that before the general election, but they chose not to. We are now approaching the anniversary of that election, and I think that the House is growing impatient. I certainly am. When will we have the SUDs? They are important. The House wants to be able to establish whether the Government have explored all the alternatives.

I hope the Minister will respond—in his usual, inimitable, charming way—to the points raised. In respect of the national policy statement, if we are truly signed up to sustainable development, the environment and the needs of local communities must not be sacrificed. The Committee commends the national policy statement and is glad that the Government welcome some of its proposals. However, we are disappointed that they disagree with certain measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I am one of 144 Members of Parliament in the Thames Water area directly affected by the issue of the Thames tunnel, and I hope that both the Minister and the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) will forgive me if I restrict my comments to the area that is close to my heart.

It is good to have consensus at times in politics and to be able to discuss issues in a measured way. One of the difficulties with the Thames tunnel is that there will be one hell of an outcry from many Thames Water customers in the years to come when they recognise the sheer cost implied by what is being put into place through this national policy statement for waste water, as it affects not only the London area, but the Thames Water area. Those living in the centre of London will see the tunnel being constructed, as I am sure it will be in the years to come, and will recognise that that does not come entirely cost free. I suspect that Thames Water customers in the Oxfordshires and Gloucestershires of this world will put a lot more pressure on. It is, therefore, all the more important that I use this opportunity to put certain concerns about this policy statement on the record, although I do not wish to break away too far from elements of the happy consensus that we have seen tonight.

I think we all acknowledge that if the Thames tunnel goes ahead, as I confidently predict it will, it will be a nationally significant infrastructure project. It is therefore sensible to make it one in the formal sense, both in relation to the Planning Act and, as the framework suggests is needed with such projects, with the sort of national policy statement we are debating tonight. I agree with other Members that although this debate has been relatively short, this opportunity to debate such a crucial issue is welcome. The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs certainly thought so when it examined this draft national policy statement last year, as we gathered from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) earlier.

The Committee also signalled some concerns about the way that the document appeared to pre-empt elements of the planning process. The waste water NPS is the key document against which the planning application for the Thames tunnel will be judged. For that reason, the Committee said that it should be “a purely generic document” to prevent the justification for the Thames tunnel project from being removed from scrutiny. It also warned that although reference to specific schemes could be put in an annex to the national policy statement,

“it should be made clear that it does not constitute information to which decision makers must have regard when considering project applications.”

I fear that the Government have rejected that element of the advice. Instead, the NPS makes it clear, on page 21, that the tunnel is the “only option” and that what would be left to the Planning Inspectorate would merely be the “specific design and route”. In its response to the Select Committee report, DEFRA said the Government want to provide a “degree of certainty” to Thames Water. I do not think there is any doubt that they have been able to achieve that result.

Let us be quite clear about what the national policy statement means in practice. It means there will be no independent analysis of the very case for a tunnel. The document we are debating removes the case for the tunnel from the planning process. I think the Minister will argue that that is reasonable because the arguments have already been heard in detail—perhaps privately in his office and the offices of his predecessors—that the evidence is overwhelming and that the final NPS makes an unarguable case. If that were true, he would have a point, but the NPS is far from entirely convincing, not least because there are a number of things that one would never learn just from reading the document. In my brief contribution tonight I shall list the ones that seem the most significant, and I join the Select Committee in asking whether there really is no need for an independent assessment.

First, the tunnel will not collect 39 million tonnes of sewage. Like Thames Water, the NPS mentions 39 million cubic metres of discharge into the Thames each year. It then states that the Thames tunnel is the preferred way to address this issue. The casual reader of the document will assume that the tunnel collects 39 million tonnes of discharge, but that figure will be more than halved without the tunnel being built. The construction of the Lee tunnel and the upgrades to the sewage treatment works will prevent 21 million tonnes from entering the tidal Thames, and improvements to Mogden sewage treatment works will tackle several million more upstream.

Rather than celebrating the huge strides already being made to clean up the Thames—I am not entirely complacent about that; there should be huge strides and we should always be looking to improve the quality of water in the Thames—the NPS makes only oblique references and never entirely quantifies them in the way that I have tried to do tonight. It is worth repeating that the amount of sewage entering the Thames will fall dramatically without the Thames tunnel project. Only 18 million tonnes of discharge will be addressed by the tunnel, by no means all of which would be stopped as there would still be three large discharge events in an average year.

