Flooding

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

More than 2,000 homes and up to 400 businesses in Leeds were hit by the floods, but what a fantastic, heroic job the emergency services, public sector workers and local volunteers did in Leeds, as they did around the country. Locally, we still await estimates of the financial cost of the flooding, but we know that in human terms it has hit people and businesses hard. We need to ensure that Leeds residents and businesses are properly protected, and we need an urgent review to put in place changes that prevent it from happening again.

Five years ago, the Environment Agency estimated that 3,000 properties in Leeds were at risk and that a major flood of the River Aire could cause £500 million of damage in Leeds city centre alone. Five years ago, given the estimates of the scale of the potential cost of flooding in Leeds, it proposed a £180 million flood defence plan, designed to deliver protection against a one-in-200-year flood event—the Government rejected it. Why? It was because of spending cuts. My Leeds East predecessor, George Mudie, raised concerns about the risk of flooding at that time—half a decade ago—as did Councillor Richard Lewis, Leeds City Council’s executive member for development, who condemned the Government as “short-sighted”.

We are now halfway through the construction of the smaller Leeds flood alleviation scheme, which is designed to deliver flood protection against a one-in-75-year event. That itself will now undoubtedly need repair work, and the Government review, working with Leeds City Council, must consider the following: whether the scheme, if it had been completed, would have been sufficient to prevent flooding in the city centre; whether it would have helped in any way in Kirkstall; whether it will be sufficient to protect against future floods; and whether that one-in-75-year figure is still appropriate and, if not, what further funding is needed for improved defences.

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) is seeking a meeting for Leeds MPs and council representatives with the Minister, and I hope we can have that soon. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister three times today whether he would commit to funding fully plans to give the whole of Leeds the protection that we need, and three times the Prime Minister failed to give a clear answer. People in Leeds and people across the country deserve better.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Very briefly, Mr Neil Parish.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

May I thank the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the floods Minister for all the work they have done on the flooding in the north of England? We now need a fundamental review on floods, as they are occurring more often. In the past, there may have been a flood every 25 years or 50 years, but now there is one every five years or 10 years. The frequency may be down to climate change or it could be part of a pattern, but something is fundamentally wrong.

We must ensure that internal drainage boards have more powers, so that more can be done locally and that more dredging can be done. We must also learn the lessons from Somerset, where large pumps were brought in from the Netherlands. If we need pumps, let us move them around the country and ensure that we can pump out all the water. Rivers close to the sea and inland rivers are very flat and silty and tend to need dredging. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) was quite right to say that chalk streams and rivers do not need the same amount of dredging.

We must also look at land management. At the moment, farmers are given compensation only when there is a loss of earnings. We need to look at that land and say, “Why don’t you farm that land in a way that allows you to have an income from it?” I am talking about planting trees or retaining water in the peat. Farmers might then view managing flood protection in a much more positive way. If we can put all these things in place, we could slow down the amount of flooding that is happening, but if we have 13 inches of rain in 36 hours, it is very difficult for any flood protection scheme to protect everybody.

What the people of Cumbria were absolutely certain about today when they attended an Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee was that they have all worked so well together and that their communities and their emergency services have performed well. They were delighted that Ministers had turned out to support their local communities. It is essential that we work together to change what is happening and to put enough money in place.

I plead with the Chancellor to view flood protection as very much part of our infrastructure. If we are to build infrastructure, we need to protect it from inland floods and the sea. We need look only at the Netherlands to see that if we want to protect the country, we need sea and coastal protection. These floods have been a wake-up call.

My very final point is that if we look at the amount of spending on flood protection, we will see that it began very slowly during the last Labour Government, but then it started to rain and the flood money went up, and the same happened under the previous Government. Now we are seeing a bit of tit for tat between the Government and the Opposition, but what this Government need to do is put together a package that will ensure that we have the right funds in place to protect us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We will continue to work closely with Northern Ireland to tackle the disease throughout the United Kingdom.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), and wish the Secretary of State and everyone else a happy Christmas.

In Gloucestershire and Somerset, there has been a very beneficial reduction in the number of cattle suffering from TB in the badger culling areas. When will the Secretary of State be able to release the figures that will show what is happening?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right, and I am pleased to say that, thanks to our strategy, more than half the country is on track to be officially free of the disease by the end of the current Parliament. The Chief Veterinary Officer has made it clear that licensing of future areas is needed to realise the disease control benefits, and I am determined to pursue that recommendation.

