Badger Cull

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Bovine TB is a £100 million problem in cash terms but a much larger human problem for dairy farmers, who are devastated year after year by having to destroy herds that they have nurtured for years and sometimes generations. I do not wish to engage in an either/or dispute, but to speak about what can be done between now, when the cull has been stopped, and next year, when, if the Secretary of State is correct, a cull will go ahead.

Before that, I want to respond to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who said that the Labour party was close to a cull but chickened out. That was not a fair remark. I was a Minister when the ISG report came in, and I remember the hours and weeks of deliberation on it. We never saw this as a virility test, and it should not be seen as such by any Government. It is a tremendously serious issue. It was the Labour Government who authorised the trials in the first place. We did so because we wanted to see if they would work, and the decision that was ultimately taken was an honest one based on what we understood of the science of the trials.

The ISG report concluded that substantial reductions in cattle TB could be achieved by improving cattle-based controls, and I welcome the measures that the Government will be putting in place from next January to increase those controls. I simply ask that the Secretary of State provides financial support to farmers carrying out their duty to put in place those increased controls, including on cattle movement through zoning and herd attestation, the pre-movement testing of herds before new cattle are allowed to join them, the quarantining of purchased cattle and the shorter testing intervals. All those things were set out in the ISG report as ways to improve the situation—not as solutions, but as improvements. I am glad that the Government are taking renewed efforts to put them in place, but I hope that when the Secretary of State winds up the debate he will recognise that they will be burdensome and costly for farmers, who should therefore be recompensed and incentivised appropriately to ensure the success of those measures. Those controls should be supported by measures to improve biosecurity on farms, particularly around feeding and water troughs, which hon. Members from both sides of the House have mentioned.

Let me be clear: I will vote against a cull, but I recognise that the Government may get their way. Therefore, when and if the Government go ahead with the cull next year—and in the following three years, because it will take place over a four-year period up to 2016—I would ask the Secretary of State to do one further thing in the next nine months: change the licence condition to allow only cage trapping and shooting, rather than what is referred to as the “controlled shooting” of badgers. He has said that he wants to proceed only on the basis of sound science. I welcome that commitment, and I trust that he will therefore recall that the independent scientific group pointed out that culling required “co-ordinated and sustained effort” and that what it called the “modest overall benefits” came only from a clinically executed trap-and-shoot exercise. Free shooting of badgers was no part of the scientific trials that form the only basis for a sound policy. Indeed, the Game Conservancy Trust stated:

“A…problem with shooting at or near the sett”—

that is, free shooting—

“is that a wounded badger will almost certainly attempt to bolt underground, preventing a second shot (and preventing safe disposal of the carcass).”

If the Secretary of State persists with the cull next year, I would urge him to use the next nine months to change the licence conditions and stop the free shooting of badgers.

I desperately want to see a solution to the scourge of bovine TB. Sometimes we find it difficult to accept that we do not have a solution to a problem. Ultimately, I believe that oral vaccination of both cattle and badgers will bring us that solution, but any frustration at the lack of a current solution should not lead us to adopt a false solution. The proposed cull is a false solution, and I shall vote against it.

Bovine TB and Badger Control

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I always listen to the Secretary of State with the closest possible interest, but I am afraid that we do not have time on this occasion for a treatise in response to each question. We need pithy replies, if possible.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is right to say that we must address the problem of bovine TB. Will he, therefore, this year, while this delay is in place, use the funding that would have been made available for the cull to improve biosecurity in the cowsheds and byres of farmers, and set minimum standards for biosecurity, which the Krebs report said was a very important element in controlling the disease?

[Mr Paterson]

I am in agreement with the hon. Gentleman that biosecurity can help, but the problem is that we are dealing with an animal that can get into sheds. When I was in opposition, I went to Michigan and they had clear evidence where they had separated white-tailed deer from cattle herds and invested significantly in fencing off the cattle herds indoors. It is not possible to do that with badgers, because our cattle system has cattle out on the fields, and 1 ml of badger urine yields 300,000 colony-forming units of disease and it takes only 0.001% to infect an animal. That is the problem. We have animals out on grass, mixing freely with wild badgers, and that is where the disease is being picked up.

Flooding

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

The Environment Agency has drawn praise not just from the local communities that were flooded this weekend, but from those that were flooded the week before last in Sussex. In my experience, including of the severe flooding event in Cornwall in 2010, the agency constantly strikes a balance to ensure that the forces of nature, which we admire on a fine day when the rivers are not bursting their banks, can be contained, and as far as possible directed not to do damage, to the built community in the event of such adverse weather conditions, which we see more frequently.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with the Environment Agency’s assessment that it should spend an additional £20 million on flood defences each year? Instead of disputing whether there is a 6% or 27% cut, does she not realise that the failure to invest that money costs Great Britain plc far more in the costs of clearing up after floods?

[Mrs Spelman]

We would all like to spend more money on flood defences—there is a very good return on investment: for every £1 of taxpayers’ money spent, there is an £8 return—but the reality of the situation is that the Labour party left the nation’s finances in a very bad state. When in government, the hon. Gentleman’s party indicated that it would cut capital by 50%. In the circumstances, therefore, he should see a 6% reduction as a significant improvement on what his party pledged.

In addition, I could not underline more the importance of the new approach to funding flood defences, which is to encourage partnership funding to bring in extra resources, so that more homes can be protected. In its first year, partnership funding has brought in an extra £72 million—much of that from local government. That means we will exceed our aim to protect better at least 145,000 more homes in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Common Fisheries Policy

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about what is happening in his constituency, and clearly there are similar stories all along our coastline. That is a prime illustration of the fact that—as I think Members in all parts of the House agree—the present system does not work, and is not fit for purpose.

A deep-seated and long-standing problem is the issue of compliance across the European Union. It is very frustrating for our fishermen to see the rules applied so inconsistently. The fact that quota restrictions are being flouted with impunity in other parts of the EU not only causes great resentment, but undermines confidence in the system and people’s sense of ownership of the system of fisheries management. We know from the experience of recent years that conservation measures that have been developed in co-operation with the fishermen have been the most effective in conserving fish stocks. The current problems are symptomatic of a top-down CFP, and of that lack of a sense of ownership.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Having pointed the finger elsewhere in Europe, would the hon. Lady care to comment on a recent case in the United Kingdom—indeed, in Scotland? There was a parallel landing industry, and the Government were taking levies from it.

[Dr Whiteford]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to take up the comments made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran). I know that the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) was not present to hear that speech, but it dealt extensively with such problems.

Obviously I cannot discuss the situation while criminal proceedings are taking place, but the fact that the police launched such a successful investigation into the criminality that was taking place has taught us the lesson that we cannot take our eye off the ball in terms of our own compliance. However, we must ensure that criminality is not also symptomatic of people’s loss of confidence in the system. We should bear in mind that otherwise law-abiding people resort to it because they do not believe that the system is working.

I was glad that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton referred to aquaculture. Because of the crisis in the sea fisheries sector, it is often not given the attention that it deserves. I am concerned about by the Commission’s proposal for multiannual national strategic plans, and, buried in there somewhere, the rather bizarre suggestion that there should be a regional advisory council for aquaculture.

I believe that Scotland is the largest producer of Atlantic salmon in the EU, and the third largest producer in the world. In 2010 we produced 154,000 tonnes of salmon, worth more than half a billion pounds at farm gate prices, which represents more than a third of Scotland’s food exports. We also export substantial amounts of shellfish including mussels, oysters and scallops, and other species such as trout and halibut. The rapid growth of the sector at a time when the rest of the economy has been stagnant has been very encouraging. It is a success story for job creation and for economic growth, including growth in remote rural communities that do not have much else going for them. I see no benefit whatsoever in imposing a new layer of European regulation and bureaucracy on that sector, and I expect a great many risks to be posed to it if we go down that road.

I have a particular constituency interest. Although Banff and Buchan is often thought of as being at the heart of the fishing industry, it is also a major centre for fish processing. The factories in the north-east process large amounts of farmed fish, and at a time when the sea fisheries are so unstable and uncertain and can fluctuate so much, the farmed fish sector has a hugely stabilising effect on the viability of the processing sector. An increase in political interference in the aquaculture sector from Brussels—or from anywhere else—would not be in anyone’s interests. We must not try to mend successful businesses that are not broken.

There is no consensus across the UK about transferable quotas—or individual transferable concessions as they are now being called. I welcome the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s remarks about the problems the ITCs cause for the under-10 metre fleet. Those problems are not confined to that fleet, however. Other communities will also be affected, including some in my constituency.

The real issue is that most of the fishing industry in Scotland still involves family-owned vessels that maintain a strong link to a local port. They are at the heart of communities, and I do not want those communities to be bought out by large multinational fishing conglomerates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

First, I apologise to the House because I was introducing a debate in Westminster Hall at the beginning of the debate and was therefore unable to listen to the remarks of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who chairs the Select Committee. I pay tribute to her for the report. I also pay tribute to the Minister, who has worked assiduously on these matters. I know that he is trying to get a very reasonable voice heard in Europe, where Commissioner Damanaki is doing a wonderful job, but is meeting rather large obstacles along the way.