Unlike the publicity we have seen from Thames Water the NPS does at least describe the discharges as a mixture of “untreated sewage and rain water”, but it does not explain that the rain water accounts for more than 95% of the total. That somewhat disingenuous use of statistics has understandably misled countless members of the public and even Members of this House. In last week’s debate on the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) talked about tackling the

“39 million tonnes of effluent”—[Official Report, 14 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 306.]

but the reality is that there are just 18 million tonnes of discharge, of which not even 1 million tonnes are effluent. Any discharge of sewage is regrettable but we should deal in facts.

[Miss McIntosh]

When the Committee put questions on the national policy statement to the Department, we asked particularly about the potential impact of SUDS and other rainfall harvesting. If, as my hon. Friend says, we are talking about mostly rainfall, that impact would be quite substantial.

[Mark Field]

I accept that there would be an impact, but the use of the word “effluent” in relation to the 39 million cubic metres gives the public and many Members of this House a somewhat misleading impression of the sheer urgency of the need to undertake the project at this time.

It has been asserted that the river has been getting better and will continue to do so, and there is no doubt about that, but a feature of debates on the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill last week and less recently was the number of hon. Members who suggested that the Thames had been getting worse, and will continue to get worse without the tunnel. The hon. Members for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made that statement in part. That claim is not supported by the facts, as regards the immediate future; it is also probably not entirely true as regards the past and present.

I note that the Environment Agency’s website no longer hosts a press release that it issued only 17 months ago, but at that time, it went so far as to describe the Thames as

“the beauty queen of the planet’s waterways.”

That perhaps goes a little too far, even for those who have no desire whatever for a Thames tunnel-type project, but what prompted the comment was real enough: the sustained and continuing improvement of the Thames, which saw it win the international Theiss river prize for outstanding achievement in river management and restoration.

Common Fisheries Policy

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House considers that the Common Fisheries Policy has failed to conserve fish stocks and failed fishermen and consumers; welcomes the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s report, EU proposals for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy; and calls on the Government to use the current round of Common Fisheries Policy reform to argue for a reduction in micro-management from Brussels, greater devolution of fishing policy to Member States, the introduction of greater regional ecosystem-based management and more scientific research to underpin decision-making in order to secure the future of coastal communities and the health of the marine ecosystem.

It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to move this motion. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to debate the issue, and I thank my fellow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee members—from all parties—for the excellent work they did in drafting the report on this topic. I also thank the witnesses, both those who appeared before us and gave so generously of their time and those who submitted written evidence.

In my local area, I visited the coble fishermen in Filey, who are some of the heroes of the smaller—under-10 metre—fishing fleet in this country. The Committee visited Hastings, accompanied by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), and we were very warmly received. It was a highly productive visit—once we had negotiated the London tube network—and I thank everyone who shared that day with us for the warm welcome we received and the evidence they shared with us.

It was a particular pleasure for me to take the Committee to Denmark and to meet the Danish President of the Council of Ministers, the Danish Minister for fisheries, farming and food. We also met the local fishermen in Gilleleje. I have to confess that I had not visited that little fishing port for some 15 or 20 years, but we were impressed by the work and co-operation of its fishermen, and persuaded by the science we saw there. We were allowed to partake in a non-live auction mart, buying and selling some of the fish, which expanded our knowledge of the live internet auction mart that they use. We were interested to see the selective gear those Danish fishermen use, a detail that is particularly relevant to the motion.

This debate is timely. The Danish presidency is expected to reach a political decision in the European Council in June—in the well-known coastal resort of Luxembourg! Seriously however, Luxembourg does have a genuine interest in freshwater fish and aquaculture—the Minister can correct that term, if it is wrong. We are expecting a political decision in the EC in June. For the first time, it will be a co-decision. The European Parliament is seeking to reach an agreement on the financial regulation in January 2013, and we will have co-decision on all the fisheries reforms. A final agreement is not expected until June 2013.

I commend the motion. I think we can all confirm that the common fisheries policy—particularly the last round of reform—has failed everybody. It has failed to conserve fish stocks, and to help fishermen or consumers. I want to dwell for a moment on what I believe is the most exciting part of the motion and of our report, and I am grateful to the very senior lawyers in this place and elsewhere who have advised us on the report. We have a once-in-a-decade opportunity. We have a one-off opportunity to end the centralised micro-management by Brussels, which I think we can all agree has failed to deliver. We want to support the commissioner, who agrees that, as an essential first step, we must look at the possibility of handing power back to member states to enable them to work together to find a local solution.