Climate Change and Flooding

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I know he was at Paris. I was going to mention that at the end of my speech, but I will mention it now. Nobody has so far mentioned one of the crucial aspects of this debate: the investment in science and technology to enable us to meet all these commitments so that we can get to our zero rating. With our brains and our scientists, I am absolutely sure we can do it.

The investment in flooding is money well spent, because every £1 spent on flood defences gives between £4 and £9 of benefit to the economy. So it is well worth doing.

With my environmental-agricultural hat on, and as the new chairman of the all-party group on ancient woodland and veteran trees, I want to highlight a few areas, and here I have some agreement with the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). There are many other things we can do to mitigate the effects of climate change and extreme weather in our environment. There is the wider catchment approach. There is working with farmers and landowners to slow the flow of water into the river basins, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) will agree with me on that. There is more tree planting; I applaud the Government’s commitment to plant 11 million trees—that is one for every five people. Perhaps we could plant a few more. Those trees will also help to slow the flow of water. Re-wilding is another area we could be looking at, as well as silt traps, ponds, and storage areas higher up in the valley to stop the water coming down quite so quickly.

All of those things can be, and ought to be, included, and I will put in my usual call for more grass. Grass and mixed farming economies are the way forward. Grass holds in the water as well, and sequesters the carbon. I hope that the forestry Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), will look more closely at including grass in our policies. [Interruption.] We may laugh at that, but this is a serious way forward and it is great for the management of the countryside.

On climate change, I commend the Government on everything they are doing. We have taken immense steps forward in securing this ambitious global deal, and we are moving in the right direction, but there is much still to do. Zero carbon emissions is a testing ambition.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend from across the hills.

[Neil Parish]

The Opposition are saying that we have not made great progress on renewables, but we only have to see that in Devon and Somerset and across the west country there are huge amounts of solar panels in the fields. That did not happen under the last Government—and in fact many of our constituents complain that there are too many.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely good point and we have seen the roll-out of solar renewables. We have made immense progress. Some 16% of our energy is from renewables and that is because of the steps this Government have taken. People are still buying into renewables and it has got cheaper. The cost of the panels has come down, which is why we need to remove the subsidies and put the subsidies where we can have more energy from other sources that need a bit of a boost. So I am right with the Secretary of State on her policy here.

We need to lead by example. We have been doing it, but we need to continue to do so. I am a great environmentalist, but we have to do this within the constraints of the economy, which is something this Government are dealing with at all costs. We have had a debt to deal with. We are still paying off the legacy left over. We have to be realistic about what we are doing, and we have to provide security of energy at the lowest cost to the taxpayer, so whatever we do, there has got to be a balance.

Big applause for the Government for their big step in getting rid of coal-fired power stations. If there was one single thing we could do for low-carbon energy, it was that. Applause also for Hinkley Point, obviously, which is very near my constituency. It is the biggest commitment to low-carbon energy we could possibly think of.

I shall wind up by saying we can all do our own bit at home as well. We can all buy in, like Quantock Eco, Transition Taunton, Transition Athelney, and the Somerset Wildlife Trust. We can cut our air miles, make fewer car journeys, grow our own food. We can buy into it, and we need to buy into this whole situation. We need to do it through every Government Department. We need to do it across the world. We need to do it in our own homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not know Mr Skea, but I do know of NASA. And I have another minute on the back of that intervention, which I appreciate.

There has been a fourfold increase in extreme weather events since the turn of the 19th century, and we have all seen the terrible scenes affecting homes, businesses and farmers and the devastation as the water recedes. In my constituency, the town of Pickering has suffered devastating floods four times in 10 years. The Secretary of State joined me in opening an innovative scheme there called Slow the Flow, which other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), have mentioned. This involves upstream attenuation measures, bunds, the planting of 60,000 trees, dealing with timber debris and the restoration of wetlands, all of which will help matters upstream. I urge the Secretary of State to look at this as a model for future activity.