Decades of intensive fishing in European waters have led to dramatic declines in once-abundant fish populations. It is estimated that 88% of all the assessed fish stocks are over-exploited and that almost a third of all assessed stocks are being fished beyond safe biological limits, threatening their very future. Of the stocks for which a scientific assessment is available, 60% of north Atlantic stocks and 40% of Mediterranean stocks are currently outside safe biological limits. Continuous over-fishing has resulted in less productive fisheries and a gradual loss of jobs and livelihoods. Words such as overfishing, discarding, habitat destruction, unemployment and subsidy dependence characterise EU fisheries. However, we have a unique opportunity, with the reform of the common fisheries policy, to rectify some of those failures.

At the heart of the motion is the demand that CFP reforms should adopt greater regional ecosystem-based management, but if such management is to succeed, it must recognise and respect the commercial interests of fishing communities. Ecological sustainability must go hand in hand with economic sustainability. The New Economics Foundation recently published a report that concluded that more than €3 billion is lost every year due to over-fishing. That money could support an extra 100,000 jobs in the industry. When fish stocks are mismanaged, fishers, their communities and the whole economy suffer.

Some people misinterpret ecosystem-management as putting the benefit of fish before that of fishers, but without sustainable fish stocks there is no fishing industry. The history of our coastal areas sadly bears witness to that, as fishing communities from Stonehaven to Newcastle and from Grimsby to Cornwall have declined over the past century and a half. It is always comfortable for Members of Parliament to support small fishing communities, particularly those in their constituency, but we should also have the courage to point out that the demise of fishing communities is the result of their parents and grandparents’ over-fishing.

The ecosystem-based approach is fundamental to sustainable environmental management. It establishes a strategy for the management and sustainable use of natural resources by considering them in the context of their role in the entire ecosystem. The current CFP and the EU marine strategy framework directive already commit the EU in principle to that approach. Indeed, the CFP was significantly reformed in 2002 with a view to implementing the principles of ecosystem-based management. The tragedy is that that has not been reflected in practice. True ecosystem-based fisheries management would require systemic reform through the introduction of a regionalised management framework. A regionalised management system within Europe would divide EU fisheries into management regions according to ecosystems rather than nations. Unfortunately, fish do not carry passports and do not know when they are travelling from one nation’s waters into another’s, so we must look at ecosystems and not simply national boundaries.

[Mr MacNeil]

When the hon. Gentleman talks about ecosystems, is he talking about migratory stocks, non-migratory stocks or straddling stocks? What sorts of stocks does he mean?

[Barry Gardiner]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman a good example: the Baltic ecosystem and the surrounding countries engaged in its regional management structure. He will know that in recent years east Baltic cod had gone into sharp decline. As a result of the regionally based management structure in the Baltic, those countries agreed, on the advice of the regional fisheries management organisation, to halt the catching of east Baltic cod. After putting that moratorium in place, they then allowed an increase each year of only 15%, which was actually below the fishing maximum sustainable yield; if they had had FMSY the biomass of the stock would actually have recovered less quickly. They put that moratorium in place on a regional basis and in accordance with the ecosystem, and those stocks have now recovered to a level that has far surpassed what they were and what they would have been had those countries opted for FMSY: the stocks have actually achieved biomass MSY.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again and allowing the debate to continue. Does he not see that one stock’s ecosystem is not the same as another’s? When he moved to ecosystem management he would start to have a geographical impact and to impose geographical limits on that, and very quickly he would go down the slippery slope with the common fisheries policy, which at the moment is an utter mess.

[Barry Gardiner]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Would the hon. Gentleman ensure that he faces the Chair when replying to that intervention? I could not catch everything he said when he responded to the previous one.

[Barry Gardiner]

Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Of course ecosystems interact with each other, and in so far as the hon. Gentleman makes that point it is absolutely unexceptional. None the less, scientists and fishermen look at those ecosystems. Of course there are migratory stocks, straddling stocks, nurseries where fish spawn and spawning grounds that need to be protected, but the point is to look at this as part of the ecosystem and not simply to divide it up into national countries’ interests. We need a regionalised framework based around significant ecosystems so that we can manage those stocks more effectively.

At present, even detailed technical decisions are taken centrally in Europe. The Lisbon treaty provides that the EU has exclusive competence under the CFP. However, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report makes an interesting case for a lawful way of qualifying the EU’s exclusive competence over the conservation of marine resources, thereby creating a framework for genuine regionalisation. It argues that exclusive competence does not apply where the CFP does not apply. Therefore, if the CFP regulations were amended to exclude certain marine conservation policies, the scope of the exclusive competence would be limited to the amended CFP.

The establishment of regional advisory councils is cited as a key success of the 2002 CFP reform because they have served as forums for stakeholders to inform policy implementation at a regional level. The trouble is that they have no decision-making powers. Although the draft basic regulation that sets out the main rules for the CFP would address centralised decision making through a combination of multi-annual plans and regionalisation of decision making, I think that a fully regionalised management system should include the following features: quotas allocated on the basis of ecosystem regions in order to manage fishing pressures according to the necessities of those different ecosystems; regular scientific assessment of all marine species, not just fish stocks, within a given eco-region in order to establish the impact of fishing on the ecosystem as a whole; and quota allocation on the basis of eco-regions with different licences used in different ecosystem regions and with no transfers between those regions.

Certain decision-making powers need to be devolved to regional management bodies in order to tailor the application of central policy objectives for EU fisheries to the specifics of each ecosystem. The main tool for fisheries management is the annual setting of total allowable catches. Currently, the European Commission requests scientific advice for the establishment of fisheries management plans on the basis of sustainability. However, the European Council is under no obligation to adhere to that advice when agreeing total annual quotas for stocks.

The result is that the European Fisheries Council sets total allowable catch limits that are on average 34% higher than scientifically recommended sustainable limits. In the period 1987 to 2011, European Fisheries Ministers set fishing quotas above scientific recommendations in 68% of their decisions. In the case of one hake stock, quotas were set 1,100% higher than scientists advised.

Over-fishing has made the fishing industry economically vulnerable, but over-fishing does not have just economic costs; it has social and environmental ones as well. At the Johannesburg world summit on sustainable development in 2002, the EU committed to achieving MSY—maximum sustainable yield—for all fish stocks by 2015 at the latest, but in 2010 it estimated that 72% of its fisheries remained over-fished, with 20% fished beyond safe biological limits, risking the wholesale collapse of those fisheries.

The zero draft for the forthcoming United Nations sustainable development conference in Rio calls on states to maintain or restore depleted fish stocks to sustainable levels, and further to commit to implementing science-based management plans to rebuild stocks by 2015.

The EU marine strategy framework directive requires that all EU fisheries achieve good environmental status by 2020, including the attainment of sustainable fishing levels for all stocks.

[Andrew George]

On the primary thesis that the hon. Gentleman seeks to advance, he claims that fishing communities are in decline because of over-fishing, but might it not also be because of inept policy, whereby fishermen have to catch far more fish but most are thrown back dead?

[Barry Gardiner]

Discards have been widely debated in this Chamber, and I shall try to come on to that issue, but time is limited, so I must press on. I acknowledge the force of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, however.

MSY is the largest catch that can be sustained over the long term, but there is FMSY and BSMY, fishing maximum sustainable yield and biomass maximum sustainable yield. The argument that I made to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who speaks for the Scottish National party, was precisely to that point, because we can go on getting FMSY out of a small stock, but if we want to achieve the largest possible catch we need to build the biomass MSY to ensure that we then get a sustainable yield out of that much larger biomass.

That is why I absolutely urge the Minister to support Commissioner Damanaki in saying that we have to achieve FMSY by 2015, albeit that biomass MSY might not be achieved until sometime after that—I hope as soon as possible, but no later than 2020, as the stocks demand.

Achieving that aim by 2015 will necessitate the following key measures: first, rendering scientific advice binding, thus preventing quotas from exceeding biologically sustainable limits; and, secondly, introducing stock assessments and management plans for all fish and shellfish, including non-commercial species that are currently unmanaged, in order to establish sustainable limits for harvesting. Ensuring that all fish and shellfish are harvested at sustainable levels is an absolute prerequisite of the future profitability and survival of EU fisheries.

But we also need to think about the issue in terms of biomass—something that the Committee’s report does not address. A biomass MSY is the biomass that can support the harvest of that maximum sustainable yield. Achieving MSY as set out in the draft CFP means rebuilding fish populations to a level of biomass maximum sustainable yield in order to support the level of annual catches—and viable fishing communities, their economies and their social needs.

In an effort to limit fishing to sustainable levels, EU regulations under the common fisheries policy prohibit the landing of commercial species above a given annual quota. In practice, however, that often results in the discarding of thousands of tonnes of saleable fish—but just at the point when I am about to answer the question asked by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), I fear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you are going to tell me that I have run out of time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Absolutely spot-on. The hon. Gentleman is quite correct.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for the report and for the way in which she introduced the debate, and I thank the Minister for his support in the past.

I am in a somewhat different situation from other hon. Members in this regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) talked about the cuts in Lowestoft. In Fleetwood, we already have hardly any boats left as over time there has been virtually a complete destruction of the fishing fleet. I remember as a child on holiday in Blackpool, because my father would only take us to Blackpool— [Interruption.] Well, he always used to say that Blackpool has got everything you want—it has got the sand, it has got the sea, and there is always something to do when it rains. On some days, we used to go to Fleetwood to see the fishing boats coming in. For 100 years, that was the core of Fleetwood’s very existence. It has been sad to see, now as its Member of Parliament, the heart almost ripped out of it over the years.

To be fair, that was not just due to the common fisheries policy: it began with the cod war. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is in his place, for giving me an induction lesson in cod war compensation schemes when I first entered the House, as well as teaching me how to deal with fishermen. I thought that dealing with farmers was complex, but dealing with fishermen is certainly so—and, one hopes, rewarding. I have certainly learned a lot.