I applaud the openness of the commissioner, and the immediate past chairman of the Brussels Committee on fisheries, Carmen Fraga, who is a personal friend of mine and who is affectionately known in the European Parliament as “madam fish.” The commissioner was especially open in the meeting we had in Brussels, during our evidence session of some 18 months ago, and more especially when the commissioner gave evidence on the record. I am delighted that there is now a picture on the commissioner’s website of the commissioner and me handing over the report we are debating this afternoon.

I believe we have given the Department, the Commission and the European Union the opportunity—which we were all looking for—to drive decision making down to the most local and regional level. Our proposals are truly groundbreaking. I believe the fault has been that there has been too much micro-management from Brussels and a lack of overarching objectives, which we would like the Commission to remain in charge of.

The Commission should have a strategic high-reaching overview, but the day-to-day decisions on how fisheries are managed in local waters should be decided among the various coastal states on the basis of scientific evidence, which is missing at present, and through working much more closely with the fishermen. We will talk shortly about giving the advisory councils more power.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I support the motion, but will my hon. Friend make this point clear to me: presumably, she would want the British Government to be able to get rid of the much-hated and stupid discards policy and be free to decide ourselves how to conserve stock?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am going to be very methodical and discuss discards later, as we have some interesting things to say about them and I hope that hon. Members from all parts of the House will elaborate on the matter.

On the treaty base, I hope that the Minister has now had the opportunity to analyse what we are proposing. This is the first time anyone has identified what is staring us in the face—that all we have to do is amend the regulations, which form the whole context of this round of the common fisheries policy reform. The feedback we have had from the fishermen we have consulted, as well as from the Danes and others, has been very positive.

It is important to recognise that the little fish do not swim around with a Union Jack on them. Much as I would like to say that the fish outside Filey have a Yorkshire flag on them and the fish in the Scottish waters have the saltire on them, they do not; they swim across the various waters. So it is absolutely right that the Commission should retain some competence in this area, and I, for one, do not wish to reopen the treaty base that gives exclusive competence on the resources to the Commission. By allowing the coastal states that neighbour the individual fisheries to take the day-to-day management decisions, we will save a lot of the Minister’s time every December, as things will be managed on a more regular basis. The approach will be much more local, it will be based on science and it will be about working more closely with the fishermen.

[Mr Redwood]

Nor do the fish swim around with an EU flag on them. We should accept that it is our fishing resource if it is in our wider waters—we have to pay the bills, so we should be responsible for it.

[Miss McIntosh]

My right hon. Friend has put his finger, possibly inadvertently, on the nub of the issue. This is a shared resource and we need to conserve it. The Committee has gone through things and we have identified many ways in which we believe we can do that.

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the best outcome for our country’s relationship with the common fisheries policy would be what was described to us as a “toolbox”? We would operate our own toolbox, given our certain allocation, and that would perhaps give us the best option in terms of the European balance and the UK fishing balance.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for putting it so eloquently and so well. This approach would, indeed, be part of the toolbox, and it would give the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, negotiating for the UK, a much greater say and devolve decision making right down to the regional level, with a tremendous positive impact on fishermen and on coastal communities.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady has outlined the need for regionalisation, and that is the approach I would seek for Northern Ireland on this issue. Does she feel that regionalisation would mean that the days at sea, which have been reduced, would be increased to reflect the number of fish in the sea? Would the cod in the Irish sea be included in such an arrangement? Would the quotas also reflect that? What would happen with the discards? Does she agree that the approach to discards should be following the direction of the fisherman’s initiative? Does she agree that it should not be about bureaucrats in Europe, but about local people making decisions?

[Miss McIntosh]

Yes, and I will discuss discards momentarily. Our approach has to be taken on the basis of science, and that is what is missing at the moment. We need to set clear boundaries and give direction to the role of the Commission, and we have to give member states the power to act not only independently, but together in each of the individual fisheries. We will, thus, give them genuine freedom and responsibility.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that extending the limit to 12 miles is crucial? People in Brixham, in the area I represent, have done a great deal to conserve stocks, but they see Dutch vessels coming in to fish inside the 12-mile limit and that causes great resentment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

I am sure that the Minister will be more knowledgeable than I am on matters relating to the high water mark and the 12-mile limit. What I hope we can achieve, in principle, is agreement on each fishery—those in the Baltic sea and the North sea, as well as the Irish fisheries. These are a shared resource, and I hope that they can genuinely be determined by those coastal member states.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend explain how, under a system of qualified majority voting, and given that the basic regulation contains the principle of equal access to a common resource, she is going to be able to achieve what she wants? A lot of member states, albeit that they have a blocking minority, will oppose her proposals, so how will she get them through the Council of Ministers?