Our television screens have been dominated in recent weeks by the flow of migrants across continents. Perhaps this is a warning of the much greater population movements ahead if we do not tackle climate change. It is a threat to our lives and our livelihoods and to national, global and economic security. I welcome the Secretary of State’s efforts in Paris. She showed great leadership in getting together 190 nations in a single unanimous agreement. There are difficult choices ahead, and I do not envy Ministers who have to make tough decisions many years in advance amid the many voices and choices.

Credit where it is due, the UK has a proud record on climate change. In the climate change performance index, the UK is No. 2, behind only Denmark and way ahead of most other western countries. We had the world’s first green investment bank and the world’s first tidal lagoon, and we are a world leader in offshore wind. We have trebled renewable energy production to 19%, but we have much more to do. The energy performance of our housing stock needs to be improved. We need to replace the complex, defunct and ineffective green deal. We also need to invest further in renewables and energy storage.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend talks about the insulation of homes, and we need to do a lot more for solid wall properties. Many of the rural areas in our constituencies have such properties, but a lot of the green deals simply do not stack up as a result of the extra cost involved in the insulation of solid wall properties.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I absolutely agree. We need a new scheme. Owing to the demographic of our housing stock, we have some of the least energy-efficient housing stock in Europe.

We must also be pragmatic. Only 7% of our energy comes from renewables today, and fossil fuels will be part of the mix for the foreseeable future. There is an MI5 maxim that we are only four meals away from anarchy. We are probably only two dark days and nights away from anarchy, too. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, and we have to keep the lights on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), who is a fellow member of the Environmental Audit Committee.

I will take leadership as my theme today. I am talking about the leadership that has been shown during the negotiations not just by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change but by the whole team that was out there. I was delighted to meet up with Lord Nick Bourne, an old colleague of mine from Swansea institute, and to urge him to show that leadership. The outcome was good, but I am sure that the Secretary of State and her team will agree when I say that it is as nothing unless we now rise to the challenge that it has set up. We are looking at 3.5° to 3.7° based on our current trajectory of global warming. If all the actions within the current package are delivered, we may be able to achieve 2.5°, or even 1.5° if we ratchet up our actions every year or every five years. The scale of this transition is huge; it is enormous. We cannot base it on our current plans, so the leadership that has been shown should be commended. We now need that leadership to turbo-charge what we do both here within the UK and in our international negotiations.

Once again I applaud the leadership that has been shown on the ground in areas of flooding, including in Hawick in Northern Ireland, in Wales, and in Workington, the scenes from which were described in the remarkable and emotional words of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman). I was in Workington back in 2009, after what we thought was the worst flooding we had ever seen. That came on the back of the 2005 floods, and here we are again. Back in 2009, more than 2,200 properties and 250 farms were affected, 25 bridges were closed, and 40 waste treatment works were closed—again there is that issue of resilience—and here we are again.

In response to the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), whom I love dearly, I have to say that he is completely wrong. We are not talking about this one event being down to climate change. It does not matter whether we are talking about the traumatic incidents in Cumbria, Scotland, north Wales, Ireland, Bangladesh, or the Maldives, it is a pattern of climate change that is unarguable and we must deal with it.

In the short time available, I must say to the UK Government that, if we are to make the Paris commitments work and go further, we really need a step change now. We need to go further on the international stage. I strongly urge the Minister and her team to go back and look at what we are doing at an EU level. I suggest that we are not being ambitious enough to meet that 1.5° or 2° target. In terms of this country, the right hon. Lady has admitted that we have a policy vacuum at the moment, specifically in regard to the closure of various schemes. I will not argue the pros and cons of it, but we have a policy vacuum none the less, whether it relates to energy efficiency in homes, the type of clean green energy that we produce, demand reduction, or residential or commercial properties. We are consistently being told by business people and others that there is a policy vacuum in all those areas.

[Neil Parish]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that a tidal lagoon in Swansea would be a very good way to produce tidal energy, and that we could use that idea all around the United Kingdom?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My admiration for the hon. Gentleman has gone up hugely, because I was not going to be able to get in that point. He is right. We were a little frustrated by the lack of announcements on the Swansea Bay lagoon and strike prices in the autumn statement. Let us now see a commitment that will take forward not only the Swansea Bay lagoon, but the Cardiff Bay lagoon and all the ones that come after it. One of my recommendations to the Secretary of State would be this: let us use this as an opportunity to create jobs and to be a world leader so that we can export that technology, that know-how and those jobs. It is there for the taking. When Stern warned us about the challenges of climate change, he told us to make the early investment to save money down the line. That is what we must now do.

