UK Fishing Industry

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and William Cash

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who brings his customary clarity and simplicity to today’s arguments. However, I disagree with a great deal of his analysis of the problems. It must be stressed rather more than it has been that taking back control is only part of the answer. There is then the question of what we do with it.

If we are to construct our own domestic fisheries management system, there is an opportunity to put fishermen, conservationists and scientists at the heart of fisheries management—proper regional and local management—and to use scientific advice. The right hon. Gentleman said that 50% of such advice was wrong. I doubt that, but I do know that it is at least two years out of date by the time it informs the decision-making process. We need a better way of using that information to inform the process so that whether we use quotas, days at sea, closed areas or whatever, the information on which we rely properly and accurately reflects the stocks in the water.

We must not forget that even if we leave the European Union and even if we have control over the waters as others have suggested, that would not be the end of our interaction with the common fisheries policy. We share waters in the North sea, the English channel and the western approaches in the Irish sea, and other countries have historic rights of access to our waters. If they continue to mismanage stocks in a way that was unfortunately a feature of the past, that will have continuing impact on our fishermen, too.

I wish the Minister well as he goes to the December Council meeting. In the light of everything else, it will perhaps be a trickier negotiation than in recent years, but the environment will be slightly less febrile than when the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) was fisheries Minister. I go back 12, 13 or 14 years in such debates, and back then we thought it possible that the spawning stock biomass of North sea cod had reached a point from which there would be no recovery. In fact, we have a seen a quite remarkable recovery in North sea white fish stocks, but that has not happened by accident—a thought that occurred to me as the right hon. Gentleman was explaining the changes. I think around 47% of stocks are still overfished—too high, but a significant improvement on where we were. That improvement is a consequence of the changes made in fisheries management, in particular the creation of regional advisory councils, and of the significant pain that was borne by the fishing industry and communities during the decommissioning programmes of 10 years ago.

The attractions of this opportunity to the catching sector are pretty obvious, but there are concerns for the future beyond that sector. The processing sector heavily relies and has relied for many years on the availability of workers from other EU countries. Those people want to know what their future will be. If we are to have a set of World Trade Organisation rules and if there are tariffs on trade, that will have a seriously disadvantageous impact on processors, which will also hit the catchers. That is why it is crucial to get clarity as early as possible.

Like the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), I want to bring a few items from my shopping list to this debate. The Minister has already heard my worries about the Faroese deal on mackerel. There was enormous scepticism among the Scottish pelagic fleet, the Shetland pelagic catchers in particular, when the deal was brokered a few years ago. However, they did accept that they would give it a go. They gave it a go, and it is clear that that scepticism was, if anything, understated. This deal really is not working, as was highlighted recently by the report from Seafish, which pointed out that in 2015 Faroese boats caught almost 33,000 tonnes of mackerel in EU waters, mostly in Scotland’s, while Scottish boats got absolutely none from the Faroese waters. Worse, if the Faroese boats choose to land their fish in Scotland, they are then penalised by their Government. The Minister will know that the talks on the next iteration of this deal are to be held in Brussels on 6 and 7 December, so may I instil in him the strongest possible resolve in tackling this, because the imbalance of this deal becomes more egregious with every year that passes?

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about the fact that this document excludes the question of those parts of the fishing industry that I suspect would be of concern to him in relation to the joint management with Norway. The European Scrutiny Committee drew attention to that and I wonder whether it is a matter of concern to his constituents.

English Votes for English Laws

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and William Cash

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I do not doubt the good faith of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but essentially, if he stops and analyses it, he will realise that he is advancing an argument for English nationalism. The answer to Scottish nationalism is not English nationalism. In my view as a Liberal, it is federalism or Unionism, if he prefers to use different vocabulary. Ultimately, if he continues down this road, he risks putting a further stress on the Union. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said quite candidly, from one point of view he could welcome the proposals because they advance the case for separating Scotland from the rest of England.

The hon. Member for South Leicestershire must realise that if we are to maintain and preserve the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, proper constitutional reform across the whole of England is now absolutely necessary. As the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said from the Opposition Front Bench, we need a constitutional convention to build consensus, so that people in England can decide what they want. I do not know whether that will be an English Parliament, a series of assemblies or whatever else, but that debate has to be had.

I wish there were an easy way to build consensus, but there is not and I say to the hon. Member for South Leicestershire that, because of the sentiments he is hearing on the doorstep, that must be dealt with as a matter of urgency. For him to pretend to his constituents, as he apparently does, that this complex problem has a simple solution does nobody any favours and ultimately puts the Union of the United Kingdom at risk. This House risks tying itself up in knots by using Standing Orders to achieve a complex and sophisticated piece of constitutional architecture. As has been said, a Joint Committee would be a sensible way to build consensus.