[Miss McIntosh]

Happily for me, I will not be arguing the case, and I hope that today’s debate will convince the Minister. I am pleased that the European Parliament has reached out to the national Parliaments and I hope that ours is the first leading report in that regard. We should amend the regulations—we should not accept them. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) looks baffled, but it is blindingly obvious that that is where we have gone wrong in the past. We should grasp the bull by its horns and amend the regulations for the duration of the piece, recognising them as a shared resource. That is key.

The television campaign against discards by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall captured the public imagination last year. Discards are deeply unpopular and unsustainable and they are failing to conserve our fish. The conclusion we reached was that we agree there should be a discard ban, but it is very clear that there is no scientific evidence on the survival rates for each species for which the ban is proposed. We believe that we should proceed with caution on the basis of the scientific evidence. Rather than having an end date of 2014 or 2015, we should start gradually. We do not want a discard at sea being substituted by a discard on land, with the fish going to landfill. That would not meet the wishes of the great British public.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

First, let me apologise profusely to the hon. Lady for not being in my seat when she began her speech. Does she agree that part of the problem with discards is that in mixed fisheries fishermen do not have a quota for catch that they cannot avoid catching, which they then have no alternative but to discard at sea?

[Miss McIntosh]

I shall share the comments I made earlier with the hon. Lady, but we do have a recommendation along those lines on mixed fisheries. There is simply insufficient information. When we launched our report, The Guardian had a website that entirely distorted our proposals so, for the sake of clarity, we are saying that there should be a ban on discards but we need to proceed on the basis of scientific evidence. If that is available in 2014, we will be the first to welcome it and to proceed on that basis. I believe that it would put my hon. Friend the Minister, who would be negotiating such a ban, in a very difficult position if we were just to substitute a discard ban. We believe that it should switch to catch, but it should do so gradually. Let us have an end date of 2020 but proceed with caution on the basis of scientific evidence.

[Jim Shannon]

The Minister is aware of this issue, because we spoke about it last November and he has followed through on it. Scientific evidence for the Irish sea shows that the stocks of cod and whitefish are increasing. The hon. Lady is saying, I think, that we need to have time for the scientific evidence to be in place. If that is the case, it will be too late for our whitefish fleet in Northern Ireland, as the crews have already been cut dramatically. Does she not feel that there are perhaps occasions—this is one of them—when urgency is of the utmost importance and that we must respond immediately to the scientific evidence that shows that there are more cod and more whitefish in the Irish sea than there have ever been before? That would sustain the cod and whitefish industry in Northern Ireland.

[Miss McIntosh]

I hope that if we can amend the regulations on how we will proceed, the reformed common fisheries policy will go forward. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s sense of urgency and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister, who takes part in the annual negotiations, will see this as welcome relief, but it will happen after the regulations are amended.

The Committee was persuaded that there are other means of conserving fish stocks—the tools in the box, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye said. We were hugely impressed by the work on selective gear being done by the Danish fishermen and by the agreement that the Danish and Swedish fishermen and their Governments had reached about fishing in their waters. We believe that that model could be used.

We applaud the work done under successive Governments off the Devon coast to reduce discards. We want to hear more of it and to see such schemes rolled out. As we said in our earlier domestic fisheries report, we believe there is a role for celebrity chefs and supermarkets to persuade the public to eat species that are not widely eaten at the moment. That would also help to conserve fish stocks going forward.

The Commission mandated member states to introduce a system of long-term fishing rights; it is looking to introduce transferable fishing concessions. In our earlier report on domestic fisheries, which we reported to the House on 3 June 2011, we highlighted the problem of slipper skippers and those who trade fishing quotas who are not actively involved in fishing. My local fishermen are absolutely convinced that there are football clubs trading in this way. We have not established that as a fact, but equally no one has denied it, which makes me believe that it is probably happening. May I challenge the Minister on this? We asked for a register to be introduced and I would like him to report where we are with that when he sums up. Local fishermen in Filey and across the Yorkshire area would warmly welcome that.

[Sheryll Murray]

Did my hon. Friend establish that a fishing quota can be attached only to a vessel that is held by a fish producer organisation? So either a dummy vessel that has been invented in a producer organisation or a real vessel has to be owned by a football club before a quota can be attached to it.