Protection of Ancient Woodland and Trees

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered protection of ancient woodland and trees.

I thank not only the Chair and the Minister, but the Back Benchers who have turned up today in support of the debate, which struck an enormous chord when I first started talking to people about it. I also thank the Woodland Trust, which has championed the cause not only of trees, but of ancient woodland and veteran trees for so many years.

Mr Turner, I want to begin by taking us on a magical mystery tour, if you would like to come with me. Imagine that we are walking down a track through a dense coniferous and mixed-species forest. After crunching leaves underfoot for some time, we dive off into the denser part of the forest and suddenly come upon a glade with dappled light filtering through the canopy. There is a carpet of mixed plants beneath our feet. Wild flowers are bursting into bloom and birds are singing. All of a sudden, we see these gargantuan sentries, as if guarding time itself. Huge, enormous oak trees rise out of the carpet. They have a sort of mystery about them, an air of knowingness. They are covered in nooks and crannies. They are filled with creatures such as the vulnerable cardinal click beetle, woodpeckers, brown long-eared bats, wood mice, stag beetles, tawny owls and hornets, and multifarious fungi, moss and lichen, all taking advantage of the antiquated bark. It is reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s “The Magic Faraway Tree”—I do not know whether you have ever read it, Mr Turner.

Those were the first ancient trees that I ever encountered. They were 500 years old and part of the ancient forest of Neroche close to where I live in the Blackdown hills. I was filming them for “Saving the Best Bits”, a film about the special habitats of Somerset, and I have never forgotten the experience. Ancient trees, which form only part of today’s debate, are living relics. The age at which a tree becomes ancient varies with the species as some live longer than others, but the oldest ancient tree, the Fortingall yew in Scotland, is said to be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. Veteran trees are also included in today’s debate. They are not quite as old, but they are on their way to becoming ancient trees. More than 120,000 such trees are listed on the ancient tree inventory.

However, we are talking today about not only specimens, but ancient woodland as a whole. Ancient woodland is our richest terrestrial habitat, but the sad situation is that only 2% of it remains. Something is classed as ancient woodland if it has been on the map since 1600 in England. In Scotland, it is slightly later at 1750. The date is when good maps first came into use, so we were obviously slightly ahead in England. I regard ancient woodland as our equivalent of the rainforest. It represents the last fragments of the wildwood that cloaked the land after the ice age. It is a biodiverse and rich habitat that is home to animals and plants that depend on the stable conditions that ancient woodland provides. It is so rare, however, that it contains many threatened species. The loss of ancient woodlands over the past 100 years has meant that 45 species associated with them have disappeared, which is an absolute tragedy. The woods are not just biodiverse; they are living history books, because they contain fascinating historical features such as medieval boundaries, charcoal hearths and old coppice stools, all of which provide a window into past lives. They are irreplaceable parts of our heritage.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will of course give way to my hon. Friend from over the hill.

[Neil Parish]

I very much like the way that my hon. Friend is presenting this debate. We are neighbours and our constituencies share the Blackdown hills. There is ancient woodland there and all across Devon. We need to protect it, and when we need to do something such as dual the A303 or A30, we must find ways of ensuring that we go around ancient woodland rather than through it. We need infrastructure, but we need to maintain our ancient woodland.

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. I have to say that that was a pretty generous intervention, so let us not be quite as generous in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

DEFRA is a crucial Department. We respond to animal disease outbreaks, we are responsible for flood defences and we represent the largest manufacturing industry, the food industry, which I think has tremendous growth potential. But that does not mean that we cannot do things better. Today we have been talking about how we can digitise our records and help digitise such things as our farm inspections. We can do things more efficiently so that we can spend more money on the frontline, which is what I want to do.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

T2. I very much welcome the Secretary of State going to China to promote great British food that is being produced to high welfare standards. What more would she like to do in co-operation with UK Trade & Investment to liberate more exports of great British food?

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Stilton.