Every hon. Member has referred to the failure of the CFP. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) talked about mismanagement of fish stocks by coastal communities, but the mismanagement of this policy has been much worse. Anyone can go to Fleetwood and listen to people’s stories about seeing boat after boat disappear and trying to deal with the quota system, and then the disgrace of the discard system, which has finally come to the fore publicly. The CFP has been an absolute and utter failure that could have resulted in the destruction of the town were it not for the resilience of Mr and Mrs Fleetwood in getting on and doing other things, although they still feel the loss when they see the harbour. I think that we have 27 licensed under-10-metre boats that go out part time. The number of boats that fish full time is probably fewer than the fingers on my hand, and they are usually fishing for shellfish, particularly Dublin Bay prawns. I thank the Minister for ensuring that there were no cuts to the quota for Dublin Bay prawns in the Irish sea in 2012. That was extremely welcome.

Unless there is some chance of bringing home these powers, and therefore some possibility that we might get new Fleetwood people going into fishing, this is, for them, an intellectual debate that they have heard many times before. Perhaps understandably, their distrust of politicians of all persuasions is massive. As the Minister secured the quotas, it would be fantastic if he could come home with some other measures showing that there might be a possibility of British ships and British seamen fishing in British seas. That is what people are after.

We have discussed the worry about regionalisation, which has been mentioned by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations and by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who is not in her seat at the moment. Are we going to end up in a similar situation to that under the cod management plan, with the appearance of regionalisation but still with all the rules set centrally so that all that is left for the region is to try to deal with that while seeing more people go out of business? As a north-west MP, I have to ask what will happen in the north-west if we get proper regionalisation? What will that mean on the ground? Presumably we will still have to deal with the situation in the Irish sea. Perhaps there could be an Irish sea forum between us in the north-west, the devolved Scottish Parliament, the devolved Welsh Assembly, the Isle of Man Government, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I am sure that common sense could prevail in terms of what the fishermen of all those countries know and do.

Again, I take issue with the hon. Member for Brent North. Conservation is the sole interest of all the fishermen I have met, because they see it as vital to their future business. They want to do it, but they distrust all the scientific evidence because it has often come from Europe and resulted in scientists telling them to follow the policy of discard and throw back healthy fish that they could have landed. That is what has taken away their belief in any so-called scientific analysis of what is going on.

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not want to take up time, but does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it is the scientists who have been pressing for the discards to be landed so that they can make a proper assessment of the biomass and look at the ecology as a whole?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I do acknowledge that. However, I am trying to explain how a Fleetwood fisherman who now has to fish part time sees a wealth of different evidence and wonders who pulls the strings on the evidence.

I want to introduce another matter—one which I know will delight the Minister. Once he has dealt with the problems of the common fisheries policy, another issue that we face is that of wind farms and wind farm applications in the Irish sea, and the compensation for fisherman resulting from those developments. We have to deal with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on that matter and on new transmission lines, with the Department for Transport on ferry links, and with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the so-called common fisheries policy. This might sound revolutionary, but perhaps we need a Secretary of State for the Seas to bring those issues together so that fishermen can go to one door and find out what is going on.

I do not want to detain the House any longer. As I have said, I feel as though I am in a different position from other Members. To people in Fleetwood and beyond, this is a test case of whether the coalition Government can deliver. They are enthusiastic about much that the Minister has done. I am grateful to him for the extent to which he goes out to meet fishermen. However, this remains a test case of what is possible. People in Fleetwood hope to see the day when one or two more people can at last take up fishing in what they regard as their waters.

Common Agricultural Policy

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Miss McIntosh]

I will come on to say a bit about that if time permits. I have personal reasons that relate to constituency interests—apologies for not mentioning it earlier but, as declared in the register, I farm two fields in partnership with my brother—for believing that tenant farmers in this country risk being in a very difficult position. I am very grateful to the Minister for having heard me out on my personal concerns in that regard.

During the course of compiling the report, the Minister told us that DEFRA would like direct payments to be phased out over the next financial period—in other words by 2020—and to end shortly thereafter. If DEFRA wishes to achieve that, we would like to see a plan to make farming in the European Union more competitive and less dependent on subsidy, otherwise the Department’s position does not seem credible and risks alienating farmers and weakening DEFRA’s influence in Brussels. From the evidence the Minister gave us, there seemed to be no new ideas on how to make UK farming more competitive. The Committee is not convinced by the Department’s arguments that rising prices for some commodities will necessarily deliver long-term improvements in farm incomes, for example, because of pressure from supermarkets on farmers.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for setting out the Committee’s report so clearly and for initiating the debate. She will have heard the Minister say from a sedentary position, “That’s nonsense. It’s piffle.” It is important that she sets out how the Committee arrived at that conclusion and the basis of the witness statements that we took from the Minister and others.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and distinguished member of the Select Committee for those remarks. I could go through the witness statements at some length, but the record speaks for itself. For the record, the Government response states:

“The UK Government accepts that there is more for us to do in this area and are continuing to develop our ideas for reform. A UK Government priority will be to continue the good work undertaken in previous reforms, such as phasing out the remaining coupled subsidies and continuing the market orientation of the CAP.”

I am sure that the Minister would like to stand by the evidence that he gave to the Committee in an oral session.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whiteford]

Absolutely. That has been an historic problem, and this is an opportunity to address it. The Commission’s proposals to support young farmers are probably a step in the right direction. It has been very difficult in recent decades, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, for new entrants to get a start in farming unless they inherit a family business. I am concerned that the proposed scheme will apply only to those who are already entitled to basic payments. That will not help new entrants aged over 40, or those who enter farming after 2014.

I should like the scheme to be open to all genuine new entrants to farming. I should also like member states to have the option to implement that policy, so that it can be tailored as necessary to address the real issues that we face. Likewise, a simplified scheme for small farmers could be a useful step in Scotland, where 13% of pillar one support is for less than €1,000. Crofters would be prime beneficiaries of such a move, and I hope that we will find a suitable way forward on that proposal.

[Barry Gardiner]

I agree with the hon. Lady on the importance of local understanding in the distribution of funds; they should be managed locally. However, has she considered that perhaps in other parts of the EU—not within the UK—there might be countries that could abuse or rig such a system to ensure more finances for their own farmers? That would not be good for farming in general or for the CAP’s objectives as a whole. Indeed, it would not be good for the environment.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which touches on one of the key struggles that I mentioned at the outset: the problem of regulation and bureaucracy. We need to strike a balance between bureaucracy and regulation, with all the problems of compliance in recent times, and have an effective and workable system. There is no easy solution. Nevertheless, those who comply with the system should not be the ones who are punished by it. I have lost count of the number of farmers in my constituency who have complained about the amount of paperwork that they have to deal with to access CAP funding. Even though that burden of regulation has eased a little in the past few years, the single, biggest complaint that I hear from local farmers is about the very stringent and absolutely bureaucratic compliance rules.

The financial penalties for even a minor infringement or an administrative error can run into thousands of pounds, which is out of all proportion to the seriousness of the infringement. I have raised that with the Minister on more than one occasion, and he is well aware of farmers’ concerns. What prospects are there in this CAP reform round of addressing that serious issue, which has caused more problems than any other?

I hope that the Minister will respond to those concerns and to those that, I am sure, other Members will raise. There is a future for farming. It supports nearly 500,000 jobs in Scotland, either directly through agriculture or indirectly through the food and drink supply chain. Farming is a critical part of our economy and our culture, and the money that we invest in it is repaid many times over through the management of our rural communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is a travesty of justice that the rest of Europe has not complied with the requirements for enriched cages for producing eggs, but that is the fault not of this Government but of a weak European Commission that has not taken proper action against those member states that have not complied. No matter what the policy, it must be properly applied across member states, and not just by our country.

[Barry Gardiner]

I absolutely agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman makes. He may be sympathetic to this suggestion: if we were to see the withdrawal of the direct payment subsidy, UK farms would do rather well, because they are better managed and more competitive than many in Europe. That would help our industry, as long as there were common standards with which everyone had to comply—a point made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford).

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We have very competitive agriculture, and our country can compete well. As we move on with agriculture, we will have to decide where to put what public support we have. There is an argument for some support in upland and difficult-to-farm areas, not only for agricultural production but in relation to the landscape; that is essential. We have to look at where we can create competitive agriculture.

That brings me on to regulation. I praise the Minister for bringing in Richard Macdonald to look at the regulation and to try to remove it from agriculture, so that the industry can be more competitive. However, although the Minister is busy removing regulation, the European Commission is busy applying more, even though the commissioners talk about wanting to get rid of regulation. All the reform will do is add more complication. We have talked about the 7% set-aside, the three or four crops and all the rubbish coming out of the Commission; we need to oppose that, and I know that the Minister intends to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, Mr Weir, particularly under your knowledgeable chairmanship on this subject. I pay tribute to the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), for obtaining the debate.

I do not wish to go over ground already outlined by hon. Members this afternoon. They have made many serious and important points, most of which I agree with. I want to restate a few basic facts, however, and €57 billion is one of them—40% of the entire European Union budget. This is a fix such as no heroin junkie has ever been on, and it is difficult, in the words of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), to wean farmers off it, sometimes for the good reasons that he outlined.

The CAP provides support in three distinct elements to agricultural producers and rural areas. We should not forget that we are talking about not just farmers, but other land managers and the whole rural community. The three elements are direct income support, market measures and the rural development programme. As we have found, the key point is that the RDP must be co-financed, and we will return to that bugbear.

