Fisheries

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Westminster Hall

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

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Chair and to speak under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and his hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) —she is also my hon. Friend on the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—on securing the debate, but I echo his concerns that it is not taking place in the main Chamber. Given the level of debate and focus that the issue is achieving, I hope that we can return to the main Chamber in the future.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will feel that we are between two systems at the moment. I would welcome his views, given that he has just returned from one Fisheries Council and is about to go to another this month, on how the interim arrangements are working. I welcome what the Minister was able to share with the Select Committee yesterday as regards our inshore fishermen, whom a number of hon. Members here represent. In my constituency, just six families now sail three coble boats off Coble landing, at Filey. I hope that everyone will come to visit Filey to see what a tourist attraction it is. There is a real appetite for them to have more quota. I also welcome the Minister’s comments yesterday that shellfish across United Kingdom waters enjoy good health at this time.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful contribution to the debate. What I am particularly keen to see, especially off the western approaches, where we have very mixed fisheries, is the operation of a better system of quotas, so that we do not throw away a lot of good, healthy cod just because it cannot be landed when it is already dead. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is working hard on discards, but where there is a mixed fishery, that is particularly difficult.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments. I will come on to the issue that he raises.

The conclusions that we reached echo what was said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. I welcome the fact that there is co-decision. Having spent 10 years as a Member of Parliament and five and a half years advising Members of the European Parliament, I think that it is important that Members of the European Parliament take their responsibilities seriously. I am alarmed at the way this is going. Obviously, it is possible that the proposals will not be adopted finally in their current form. The Minister may want to shed more light on that. Co-decision is welcome, provided that the three institutions—the Commission, the Council of Fisheries Ministers and the European Parliament—take their responsibilities seriously.

Radical reform is needed. We need a new fisheries policy that will deliver for fishermen and coastal communities and for sustainable fishing in our waters. We want an end to the centralised micro-management from Brussels, which by any view has failed. I am very keen to see regionalisation. I do not wish to dance on the head of a pin. What we see from the Commission and what the Minister reported to us is very welcome indeed, but it must be deliverable. I shall say a few more words about that.

The end point that I would like to see would be member states, together with their own fisheries in those waters—for example, the North sea, the Irish sea and the Mediterranean—having a greater say over fisheries policies in their own waters. We must accept that there is no one size that fits all. There is an argument that the Commission should set high-level objectives only and leave regional groupings of member states and regional advisory councils to take the day-to-day decisions. I hope that the Minister will come forward with the register that he has promised us of who owns the quotas

I come now to the issue of discards. Where fish can be discarded at sea and where they have a high survival rate, we must welcome that as a sustainable form of fisheries management. I am concerned that we will swap discards at sea for discards on land. We need to know much more about what the discard policy is, how it will be achievable and the Minister’s reaction to our call for discarding to be slowed down and for us to rely on the science—the excellent work that ICES does. Perhaps a decision should be taken in a longer time frame. The date that we gave in the Select Committee report was 2020. That is something that the Minister may care to share with us.

I make a special plea for inshore fishermen in relation to the future policy. I have mentioned that. I would like to recognise and congratulate, because it is based in Copenhagen in my second homeland, ICES on the excellent work that it is doing. It is staggering that past fisheries reforms have proceeded on a base of inaccurate science. If we have learned anything, it is that we must proceed on a sound scientific basis, but we also need a workable legal basis. We heard yesterday in the Select Committee that a decision can be reached in two ways. One is that member states agree the regulation and introduce national legislation to give detailed effect to it. The other way is through a Commission regulation where Council members agree. I would like an assurance from the Minister that that will not enable the Commission to continue to give detailed directives on what the fishing regulations should be. To me, that would not be a step forward at all; it would be no advance whatever.

I was delighted that in the context of preparing our report, we had the opportunity to visit some fishermen in the small community of Gilleleje in northern Denmark, on the main island of Zealand. We saw the nets that they were preparing under an agreement that has been reached in their own waters, the Kattegat and Skagerrak, which are fished by Danish and Swedish fishermen only. They have reached a very positive decision about how the fish should be fished. The mesh sizes and all the other detailed analysis have been agreed by the fishermen and by their own Governments. Therefore, it is staggering to know from the Commission that that has not been given legal effect. If it is the model to be used going forward, we need to know from the Minister, from the Commission and from the other institutions involved that whatever emerges from regionalisation, it will be deliverable.

There is a groundswell of support for regionalisation. I was delighted when a Commission official told me in a recent meeting in Cyprus of fellow Chairs of Select Committees in other Parliaments that it is also being supported by Mediterranean countries. However, that will mean nothing if agreement cannot be reached and if it is not given legal effect, so what assurance can the Minister give us today that regionalisation will work and will deliver for UK sustainable fishing and for the fishermen and coastal communities that are so dependent on our fisheries?

What is the time frame? It is rather alarming that we may not reach a decision during the Irish presidency. It then goes to Lithuania, which will be presiding for the first time. After that, it is the Greeks—need I say more. I wish the Minister extremely well in his endeavours. I am sure that he has the full support of the House.