Common Fisheries Policy (Reform)

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Carmichael]

That was very much the context of the day. My only rejoinder to Mr Park’s statement would have been that the same was also true of Ministers and officials: the further removed they were from the management of stocks, the easier it was for them to impose unworkable deals that caused an enormous range of difficulties in practical terms. I exempt the incumbent Minister from that; he has always demonstrated a tremendous willingness to engage with industry and has a good working understanding of it.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the great problems of the common fisheries policy is that even the regional organisations are too large? If local fishermen realise that if they conserve fish they can get them at another time, they are more likely to go along with the measures. The trouble with the common fisheries policy is that there are too many fishing, from too far and wide, who are really not concerned about conserving fish now—they know very well that, if they do, somebody else will get them before they do. That is one of the worst problems of the CFP.

[Mr Carmichael]

There is not much that I disagree with there. The essence of the problem that the hon. Gentleman highlights is that fisheries management is something done to the industry and to the communities affected, rather than being something that they feel they have any ownership of, or are able to influence. Although there have been an enormous number of problems with the regional advisory councils, they have been a source of enormous progress and benefit and are certainly infinitely preferable to what we had before they were established, when everything was done in Brussels with simply no opportunity to challenge it.

How we have been able to build partnerships between fishermen, conservationists and scientists, through the regional advisory structures, is exceptional. That has been taken on by various people. I commend the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), for the work he did in the lead-up to landing a reformed common fisheries policy, because that developed the first iteration of the regional advisory councils to the point where they might even become regional management councils. That is the first point that I would like the Minister to take on. The advisory councils themselves are best placed to author the next iteration of their development. With the history of joint working and the body of expertise within the councils, that could now be done to improve and speed up the present rate of change.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Mr. Walker, I know that you have an interest in the angling fraternity, as well as the fishing industry, and it is a delight to be serving under you.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate. He has been involved in fisheries for a long time, although not quite as long as I have. When he sums up, I hope that he will reassure me that the Liberal Democrat party is now looking to secure a little more national control over our fisheries, because its position has never been really clear. Perhaps he could reassure us that it has changed its stance somewhat.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, and Cornish colleague, the Minister and to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who have worked tirelessly on securing quota entitlement, which has allowed fishermen to continue to eke out a living in the short term.

We hear an awful lot about the UK’s financial contribution to the European Union, but one of the UK’s greatest contributions over the last 43 years has been the contribution of around 80% of European fishing waters. I have lost count of the number of occasions on which the House has debated reforming the CFP. It might benefit some Members if I set out the historic timeline, but I do not intend to go into detail, because we would be here until next week.

In 1970, as the right hon. Gentleman said, the original six member states introduced a policy of equal access to a common resource. I have always been suspicious of the reason for that, given that an agreement called the London convention had been reached in 1969 restricting access to UK territorial waters. I believe that there was a reason why the original six member states decided to come together to draw up regulation 2141/70, which includes article 2 on equal access to a common resource.

The 1972 treaty of accession, which the UK signed up to, included a derogation for the six and 12-mile limits, which, at that time, was our territorial sea. The UK was allowed sole access within the three and six-mile limits, but it had to open up the waters between the six and 12-mile limits to certain vessels that had traditionally fished in them. That was 40-odd years ago, and those vessels are not fishing any longer, but we still have to have other member states’ fishing vessels coming into the waters between our six and 12-mile limits. There is an anomaly there.

In 1976, member states declared a 200-mile median line limit. For those who do not understand what a median line is, I should explain that it is the line drawn—for example, down the channel—where there is not 200 miles each side to land masses. Despite the best efforts of Ireland and the UK, which argued at first for the 12-mile limit to be extended to 100 miles—they subsequently reduced that to 50 miles—the EU insisted that we settle on a 12-mile limit.

The CFP management system of total allowable catches and quotas was settled in 1983, more than 10 years after our accession to the EEC. Historical fishing activity was used to share the total allowable catches among member states, with those for each stock dictated by scientists and historical landing data. The UK gained very low quotas in many areas, while other member states benefited. In area VII, on the south-west coast, the UK got 8% of the cod and 12% of the haddock, while our colleagues across the Channel secured something in the region of 60% of the stock. The 12-mile limit restrictions were continued for 20 years and there was a mid-term review in 1992, but nothing changed. In 2002, there was a further review. Regional advisory councils were set up, but they had no power to change regulations, and they still do not. Sometimes that has been sold to us as the answer, but it is not for the UK fishing industry. The regional councils were large and burdensome and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) mentioned, they were of course trans-European.