Given the enormous subsidy, is it not appropriate to consider what the CAP’s objectives are? Our Committee heard five objectives, the first of which should be

“to maintain or enhance the EU capacity to produce safe and high-quality food.”

The second objective should be to enhance

“the competitiveness and viability of the EU agricultural sector”

because a

“competitive and viable EU agricultural sector is the key to producing more while having less impact”—

detrimental impact—

“on the environment and to reducing farmers’ reliance on income support from taxpayers in the long-term.”

The third objective should be

“to ensure the sustainable management of the EU’s natural resources, biodiversity and landscapes, recognising that farmers are the managers of over half of the…land area”

of Europe. The fourth objective

“should be to help to maintain agricultural activity in areas where it delivers significant public benefits, such as the maintenance of biodiversity and cultural landscapes”

such as those that were mentioned earlier. However,

“the CAP should not aim to deliver an acceptable standard of living to every farmer in the EU through income support alone”—

that was a key finding by the Committee and is in the report—and

“farmers should be encouraged to look to the market for their”

fundamental returns.

The aim of this CAP reform should be to enable farmers to achieve the sustainable intensification that is required to meet the global challenge of feeding a world population that will rise from the 7 billion that it reached just a month ago to the 9 billion that it will reach in 2050, but to do so without destroying the very things that it is predicated upon: our biodiversity and our natural landscapes. The Government’s position on CAP reform must be coherent in its strategy for ensuring food security, and DEFRA must decide—I am keen to hear from the Minister on this point—whether and, if so, how it intends to implement the previous Government’s “Food 2030” strategy, taking into account the recommendations from the Foresight report on “The Future of Food and Farming” by John Beddington and co. and the UK’s position on the future of the common agricultural policy.

In the interests of fair trade and the long term, the EU should argue more strongly for a recognition of standards of production in trade agreements, including animal welfare, the use of water and greenhouse gas emissions. That is essential to achieve the global shift towards sustainable intensification that “The Future of Food and Farming” report recommended.

The Commission’s proposals to green pillar one have been at the heart of the discussion throughout Europe and our debate today. There is a suspicion that that was a sop and a way to try to justify the subsidy and support. The proposals did not receive strong support from any of our witnesses. There was concern that they would make the CAP more complicated to administer, as other hon. Members have said, and that they would confuse the logic of the two-pillar structure.

[Jim Sheridan in the Chair]

Several witnesses expressed concern about expanding pillar two, and that is DEFRA’s alternative to the expansion of pillar one. The central issue seems to be the difficulty of achieving political support in Europe, and I want to tell a story about what happened when I was in Europe just last week. I had gone over there, as had the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, to join in the parliamentary debate that the Commissioner with responsibility for reform of the common fisheries policy had called. I spoke to several members from throughout Europe and tried to persuade them of the UK’s good ideas on CFP and CAP reform. I was told universally that although some of those ideas were good, for God’s sake, I should not let the British Government suggest them because they are the most toxic brand in Europe at the moment and suggestions will not garner political support if they come from the UK.

We must consider seriously how the Government have engaged in Europe, and how they have got themselves into a position when even good ideas will not be accepted because we suggest them. Perhaps we should get other people to suggest our good ideas, and then take a back seat.

[George Eustice]

If the UK is putting forward good ideas and they are ignored because they come from us, the failure is on the part of those countries that adopt that stance. Clearly, if an idea is good, they should adopt it.

[Barry Gardiner]

Of course, in principle, we should all work from a basis of fact, science and what is rational and reasonable. The hon. Gentleman and I are totally at one on that, but we are both politicians as well, and we know that alliances are important in politics. We know that sometimes the issue is not having the right idea or the best idea; it is stacking up the votes to get that idea not only on the table, but accepted. That is what the Government have singularly failed to do. They have singularly isolated themselves in Europe, and that is a real problem for our farmers, because many of the ideas are good.

Another aspect is how, as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton said, we go about weaning farmers off the subsidies of pillar one. If we are to do that by 2020, or shortly thereafter—perhaps the Minister will clarify when—it sounds a bit like saying, “Make me virtuous Lord, but not yet.” In this round of CAP reform, we should try to get the Commission to set a date for when it will happen. Without a deadline, hon. Members know as well as I do what will happen. Come 2020, we will all be in the same position, saying, “Yes, make me virtuous Lord. Let us wean ourselves off the subsidy, but in 2027, or 2032.” We must bite the bullet. We cannot continue with this junkie habit, because it is damaging the prosperity of Europe as a whole.

It was interesting that one witness told us that the problem with shifting the policy to pillar two was that, when the opportunity was offered to member states with voluntary modulation, all but the UK ignored it, because they did not want to put additional money into match funding and co-financing. In principle, we may be in favour of co-finance in pillar two and putting more into it, but the political reality is that many do not have the money to do so. Another witness told us that expanding pillar two risked creating a very uncommon market. New member states cannot afford their share of the finance, so they cannot draw down European money.

I think we have the right nostrums. We should move away from pillar one and into pillar two, for all the reasons that hon. Members have outlined. However, regional flexibility is a problem. With pillar two, as Members have said, there is a problem of how to ensure, from Finland to Greece and Romania to Ireland, that the measures adopted are appropriate. Inevitably, as we all know, countries try to fix things in their own favour. If it is simply a smorgasbord created by an individual country, that smorgasbord will be arranged to give maximum benefit, advantage and subsidy to the country’s own farmers. Therefore, what is needed within Europe is recognition that although a regionalised, smorgasbord approach is the right one, parity must be ensured through something that we seem to have left out of this debate: sound science.

We believe in evidence-based and science-based policy. We must ensure that the benefits to the environment and the benefits that each country would bring to that regional smorgasbord are established on some sort of points system to show that they are equivalent to what other countries are offering, and therefore that the financial reward that follows from them is likewise rewarded. That is not new to DEFRA. It is already doing that in the UK national biodiversity strategy. It is considering different points for different elements of biodiversity. Why can we not propose that in Europe for adoption there? It is right to move towards a more regional approach and from pillar one to pillar two, but we must do so on the basis of sound science and public good, which must be assessed independently to ensure genuine parity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paice]

I am very happy to address that. Indeed, I addressed it yesterday in the Scottish Parliament. I am not sure about red line issues. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is no requirement for unanimity, so we can have a red line issue that stays a red line issue and not get our way. On key negotiations, I can assure him and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan that we have made it absolutely clear that we think the Commission’s proposals for the shift to an area basis is too draconian. The 40% first-year drop is far too dramatic, and we will support the proposition that there should be a more gradual transition.

I shall move on to the greening issue. As other hon. Members have said, that is perhaps the most important subject—it has certainly grabbed the most headlines in the farming press and in debates. As the hon. Member for Ogmore said, to put it mildly, the greening situation requires a lot of improvement. There are three components. First, farmers with permanent pasture must keep it as such and must not be allowed to plough it. There has been grave concern—and, indeed, anecdotal stories—that some farmers have started ploughing such land because they do not want to be stuck with that obligation. I urge them not to do that because we can negotiate around it. Indeed, at the NFU annual general meeting three weeks ago, the commissioner said that he did not see a problem with farmers who wanted to reseed such land every 10 years. As long as we can get that commitment in writing, we have largely resolved the issue. So there is no justification for farmers to consider ploughing up permanent pasture.

The second issue that has been debated is the requirement for a three crop rotation. My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) properly identified one of the nonsensical issues with that. A further issue with a three crop rotation is that very large numbers of dairy farmers, particularly those with outdoor stock farms in the hills, will grow a field of turnips, maize or barley to feed their own stock. It is clearly nonsensical for them to have a three crop rotation. We have made that point to the Commission repeatedly. I hope that we can get somewhere, but we will have to wait and see. I assure hon. Members that we have pressed very hard on that subject.

The third part of the greening proposal is, of course, the 7% ecological focus area. The commissioner has said repeatedly in Council meetings that he is not trying to reintroduce set-aside. However, one has only to listen to the language of this debate to realise that that is how the matter is perceived. The commissioner has said that someone will be able to count their hedges, ditches and I think that I even heard him say tracks—in other words, what someone has not got in production—and take out some land to get to the 7% if they have not got enough out already, as will be the case with most farmers. If farmers are fortunate enough to have perhaps a piece of woodland, they may well already be up to their 7%.

The Government consider that taking land out of agriculture, when, as hon. Members have all said, we need to increase production, is clearly wrong. However, there is a more fundamental problem with ecological focus areas. I have used the phrase that this is about trying to reach down to the lowest common denominator—the thing that most farmers will be able to meet without having to do anything—and that if they really have to, they might have to take a little bit more land out of farming.

The British Government take the view that we need to be far more active. Several hon. Members have rightly referred to our stewardship schemes. Such active management is far more important. There is plenty of science to demonstrate that, in terms of environmental care, biodiversity, water retention or whatever, active management of a small area of ground can deliver far better results overall than simply watching—for want of a better word—the 7%.

I will come back to the comments made by the hon. Member for Brent North in a moment before he leaves because I want to talk about his remarks on engagement. We are working very closely with a number of other member states to develop a proposal of what we might call equivalence measures: a menu of different options that member states can choose from, all of which have an environmental equivalence in quality terms. The commissioner has already made some good noises about appreciating the concept of equivalence, but he still seems to equate it with quantity rather than quality. That still concerns us.

