UK Fisheries Policy Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Anne Marie Morris
Main Page: Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)Department Debates - View all Anne Marie Morris's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I will try to be as brief as my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), Mr Paisley.
As I have said, any management system must have buy-in from the industry and must also be flexible enough to allow for massive fluctuations in stocks, such as the massive fluctuation in the bass stocks that we saw in the south-west this year. At the end of the day, fishermen cannot tell what is swimming into their net. They capture bass. If they cannot land the fish, they get discarded on the sea bed, dead, and that does not help anybody, particularly with the conservation of fish stocks. The system must also be able to accommodate mixed-species capture in a mixed fishery, such as we have in the south-west, to allow utilisation on board boats of all stocks that are kept and also to meet our obligations under article 62 of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. We should utilise the maximum amount of scientifically approved stocks for the benefit of the United Kingdom fleet.
We joined the European Union at a time when I was connected to the industry, and I look to the Minister to provide me and the United Kingdom’s fisheries with the assurance that we shall not sacrifice access to resources to buy access to a market, which is what happened at that time. We have to put right the wrong that took place. I want the Minister to provide me with that assurance, as well as the assurance that on 29 March 2019 we shall leave the common fisheries policy. I fully accept the possibility that we will have to allow an implementation period. We owe that not only to British fishermen but to our European partners.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the London agreement provisions must be included as well, and they must not hang over?
Mrs Murray
As I understand it, we are leaving the London convention of 1964 as well.
Will the Minister confirm today that, even with an implementation period, we shall leave the common fisheries policy on 29 March 2019, and that access to resources will not be sacrificed to buy access to the market?