Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Lord Benyon and Austin Mitchell

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend the assurance that I am absolutely determined that vessels from overseas respect whatever rules we bring in. Looking at the wording of this document, the means we are applying here is the marine strategy framework directive. The policies we are implementing through our conservation schemes—our marine-protected areas, our marine conservation zones under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009—are entirely in accordance with that directive, so it is impossible for other countries to try to say we are acting in a discriminatory way. I got the verbal support of the Commissioner on this in my negotiations with her, and I want to make sure we underpin this issue in the negotiations going forward.

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I hope that the Minister will accept that the Commission’s proposals are rather like the curate’s fish: good in parts, but very smelly in others. There is a particular problem, which I hope he will pursue, with the national input, which is now beginning. First, in the process of decentralisation, more power should be passed down to the regional advisory councils, which involve the industry and have done a good job. Secondly, in pushing the question of discards back to the national Governments, the commissioner is trying to perform a populist trick, because discards pose a particular problem for mixed fisheries—which we have—and quotas. There are bound to be discards, and the fish are dead, whether they are landed or dumped at sea. We have to deal with the problem, but it is better dealt with in the way that the industry is dealing with it now—by selective measures, which have cut discards by 50% over 10 years—than through the blanket ban that the Commission proposes. I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind in the negotiations.

[Richard Benyon]

I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about decentralisation. If I have a disappointment, it is about the tone of the document. I do not think that there is quite as much as we had hoped for on regionalisation and decentralisation. What do we mean by that? It means that we want fisheries to be managed on an ecosystem basis. It means that when it comes to the Irish sea, for example, we are talking with the Irish Government and devolved Governments to try to match what we know is a complex mixed fishery; and, when it comes to his constituency, we are proceeding in a similar way on the North sea. We will push hard for that, because we absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that top-down micro-management, under which net sizes and other technical measures are decided in Brussels, has failed and would be a disaster if allowed to continue.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that if most of the 700,000 people who signed the Fish Fight petition saw a headline with the words “discards” and “ban” in it, they might think, “Great! Job done,” but he and I know that it is not as simple as that. In order for the measure to be effective, particularly in mixed fisheries, we need to be nuanced and careful. That is why we have to ensure that we work closely, as he said, through the system of management that we develop and that we do not just allow a problem that at the moment happens at sea to be converted to a landfill problem, which could happen unless we are imaginative.