[Barry Gardiner]

rose—

[Mr Paice]

Give me a minute. I see that the hon. Gentleman is anxious to leave. I am sorry if I have bored him already. Frankly, what he was saying about engagement is, I am afraid, nonsense. He obviously has a very selective group of people to whom he speaks in the European Parliament, because the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I have spent a great deal of effort over nearly the past two years developing relationships through the European Council, the Commission and the Parliament.

As I said to the hon. Member for Ogmore in our earlier debate, nowhere is there a better example of that than fishing, which has been mentioned. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who has responsibility for fishing, visited Brussels four days after the Prime Minister executed—I mean exercised—his veto. He executed the issue, but exercised his veto. Yet my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary came away from that Fisheries Council having made a superb step forward in terms of the overall EU fisheries policy, which demonstrates that the British voice is still being listened to. Frankly, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who has left his place, said, the previous Government’s attempt to renegotiate the CAP did not exactly put them in a good position from which to criticise others.

[Barry Gardiner]

rose—

[Mr Paice]

I will let the hon. Gentleman intervene. I suppose that I have provoked him.

[Barry Gardiner]

Not at all. I apologise that I have to leave, Mr Sheridan. I am delighted to hear what the Minister has said, but, of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

I have two further short points to make about greening. First, it is a good example of something where one size does not fit all. Others have used the same phrase; we have used it regularly in Brussels. We have tried to persuade Commissioner Ciolos that he needs to accept that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, there are a vast range of farm sizes, types, soils, topographies and so on across the EU. The rigid three-legged stool that the commissioner has invented for greening the CAP is too inflexible to meet all those needs. I fear that, as I suggested earlier, he is simply trying to deliver something that most farmers could achieve.

Flood and Water Management

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point and for his invitation, which I was able to accept, to visit some of the areas that had been affected in Beverley.

Partnership funding for flood defences, which was introduced only this year, will of course be limited to the amounts that can be raised. The level of funding is the key to the success of our report and the message that we gave, as well as the success of the 2010 Act itself. I have a direct question for the Minister on the business of funding, particularly the levy-raising powers. I and many other hon. Members represent deeply rural constituencies. A concern has been expressed that, where there is not an established local levy, there may be constraints on the amount that can be raised. The Minister must realise that there is a limit to how much any individual local authority can afford because, as we note in the report, budgets have been reduced as a result of the comprehensive spending review.

We welcome the fact that regulations on the transfer of private sewers and lateral drains have proceeded, but the Minister must respond to the concerns expressed in our report, which are reflected across the country, about how we can recover the costs, which are either non-funded or underfunded. It will be helpful if the Minister responds to the water companies’ direct concern about that.

Colleagues would be disappointed if I did not mention sustainable drainage systems. We need to know the commencement date for the relevant provisions of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Are we really looking at a delay until 2012, and if so, do we as parliamentarians accept that? I put it to the Minister that we do not. I do not think it would be appropriate to have a phased introduction of sustainable drainage systems. The country is crying out for sustainable drainage systems to be introduced with a specific target date—I hope, by the end of this year. When will the regulations be laid and what consultation period is required? The time needed for preparation makes those provisions coming into effect this year a very tight timetable, and there is concern that they will be postponed until next year.

I want to place on the record my views on misconnections and the ending of the automatic right to connect. Sir Michael Pitt was extremely clear and categorical on that. I am not sure that we have reached an end to the automatic right to connect. I would like to make water companies statutory consultees on the same basis as the Environment Agency is. Many water companies have loose arrangements with the planning authorities, but it is important that we enshrine that in law. Water companies should be made statutory consultees on any future planning applications to limit potential misconnections as far as possible. I touched on the maintenance of watercourses in response to the hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham), but I repeat that we need as many engineers as possible and that we should use the internal drainage boards where they exist.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a compelling case on many fronts. Planning and misconnections are a considerable problem around the country, and a number of misconnections have been made in my area, but would creating an obligation for water companies to be statutory consultees in relation to planning applications make a difference to the builders putting in the equipment? The rules are very clear: they should connect to the appropriate foul water or surface water sewer. The key surely is to have better monitoring afterwards through building regulations and to ensure that the plans and specifications have been followed.

[Miss McIntosh]

I think we need both approaches. The system is failing because of the lack of consultation with water companies. Because they are not statutory consultees, they are being asked to link up to new developments where they do not think it is appropriate. One example is a proposal to build 300 houses in Filey on an area that is prone to flooding; the water company has said that there will be great difficulty in connecting, but I do not see where the planning inspector can overrule the local authority. The Committee’s key message was that more than 5 million properties in England are at risk of flooding—that is a Government and insurance industry figure—and, at the same time, the UK faces increasing economic and environmental challenges to securing clean, reliable and affordable water supplies.

The natural environment White Paper, “The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature,” has been well received and, as I say, the Committee is doing a substantial piece of work on it, but we are severely disappointed that the water White Paper has been delayed. Despite its importance, it has not been published within two months of the natural environment White Paper. I had the opportunity to express our concerns to the Prime Minister and to say that the Committee does not want any slippage in the introduction of the water Bill, which will be as important to the water industry as the Water Act 1989. I know it is not within the Minister’s gift, but I hope that the Government business managers listening will make time available early next year for that substantial piece of legislation. I also hope that the Minister will be able to assure hon. Members today that we will receive the White Paper—no doubt, with great interest—well before the turn of the year. We want an holistic approach to flood and water management, and the natural environment White Paper and the water White Paper both have a substantial contribution to make.

The extended parliamentary Session—the first to run for 18 months—must not be used as an excuse to delay the introduction of legislation if the regulatory changes are to be made without disrupting the water price-setting process. The Minister has an opportunity to set out this afternoon the Government’s timetable for finalising the provisions of the 2010 Act that have not yet been commenced.

It is an understatement to say that the White Paper is eagerly anticipated, and we look forward to receiving it without further delay. Many strands of work are involved: we expect it to look at the Cave review of competition, the Walker review of household charging, the Gray review of Ofwat and the implementation of EU directives such as the water framework directive. Time will not permit me to go into many of the concerns that have been raised about the directive, but suffice it to say that many of the water companies and, indeed, many farmers and landowners are extremely concerned about how it will take effect.

There is good news. Since our report was published, we have had the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consultation on water affordability, which followed up from the Budget statement on 23 March. That demonstrated that the Government are committed to supporting households with water affordability pressures and households in areas with particularly high water bills, such as the south-west. I am sure my hon. Friends from that area will have plenty to say on that.

We also welcome the reforms to the WaterSure scheme, the approach to social tariffs and the options for additional Government spending to provide further support. Water companies would find it incredibly helpful if the Government—obviously, not DEFRA but another Department—could, on a confidential basis, give the details of people on benefits to the water companies, so that they can earmark and target those most at risk and those who would most benefit from a social tariff. The consultation closed on 17 June, and we now expect the Government to introduce their proposals.

The natural environment White Paper will make a clear contribution to valuing water more effectively. We heard from a number of witnesses in June and we will look further at the matter in the autumn. The national ecosystem assessment that was published in June shows that there is a great body of work to build on.

I know that the Minister would be disappointed if I did not express my disappointment at the failure of the Pickering pilot scheme for flood defences to go ahead. The Woodland Trust and others are enthusiastic about more natural means of flood defence, such as the planting of trees to slow the water down. I hope that the Minister will not feel constrained and will tell us today where we are on reservoir provision. I make a plea on behalf of many constituents, and I am sure many in the House as well: time after time, the Environment Agency seems to get carried away with over-engineered, over-expensive and over-fancy flood defence projects that fall flat on their face at the first hurdle. That is why we do not have the flood defences we need in Thirsk or in Pickering. The Pickering pilot project was innovative and looked at more natural means of flood defence, but it will not now go ahead. The money, particularly from the local authority, is ring-fenced only until next year. I am sure that the Minister would think that it was tragic if we were to lose that project for ever because of delay owing to the Environment Agency not knowing that the flood storage system it had in mind constituted a reservoir.

I again express the Committee’s support for sustainable drainage systems. Local authorities have expressed concern that they be properly resourced, and the Minister has the opportunity today to set their mind at ease. They have to be given the financial resources they need. I have mentioned water companies being statutory consultees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Walker, for inviting me to speak in this timely and important debate. It is important because my constituents are dealing with the issues created by the Severn estuary and because of the work that the Select Committee has accomplished, which we are considering.

I want to look at the situation in my constituency from two directions: the Severn estuary and the Slad valley. The Severn estuary is the most important, because it has raised a number of key issues, which my constituents are concerned about. The first is the solutions being imposed from afar when localism and more community involvement would be much preferred. In that respect, we are talking about a long-running process, which has been under way ever since local people around the Severn estuary in my constituency first discussed a strategy after the Environment Agency produced its proposals. The second issue is the use of farmland adjacent to the estuary. The concerns are therefore largely about land use and the lack of consultation, and I will touch on both.

We have had an interesting discussion about insurance, and I will touch on that before I go on to the meat of my remarks, because that issue, too, has been raised by constituents. The flooding map would suggest that the whole village of Frampton On Severn is vulnerable to flooding, which it is not, and large parts have not been flooded for long periods or, indeed, ever. Why should the map be so misleading? It is largely because the map shows what would happen if there were no flood defences. However, there are flood defences, and that needs to be made clear. Insurance firms and the insurance industry in general need to be aware of the fact that flood maps show what the situation would be without defences. However, there are defences, which operate perfectly well in Frampton, so the village has no worries about being flooded. It would be a great step towards allaying residents’ fears if we could give more meaning to these maps and bring insurers’ attention to the reality of the situation.