[Miss McIntosh]

We have not always established whether football clubs or others are involved, but my hon. Friend raises a very telling point. We believe that transferable fishing concessions would make the situation worse and would not necessarily reduce over-capacity. What we propose is a siphon mechanism to reallocate fishing rights away from potential slipper skippers. I hope this addresses her point. Under our proposal, if an operator chooses to lease his fishing rights, a percentage of that allocation would be returned to the national envelope. That could then be reallocated to active fishermen so as to maintain traditional fishing activities in coastal communities. We urge the Minister to recognise the role of active fishermen, who are the lifeblood of coastal communities such as those in Filey, Hastings and elsewhere. We also emphasise the need to protect small-scale fishermen, such as those in our under-10 metre fleets, by keeping them outside any market-based system of fishing rights.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

The hon. Lady makes a very interesting suggestion. Does she agree that that envelope could be used to incentivise sustainable fishing?

[Miss McIntosh]

The whole thrust of the motion is very much about sustainable fishing. We mention in particular

“the introduction of greater regional ecosystem-based management and more scientific research to underpin decision-making”.

The whole thrust is about how we define what is sustainable; we clearly do not have sustainable fishing at the moment. I hope the Minister will go down the path of avoiding excessive fleet consolidation and I make a personal plea that we could give more quota to our inshore fishermen. I ask the Minister please not to go near a quota for shellfish for inshore fishermen.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a great discrepancy in the way that the EU and the UK define these vessels, with the EU using the under-12 metre definition and the UK using the under-10 metre definition? Would we not be better using a definition based on the extent to which vessels are high catching? There is sometimes an assumption that all under-10 metre vessels have to be low-catching, sustainable vessels, whereas some of them catch large amounts of fish.

[Miss McIntosh]

My hon. Friend reminds me of the evidence we took in Hastings. I thought we should perhaps pursue an amendment along the under-10 metre/under-12 metre line, but this is more about the fact that such vessels do not have access to the quota under the current system and that they could be disadvantaged if there is over-consolidation—a point that was raised earlier. We were not persuaded that the under-10/under-12 issue was so significant.

I urge the Minister and his Department, when negotiating for the whole of the United Kingdom and all its constituent parts, which are well represented in the Chamber this afternoon, to press for an additional general objective for the common fisheries policy: contributing to the socio-economic development of coastal communities. By all means let us look at the new European maritime and fisheries fund to see how that can be done, particularly to help fishermen purchase and use more selective gear. I reiterate our desire to see more scientific research underpin decision making. I underline the fact that the Commission proposes a general objective of restoring stocks to levels above those that can produce maximum sustainable yield by 2015, which we believe will be extremely difficult to achieve. We suggest that the marine strategy framework directive, which aims to restore commercial stocks to within safe biological limits by 2020, is a more realistic and achievable aim.

In conclusion, we greatly welcome this opportunity and urge the Minister to grasp it and to get to Brussels or Luxemburg to make friends and use his charm to persuade our allies to introduce this groundbreaking change. We applaud his efforts and are 100% behind him in that regard.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

We have had an excellent debate, summed up brilliantly by my hon. Friend the Minister. I thank everyone for their kind words and warm welcome, both for the motion and the actual report. I wish to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that he has a suite of opportunities and a menu on which to draw. It is indeed our first call that he should seek to devolve decision making to the regions, but if that attempt were to fail, it would not be the wish of the Select Committee—or indeed the House—to allow the Commission more discretion in taking delegated powers.

The way is open for DEFRA to persuade the Commission to pursue our recommendation or press it to produce a clear road map for regionalisation—or, at the very least, legally binding regional agreements. We cannot proceed with a situation in which we have reliable scientific advice for only 30% of all EU fish stocks—for just 21 out of 60 in the Mediterranean.

The Committee would love to travel to Iceland, as I am sure would others, so perhaps that is a bid that may be looked on favourably. In any case, it gives me great pleasure to ask the House to support the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House considers that the Common Fisheries Policy has failed to conserve fish stocks and failed fishermen and consumers; welcomes the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s report, EU proposals for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy; and calls on the Government to use the current round of Common Fisheries Policy reform to argue for a reduction in micro-management from Brussels, greater devolution of fishing policy to Member States, the introduction of greater regional ecosystem-based management and more scientific research to underpin decision-making in order to secure the future of coastal communities and the health of the marine ecosystem.