In 2012 there was another review. Throughout the time I have been talking about, we have seen the UK fishing fleet being reduced to a shadow of its former self, together with the UK share of the fish stocks found in the UK sector of the EU pond, which are 80% of it. Enough is enough. It is time for our fishing industry, which makes a disproportionately large contribution to the economy of many coastal communities that rely on fishing, to get the recognition it deserves. No one more than I and my family knows the real price paid by the brave men who put to sea to bring such a healthy source of protein to our table.

In 2003, the then Leader of the Opposition and right hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, Michael Howard, said:

“The CFP has been a disaster for the British fishing industry and we want to withdraw from it and establish national control—and that is what we will do.”

On 9 December 2003 the shadow Secretary of State said:

“By any measure, the CFP has been a disaster for the British fishing industry, which is why my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition reaffirmed on Sunday that ‘we are committed to a policy of withdrawing from the Common Fisheries Policy and restoring national control for our fishing industry’.”—[Official Report, 9 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1000.]

Unfortunately, the party in question remained in opposition and so could not deliver that promise; but I believe that the only answer for our fishermen is to regain national control. Forty years of senseless destruction are enough. Britain’s fish stocks are our responsibility. It is our duty to protect them and the communities dependent on them.

I notice that there are some hon. Members from the Scottish National party present. If one of them makes a speech, perhaps they will clarify their policy, which I am confused about. In 2003 the SNP MEP Ian Hudghton said that equal access to a common resource was fundamental to the common fisheries policy, and that no one could change it. Yet I remember that in the early days of my involvement in fisheries policy the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), who was then the Member for Banff and Buchan, promoted a private Member’s Bill to restore national control.

I am asking my hon. Friend the Minister, and the other right hon. and hon. Members who are present, to join me in asking the Prime Minister to include restoration of national control over our 200-mile/median line limit in the negotiations when he goes to Europe.

[Neil Parish]

I agree that, as we are now looking to renegotiate many of our arrangements with the European Union, the common fisheries policy is one that is ripe for reform, and for our taking back much of our national control. That would be good not only for our fisherman but for conservation and fishing management. Those fishermen would know that fish that were retained would be there for them to catch another day. At the moment, they think, “Let’s take them before the Spanish, French, Belgians or anybody else come to get them.” There is a lot to be said for taking back much greater national control and for pushing our limits back out to at least 12 miles, if not further. We should control our own waters. I would urge the Minister to urge the Prime Minister to go for that renegotiation.

[Mrs Murray]

My hon. Friend has served the fishing industry in this place and, I believe, as a member—I believe as chairman—of the fisheries committee in the European Parliament. He served them well.

Of course we are not saying that we should tell all foreign fishermen not to come into our waters. We should allow fishermen from other member states limited access, but on our terms. In 2003 it was reported that the then Leader of the Opposition claimed that Prime Minister Tony Blair had missed an opportunity by not using the draft European constitution as a means of tackling the fishing issue. That was a failure for our fishermen. Unfortunately between 1997 and 2010, when my late husband was fishing, he was under far more pressure than he had ever been before, because he felt ignored.

We must now call on our Prime Minister to rectify the situation, so that our Fisheries Minister, who has done a fantastic job so far, can have real power in controlling British waters.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are clear that we have one of the best environmental protection regimes in the world, through the Environment Agency, which makes sure that groundwater sources are protected. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the study produced by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering—both independent bodies—he will see that it is perfectly possible to frack safely and in an environmentally friendly way.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

T2. I welcome the work done by the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) on food exports and dealing with retailers, but there is a huge crisis in farm gate prices for milk, beef, lamb and all other sectors. It will be important this year that we get the single farm payment out early or at least on time. Will the Secretary of State reassure me that the Rural Payments Agency is capable of making those early payments?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we hold regular discussions with Mark Grimshaw to ensure that we keep our commitment to the majority of farmers being paid by the end of December and the vast majority by the end of January. I am also pushing the European Commission to relax some of the inspection controls to make sure we can pay farmers properly. We need to do that to make it happen, otherwise we will be subject to fines.