To return to the Severn estuary, it is obvious that there are flood risks, because flood defences are already in place; some are in need of repair, some need adjustment and some need to be completely reshaped. There is no dispute that flooding is a risk. What we are disputing is how the strategy will unfold over the next 10 to 50 years. Essentially, three sequential tests will be applied to the strategy, and they all raise key issues, which we should consider.

The first test is economic and is all about the value of the territory being defended—whether it is farmland or land for housing and development. There are concerns about planning, but we are talking about the situation that exists now. Some areas of land along the Severn estuary in my constituency have an agricultural value but no developed value. That needs to be carefully considered, because it is necessary to ensure that public money is spent wisely. Huge sums would not necessarily be invested in defending just agricultural land.

That raises the issue of production. No planning system considers what would happen to land or to a factory if it were flooded or not flooded, but a lot of people in my constituency are rightly concerned about quality farming land being removed from production. That needs to be carefully considered by all concerned.

If the economic test is failed, there is the “make do and mend” approach, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) referred to indirectly, if not directly, when she noted that some farmers protect their own land. The existence of that option needs to be set out more explicitly as one of the range of options that are available.

The second test is the legal test and has something to do with habitat. At the end of the day, we have a commitment to ensure that new habitats exist after flooding. Where areas that are flooded hosted wildlife and so forth, we have to retrench and find new habitats. That raises two critical questions: what kind of territory are we really thinking about and how far do we consider the entire basket of options? That raises the question of where the habitat should be and how much should be provided.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the biodiversity offsetting provisions in the White Paper that the Government released earlier this year go a long way towards addressing this question? They propose a very commercial way of proceeding, but they can bring real biodiversity benefits by looking at an offset bank and ensuring that appropriate provision is made elsewhere. I thought that was one of the great features of the White Paper.

[Neil Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is an important feature, but the question remains who will provide the habitat on what is, effectively, a peninsula. The Environment Agency has made it clear that that will be decided through agreement and consultation, but we still have to answer the question of where we should allow or encourage the conversion of farm land into habitat areas. That is still the issue. There is still a legal test. In that context, the question for the Minister is how much land he wants and how much DEFRA will agree to. That has implications in terms of the European Union’s attitudes and regulations. The legal test is therefore important, and it must be framed in a way that everybody understands.

The third test is the community test, which I have mentioned. It is critical because local people must feel part of the process; they must feel engaged and that their expertise and local knowledge are applied appropriately. That is where we have run into trouble to some extent in the processes that I have already described, relating to the Severn estuary. The Environment Agency has rightly recognised the concern and alarm and has, as it puts it, taken time out. Everyone will consider where we are, and the options that are on the table. Of course the time out will end at some point, and there will be some options and choices.

To make sure that the community test is given a fair chance to work, I am pleased that the Environment Agency has decided to appoint an engagement officer, with the specific task of ensuring that our communities—our farmers and the local people—will be properly consulted when the time out period comes to an end and options and choices are agreed. Of course, DEFRA has a key responsibility because, in the end, when it agrees a strategy the moneys will be released, so the question is a political one, as much as it is a function of the Environment Agency.

In concluding the part of my remarks that focuses on the Severn estuary, I want to emphasise the importance of the economic test in relation to respecting the value of land and acknowledging the issue of agricultural production. As to the legal test, I want it to be clearly understood that we must be sensitive and sensible about identifying suitable areas for habitat and making sure we consider a sufficiently wide area, so that any landowners who want to move in that direction can do so without threatening those who do not. That is a critical issue.

I want to touch on some other points, one of which is localism and the question of local knowledge and aspirations. There is a long valley in my constituency, called the Slad valley. It is famous as it is where the Woolpack is—the famous haunt of Laurie Lee. It is a great pub, and I invite all hon. Members to go there.

At the top end of the valley there is the beginning of the mills, water storage systems and so forth, and at the bottom is Stroud, which gets flooded. Of course there are ways to protect houses, and many have opted for protection, although not all, and certainly not enough. Our community, and people in the Slad valley, are keen for the problem to be solved further up the valley. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton has alluded to the same points, because I know that such things are being carefully considered in parts of Yorkshire. That emerged in the all-party group on flood prevention some months ago. I want to underline the importance of properly consulting organisations, to enable their ideas to be incorporated. I am also delighted, therefore, that the Environment Agency is willing to meet all the various partners and actors.

A point that needs some amplification is the role of internal drainage boards, which are important and do a huge amount of work. It is interesting that the one that covers most of my territory also covers a huge industrial area in the Avonmouth sector. Of course the work that it does there effectively finances the work it does on the agricultural side. We must be mindful of the cross-fertilisation approach that is used in all sorts of public protection measures. The internal drainage boards are a good example. First I put in a plea for recognition of the value that they bring to such management issues; and secondly I urge the boards, wherever they exist, to co-operate whenever they can with the other organisations.

I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet a contingent of my constituents to discuss the situation in the Severn estuary. They were going to come here today, but they are still more excited to have a direct meeting. I have had many meetings, with a huge number of people representing many different interests, but the key point that they want to get across is that they want to be consulted. They want their local expertise to be recognised, their local knowledge to be understood, and their homes and farms to be properly considered in the context of the three tests, which should be properly respected and understood.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to speak in the debate, and congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on initiating it. She chairs the Select Committee with great aplomb, and I know that the matter is exceptionally dear to her heart. I was surprised only that she curtailed her remarks as she did. I expected at least an hour from her.

I look forward most of all in the debate to hearing from the Minister about the progress that has been made since the Government responded to the Committee earlier in the year. The Committee’s report was published last year following a series of welcome and ambitious commitments from the Government: safeguarding clean, reliable and affordable water supplies; protecting households and property from the risk of flooding; and reforming the water industry and making it more resilient, efficient, sustainable, innovative and affordable. The report provided the Government with a comprehensive and holistic approach to delivering on those commitments. Of course we should, in this debate, be assessing the progress that has been made. Instead, I am afraid we must reflect on a number of broken promises and missed opportunities.

A water White Paper was promised for June. In April the Minister revised that commitment and promised that it would be published in the autumn. Unfortunately, the latest business plan of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now promises publication in December, nine months after the Committee’s report, and we are still no clearer on how the Government plans will encourage the retrofitting of sustainable drainage systems, how they will ensure that customers’ views will be taken into account during the price review process, and how investment in the water industry will be better managed to avoid the boom and bust cycle that so badly harms the supply chain. There is also uncertainty about the future of metering and water efficiency in households, social tariffs to reduce the impact of rising bills on low-income customers and the future of competition in the water industry. Publication in December would leave only four months for the Government to meet their commitment to introduce any new legislation required as a result of the White Paper by next April. I hope that the Government’s ambition will not be scaled back in the fight against a tight time scale.

Since our report, the Government have also severely cut capital funding for flood defences. When we consider that we need to increase investment simply to maintain the current level of protection, that is cause for considerable concern. As the Committee pointed out:

“To cut back significantly on flood defence infrastructure spending could be a classic example of short-term savings leading to much greater long-term costs.”

The Government have also failed to provide any assurance on the provision of flood insurance beyond 2013. The natural environment White Paper, which was excellent in many ways—we adverted to some of it earlier in the debate—also missed a valuable opportunity to set out how, for example, agriculture and land management could play a stronger role in reducing flood risk and improving water quality. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to update us on each of those issues, so that we may leave this afternoon’s debate with a much clearer idea of Government policy on the future of flood and water management. I shall try to deal with each of those issues.

I also want to discuss some of the priorities for the forthcoming White Paper. Ever since privatisation, capital expenditure in the water industry has been concentrated towards the middle of the five-year funding cycle. That has led to financial and managerial inefficiencies in addition to instability in the supply chain, ultimately resulting in higher costs for consumers. It also leads to the migration of skilled resources out of the sector to more stable industries. That has created a severe and worsening skills shortage in the water industry.

The White Paper must help to bring to an end the effect of that five-year asset management planning cycle. It should also explore the link between the price review and innovation. In the current investment period, companies are looking for tried and tested technologies with payback within three years. Some water companies have disbanded their research and development departments as they are not currently funded by the price review. R and D is now conducted on an ad hoc basis rather than in a co-ordinated way.

The water sector faces a period of huge challenge in coping with the implications of climate change, and in reducing its own carbon emissions. It can ill afford to be locked into a short-term investment cycle that stifles and inhibits innovation. The White Paper must set out how the Government will restructure the water industry properly to incentivise and encourage companies to invest in innovation, particularly in treatment processing, energy efficiency, leakage prevention, and water efficiency.

Competition can help to stimulate that innovation. Competition in the water industry is not an end in itself, but it is a means of improving services for customers, particularly the most vulnerable, and improving environmental outcomes.

In the White Paper, the Government gave a commitment to respond to the Cave review, and I would welcome an update from the Minister on how the White Paper will ensure that greater competition will meet those challenges. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether the Government’s one-in, one-out rule, which prevents a regulation from being introduced unless another is scrapped, will apply to any legislation proposed in the White Paper. If so, perhaps he will share the Department’s thinking on which regulations might be scrapped in the event of any legislation coming forward in April 2012.