My biggest concern as a Scottish MP is the way in which the proposal would affect spending decisions. I am afraid that the Leader of the House came dangerously close to indulging in sophistry when he said that they would be dealt with purely through estimates votes and that legislation would have no affect on that. I am struck by two things. First, it is long overdue that this House took a much more forensic approach towards estimates, because I think we are the only Parliament in the world that allows estimates to go through on the nod. Departmental budgets are approved with little scrutiny by the House. Secondly, any legislation passed this year will inevitably impact on estimates next year and the year after. The proposition that it is somehow possible to divorce spending from legislation does not stand up to scrutiny.

What are the people of England being offered by Conservative Members? Essentially, they are being told that they will have a veto on legislation, but that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Members will also be able to engage a veto on money and Ways and Means resolutions. This is a constitutional muddle, and that gives more force to the idea that we should be proceeding with more caution.

I reiterate the point I made in the previous debate that, if these vetoes are going to be in play, the Government need to look again at the operation of the Sewel convention and legislative consent motions for the Scottish Parliament. If English Members are to have a veto on legislation, Scotland ought to have one as well. There is still time to make that change—the Scotland Bill is still going through this House—and I hope that, when she replies, the Deputy Leader of the House will confirm that serious consideration is being given to it.

I am mindful of your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to raise one final point: the position Mr Speaker that will be put in if we proceed with the proposal. My concern should be shared by everyone in the House. I do not envy Mr Speaker the position in which he will find himself. He will require the wisdom of Solomon if he is to make the necessary adjudications, and he will certainly need a lot of legal advice, which I suppose would be one of the upsides of the process.

It would be useful to know the view of the Clerks, Parliamentary Counsel and Speaker’s Counsel before we proceed. It seems to me that a whole body of legal advice will be required, not just for primary legislation, but for secondary legislation. The issue of most concern, however, is that when Mr Speaker makes an adjudication on a controversial case—perhaps one on which there is some doubt about the financial consequences—he will be forbidden from giving his reasons for doing so. We already know what will happen. On the day when he makes an adjudication, the aggrieved party, the one that is disappointed, is always going to be bouncing up. There will be points of order, applications for Adjournment debates and all the rest of it. The Speaker will be in a position where he or she has no option other than just to say, “That is my ruling and I am not going to give you any reason for it.”

[Sir William Cash]

The idea of giving reasons for a Speaker certificate is simply absurd. If reasons were given, everything would be handed over to the courts. That would nullify completely the sovereignty of Parliament and its organisation of its own arrangements. I really do think that the right hon. Gentleman ought to take that into account.

[Mr Carmichael]

I do not think anybody should have anything to fear from justiciability. Essentially, we are getting to the point where it is inevitable that we will have a written constitution and that brings with it the concept of justiciability. Mature legislatures across the world have this and manage to cope with it. There are historical reasons why we in this House are so suspicious of it. For the Scottish Parliament, it is already a reality and it is something we manage to cope with remarkably well.

I am mindful of the fact that I have taken slightly longer, but these are issues of great significance. I appreciate the listening mode we have had from the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House, but we need more. We need proper consideration. They should take these proposals away, come back with a Green Paper and let the Select Committees do their job. Let us build a consensus, so that the legitimate grievances that have been spoken of are given a solution that they ultimately deserve. This is not it.

English Votes on English Laws

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and William Cash

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I do not think that is quite the kind of two-tier system that Conservative Members were cheering. The right hon. Gentleman is correct in his analysis. An appropriate change could be made to Standing Orders for that, because it is perfectly—

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Carmichael]

Forgive me—I really do need to make some progress, or nobody else is going to get to speak.

That would be an appropriate use of the way in which the Chamber responds to issues through Standing Orders. Matters of constitutional change, by convention—and rightly so—are taken on the Floor of this House at all stages, and likewise in the other place. They are given the fullest consideration because it is understood that they become exposed only with proper debate and scrutiny.

One of the novel aspects of the proposal that the Leader of the House laid before the House last week is the extension of these matters to Finance Bills. That opens up a whole range of questions that were not answered by him at the Dispatch Box or by the papers that he placed in the Vote Office. Finance Bills are, and have been for a long time, treated differently by this House. The fact that they are considered only by this House and not by the other place is the obvious difference, but there are also differences in the way in which they are introduced and considered in a mix of time spent here on the Floor of the House and in the Committee Room upstairs.

[Mr Carmichael]

That is exactly what I hope this debate will achieve, because I know that the concerns about the constitutionality and the process of this are shared by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House.

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Mr Carmichael]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman just this once.

[Sir William Cash]

I am exceedingly grateful. The problem with the proposition that the right hon. Gentleman is putting forward is that it ignores the fact that there are already two classes of functions that were passed by the United Kingdom Parliament, which created not two tiers of membership in this House but two functions as between the Scottish Parliament, with its devolved functions, and those in the United Kingdom, which have been left swinging in the wind. Does he not accept that?

[Mr Carmichael]

I do, but the hon. Gentleman must surely accept that what is being proposed through changing Standing Orders is not an appropriate way of addressing it. As I have already said times without number, I fully accept that several anomalies have been created by devolution, starting in 1999, but the answer to that is not to trash our own procedures in this House.