We talked much about sustainable drainage systems in another area on which the Government gave a commitment in the White Paper. When sustainable drainage systems are successfully implemented, they can make a significant contribution to reducing the risk of flooding by increasing the capacity of land to absorb water. They can also reduce the risk of water contamination, and increase the sustainability of water use. The provision of SUDS for new developments and, where possible, for existing developments is widely supported throughout the House. However, evidence to the inquiry revealed widespread concern among local authorities about their ability to fund the adoption and maintenance of SUDS. The Government’s response to the Committee stated that DEFRA would fund local authorities for the costs of maintaining adopted SUDS and SUDS maintenance in the “short term.” Will the Minister say how long he expects that “short term” to be? That is important for local authorities.

In November, the Prime Minister said that flood defence spending would be protected, and would be “roughly the same” as under Labour. In fact, capital funding for flood defences to protect homes has fallen from a baseline figure last year of £354 million to £259 million. We now know the meaning of the phrase, “roughly the same”. It means give or take 30% according to my mathematics. In fact, it is a 27% cash cut to the budget, and a 32% real-terms cut when inflation is taken into account.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

After the floods in 2000, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had people from Norfolk and other areas to No. 10 Downing street and made expansive commitments on flood protection. However, the pressures of political life being what they are, flooding moved out of the spotlight and those promises disappeared along with the floodwater. It is an historic happening for Governments slowly to cut long-term infrastructure investment when it is not in the spotlight. Does the hon. Gentleman have any thoughts on how to create a long-term sustainable structure which, regardless of the political cycle, ensures that our constituents are properly protected from flooding?

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman points out that at various periods during the previous Labour Administration the flood budget was raided, but he must acknowledge that overall there was both a real-terms and a cash increase in that budget. He is absolutely right that from time to time that budget was raided and cut as necessary in the political cycle, but overall it was increased. The Minister knows that I have the greatest respect for him and the work that he is trying to do in this area, and I know that he understands the importance of the matter. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) talked about small cuts, but this is not a small cut. It is a 27% cash, or a 32% real-terms cut in this period. That is a huge amount.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. I was not trying to suggest that he is not being proper in challenging the Government. My point is that historically Governments tend to raid the flood budget when under the pressure that they inevitably suffer. The last Government was much better at spending money than the present one, but it turned out that so much of that money could not be sustained, and we could not afford it. He should not boast about that too much. What we should focus on is how to create a long-term situation so that whoever is in government and whatever the state of public finances our constituents will have a guarantee that that political cycle will not get in the way of sensible, stable support for flood defence in their homes.

[Barry Gardiner]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have talked about introducing minimum standards, and we must move towards consensus, because that is in everyone’s interest.

The Government have given a commitment to deliver 15% efficiency savings in Environment Agency flood defence budgets, but that leaves an overall reduction in those budgets of 17%. I would be grateful if the Minister provided us with an update of his assessment of the impact of that reduced funding settlement in relation to the Government’s flood programme, and the flood defence work that the Environment Agency has programmed for the next three years. Will he also provide an indication of how the 15% of efficiency savings in the Environment Agency has impacted on that work?

Despite those funding reductions, the Committee noted the Government’s commitment fully to fund local authorities in their new roles under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, and that they would provide direct grants of up to £36 million a year to lead local flood authorities. That is welcome. Each lead local flood authority would receive at least £110,000 a year, with the authorities tackling the highest levels of local risk receiving up to £750,000 a year. However, the communities and local government special grants settlement for 2011-12 highlights that the most that any lead local flood authority received this year was not £750,000, but £260,000—that was in Kent. Of the 152 lead local flood authorities, 144 received less than £200,000. To allow for local flexibility, those grants are not ring-fenced. On average, central Government funding to councils will fall by 26% over the next four years. I understand the constraint under which the Government are operating.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman’s party created them.

[Barry Gardiner]

Indeed, I take on board the party political knockabout that we can have. Local authorities have been put in an extremely difficult position. By not ring-fencing the funds, the Government cannot be sure that they will go into flood defences. It is therefore important to find out from the Minister how the Government plan to review local authority spend on flood management, and how they propose to hold local authorities to account for the money they have been given to spend in that area.

I acknowledge that that is not just a matter for central and local government. The Committee concluded that it was right for beneficiaries such as developers to help fund new flood defence schemes. In light of that, will the Minister confirm how funding through the new flood and coastal resilience partnership funding arrangement will be focused on those communities at greatest risk? How will the Government identify those communities and ensure that their protection is achieved in practice? As discussed earlier, the Government’s draft national planning policy framework should also be amended to address how planning should apportion the costs of providing flood defences for new developments between public agencies and private beneficiaries.

The Labour Government’s statement of principles guaranteed universal flood insurance coverage for homes in affected areas. That guarantee runs out in 2013, and was based on the understanding, following the Pitt review, that Government should have

“above inflation settlements for future spending rounds.”.

We know that that will no longer be the case.

The Government’s response to the Committee’s report committed to updating the Committee on progress with implementing

“a roadmap to take us beyond 2013.”

I would be grateful if the Minister took this opportunity to update hon. Members on precisely what the roadmap beyond 2013 might look like.

Water saving through greater efficiency will become increasingly important, especially in parts of the country where climate change and population growth will lead to significant constraints in supply. The Building Regulations 2010 introduced a new minimum water efficiency standard for new homes. The potential consumption of potable water by persons occupying a dwelling should not exceed 125 litres per person per day. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government have plans to increase the minimum water efficiency standard in future revisions of the Building Regulations 2010?

As the Committee noted, metering plays a key role in helping to reduce water demand. More widespread introduction of metering will mean that there are winners and losers and some, including groups of vulnerable customers, could see significant rises in their water bills. Social tariffs can help to ameliorate the impact of rising bills on low-income customers. The Government’s response to the Committee stated that they were preparing

“guidance on company social tariffs under Section 44 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.”

Will the Minister confirm when that will be published as it is of great interest and importance to many poorer constituencies? The regulatory framework under which water prices are set must also be reformed to include stronger water efficiency targets for water supply companies. The water White Paper should be clear on how that will be taken forward.

In giving evidence to the Committee, the Environment Agency estimated that costs associated with implementing the water framework directive up to 2027 could be between £30 billion and £100 billion, depending on the approach taken. Despite that level of investment, the UK was likely to see only 26% of rivers achieving “Good Ecological Status” by the water framework directive target date of 2015. The Government’s response to the Committee highlighted that it was possible, within the terms of the directive, to set lower standards of compliance. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government have plans to make use of that option? If so, it would be extremely deleterious. Do the Government have any plans to implement the “polluter pays” principle more accurately, so that customers do not have to foot the bill for cleaning up pollution for which they are not responsible? Domestic water customers currently pay some 82% of the costs of implementing measures to meet WFD requirements.

Together with other members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I welcome the focus placed by the Government on flood and water management. They seem, however, to have lost their way over the nine months since the report was published. An ambitious water White Paper and the commencement of provisions in the Flood and Water Management Act that have not yet been effected, must be a priority. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how the Government plan to move the issue forward.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. We have one hour and 10 minutes for speeches, and seven colleagues who wish to speak. That is about 10 minutes each.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

Of course I acknowledge that; I was coming on to talk about it. Possibly through the unguarded way in which I was talking about affordability in the south-west, I may have—heaven forbid—given the impression that I thought that people in the south-west were all millionaires. Of course I do not think that. I am fully aware of the profile of rural life across the south-west and across other parts of the country. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—there is deprivation in rural areas as well.

[Barry Gardiner]

Just to add to the Minister’s caution around the question of deprivation, so much of social housing in the past 25 years has been built in areas that are subject to flood risk. The people who live in that housing had few housing options open to them. Through being on housing lists, they were forced into that accommodation. They are particularly exposed to those risks, in ways which people who have the financial ability to choose where they live are not. For that specific reason, it is important that deprivation is taken into account.

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and that relates to the issue of insurance as well. I have been taking forward one measure. Housing associations or council-owned housing stock offer an opt-in scheme on contents insurance. I believe strongly that we should encourage people to do an opt-out scheme. Fifty pence a week can give you £5,000 worth of contents insurance. People would be more likely to have that if it were an opt-out scheme. There is so much that we can do to protect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Benyon]

I apologise, but I really cannot, because I do not have much time left.

The statement of principles was mentioned by a great many hon. Members. We are working hard with the insurance industry and all relevant parties. A number of hon. Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee, came to our flood summit, out of which came three working parties, which will look at the financial risks from flooding, data provision, transparency and sharing, and the customer experience of resilience to flooding. We had a meeting with the Secretary of State to follow up that work, which we are progressing, and we will come forward with the solutions in the early part of next year—that is a real priority for the Department.

It is important to recognise that some houses that have insurance in name barely do so if we take the excess charges into account. We face a great many difficulties, but our understanding of flooding—in particular we have a greater understanding of surface water flooding—is starting to pay dividends. We can now get a picture, almost house by house, of where risk starts and finishes, and of what we can do. Sometimes the risk can be alleviated merely by putting a row of bricks on top of a wall or by blocking an entrance or configuring it differently, but we must make certain that all our plans are joined up. Our desire to protect the natural environment, which is strong, does not mean that we are flooding homes because we are not thinking of things in an holistic and joined-up way. All agencies are seized of that, and I will continue to drive it.

I am rather concerned by the eponymous nature of some of the proposals and the optimistic view that people might have of my abilities. I hesitate to take credit for so much that has been thrown at me, because it has been a team effort. I pay tribute to how the Environment Agency is approaching this important issue, although I can assure hon. Members that I work closely with it.

DEFRA has spent a lot of money on equipping emergency services and other organisations with training and equipment to deal with flood. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raised the issue of a statutory duty, but that is one of the few areas of the Pitt review that we have not taken forward. We have an open mind about it but, having said that, I cannot see why it makes a difference for a fire and rescue service to have a statutory duty. Every fire and rescue service that I have spoken to, and I have spoken to a lot, has done wonderful work when dealing with flood. We are equipping them and we are training. I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman with an open mind about whether a statutory duty would make a difference—the wording in the Pitt review is “as necessary”. Sir Ken Knight, the chief fire officer, has come forward with some proposals, and I would not mind discussing them with the hon. Gentleman in a less formal way, to see whether we can find a solution that satisfies everyone.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and other hon. Members made important comments and gave moving descriptions of flooding in their areas—descriptions I recognise from flooding in my own constituency. I hope that hon. Members from the south-west were pleased with the Chancellor’s words in the Budget, which showed a real commitment to deal with the unfairness that they so accurately feel on behalf of their constituents. I assure them that we are following through on that.

The hon. Member for Copeland made many important points. He talked about whether we were taking an holistic enough view and dealing with the problems upstream. He was absolutely right to say that. It is important that water companies, farmers, landowners, local authorities and the Environment Agency ensure that we use the natural environment where we can to prevent flooding further down.

We will not spook the investor when we come to reform of the water industry. We recognise that around £100 billion has been spent by investors in the water industry in the past 20 years, and we want to see much more of that.

With those remarks, I would like to leave some time for the Chair of the Select Committee.

Common Fisheries Policy

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for facilitating a useful meeting with fishermen in her constituency last week to hear their concerns about our under-10-metre consultation, which, like all things to do with fisheries, is welcomed massively at one end of the spectrum and treated with suspicion at the other. I want to ensure that we can keep as many happy as we can.

The point about the consultation is that it is a UK—or English, in this case—Government responsibility. We can carry it out and make changes that will advantage my hon. Friend’s fishermen and, I hope, not disadvantage others. The Commission paper offers opportunities to rebalance the industry where we feel it is necessary, without disadvantaging either side, through market mechanisms that will see the transfer of fishing opportunity between willing buyer and willing seller in a direction that fishermen in her constituency will find very attractive.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I welcome Commissioner Damanaki’s proposals and ask the Minister to confirm that he will support the proposal to establish a legal obligation to set fishing limits at sustainable levels by 2015. On the question of discards, the requirement to land all catch of specified species and the catch limits will effectively act as a ban on discarding the species most commonly associated with the problem, but will not tackle the problem for all the species. Notwithstanding the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), the Minister will know that if we are to assess stock levels and to obtain the scientific data that we need to consider on an ecosystems basis, that is the only way of achieving the legal—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

Wild Animals (Circuses)

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

On whose authority did the official at DEFRA phone up the lawyer of the European Circus Association to find out whether there was a preparation in the pipeline to make a legal challenge? Will he confirm that if that challenge continues to be in the pipeline, his Department will continue to do nothing, which gives the association a perverse incentive to make it last as long as possible?

[Mr Paice]

The answer to the first question is that my noble Friend Lord Henley is responsible for this policy within the Department. The answer to the second question, which is completely fallacious, is that we are not doing nothing. We have already made it clear that we will introduce a tough licensing regime soon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I am sure Members know this, but I should perhaps point out that my hon. Friend has a degree in estate management, and his constituency is therefore very blessed given its appetite for engagement in community forestry. Brandon wood is one of the best examples of community forestry, and I suggest that my hon. Friend should pass it directly to the IPF, because that panel is open to all members of the public, and part of its work will involve going around the country. He has an excellent opportunity to commend this example to the panel.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the best ways of getting local people further involved in woodland management would be by progressing the wood fuel strategy? Responsibility for that now lies with her colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change of course. Several months ago I had a meeting with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), at which it was agreed that the programme could be doubled, but that it was important that both Departments work together on this because it is important that both demand and supply are matched up and incentivised.

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the potential of wood fuel as part of a portfolio of renewable energy sources. We work very closely with our colleagues at DECC on this matter. We share a vision for the role of renewable energy, and I will address the wood fuel strategy with my DECC colleagues.

Fisheries

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell]

I agree, absolutely—this speech is becoming a duet between me and the Scottish National party, which is an interesting state of affairs. The problem that the hon. Gentleman points to is that simplistic solutions will not work. The problem with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s proposals is that they are simplistic. The EU has responded to them with another simplistic solution, which will not work either. It took the Norwegians 20 years to develop their techniques, and they did it in very different fisheries, with an emphasis on conserving the young, immature fish. Norway’s job has therefore been much easier, but it has taken it 20 years to eliminate discards. We have had 10 years of working to reduce discards, in which they have been reduced by 50%. That has happened partly, it has to be said, as a result of decommissioning, but also because of other measures, such as square-mesh panels, which were developed by the industry as a means of conservation.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Norwegians’ use of temporary real-time closures of areas when by-catch becomes excessive has served as an incentive for fishermen to use more selective gear? Does he also agree that selling fish caught illegally, without quota, through fishermen’s sales organisations—where the fishermen are entitled to only 20% of the revenue to cover the costs, thereby avoiding wastage and maintaining incentives to use selective gear by channelling profits back into fisheries—has been a key measure in achieving what he describes?

[Austin Mitchell]

I agree, absolutely. We have a lot to learn from the Norwegians, but the point is that the Norwegians control their own waters in the 200-mile limit around Norway, just as we should control the 200-mile limit—or the median line—around the British coast, but we do not. Therefore, we cannot enforce such measures. That is the problem with all these arguments.

The television programmes that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall did were fantastic. The great innovation—the great gimmick—of landing discards at Hastings and throwing them to the crowd on the beach, because landing them would have been illegal, was marvellous, because people took those fish home and cooked them. I wrote to Fearnley-Whittingstall and suggested that he should hire a cruiser and follow the fishing fleet around, picking up the discards and serving them as expensive meals to a wealthy clientele on the North sea coast. That kind of experiment would have been useful. However, his solution is simplistic; therefore, it will not work.

Following Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s pressure on fisheries policy—on which I again congratulate him—the EU has put forward another simplistic solution. What it is doing—I suspect rather cynically—is setting out the problem, throwing it back to the nation states and telling them to solve it with a ban on discards, which will not work and cannot work. The Minister cannot solve the problem, so we are in deadlock. The EU proposes measures that will not work and forces them on the nation states, which cannot enforce them because of the common fisheries policy, and nothing happens, which is likely to remain the outcome.

The British reduction of discards by more than 50% over 10 years was achieved through square-mesh panels, video observation of the fishermen, closing grounds in-season and cod recovery plans, which were submitted by the fishermen and approved by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. They were all painstaking, laborious techniques, but they have worked. That is the only way to do it, not through a simplistic ban, because fishermen will continue to discard.

[Austin Mitchell]

That is certainly true, and again, it illustrates the difficulties that we face. One attempt that Europe has made—the cod ban—has proved disastrous for enforcement and protecting stocks, not to mention avoiding discards. That is control from the centre. What we need in the EU now is a policy to address that, yet power is being taken away from the Council—at least we have an opportunity to put up a fight against any proposals in the Council, and to bargain and improve our position in negotiations—and transferred to the Commission. However, the commissioners have never knowingly handed power down to the nation states—or, in the case of fishing, to the regional advisory councils. The North sea RAC is doing a splendid job. If the power to manage stocks was conceded to it, it could eliminate discards. However, it is not doing that because in the final analysis, the EU will never hand over the necessary powers to allow the RACs or nation states to deal with the problem adequately. In those situations, discarding will continue because, under a discard ban, what is a fisherman who catches fish that are not on his quota supposed to do with them? It is inevitable that he will chuck them overboard, if he can do so unobserved. We cannot monitor every ship by satellite or closed-circuit television; that is just impossible. So this is an impossible plan and it will not work.

That is why I was loth to give my support to the early-day motion. There is a continuous conflict between the conservationists, whose aims I admire, and the needs of commercial fishing. We see this in the marine conservation areas. There is now an argument to make them areas in which there is either no fishing or very restricted fishing, but we must not turn the waters around the British coast into a patchwork quilt, with some areas where fisherman can catch and some where they cannot, or with different quotas for different areas involving limits on species. It is appalling that there is a proposal to ban fishing in the experimental areas that are being set up. We cannot do that.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the 2006 reorganisation of the Manguson Stevens Act in the US required the end of over-fishing by 2010? In fact, the National Marine Fisheries Service has now heralded the fact that that has taken place in US waters. That policy’s success was due to the requirement for new annual catch limits in every fishery, and the establishment of strict scientific guidelines on the limits of sustainability, within which annual catch limits could be set.

[Austin Mitchell]

That is so. We have set up our marine conservation areas, and I support them, but I do not support them as a means of restricting the opportunities for fishing.

I suppose that I had better bring my remarks to a conclusion, enthusiastic as I am to go on for hours, preventing all the other Members who want to raise matters from doing so. I shall simply say that the fishing industry has the greatest and the closest interest in proper conservation, because it has an interest in the sustainability of stocks. It wants the stocks to be there to hand on to the next generation of fishermen. That is why it was always important for us to have 200-mile limits to protect our fishing, in the way that Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, America, Canada and many other nations have been able to do. We cannot do that now, however, because Ted Heath foolishly handed these powers over, just like that, without argument, to Europe. The fishing industry wants sustainable catching as well as conservation measures, and it is the only body that can enforce them and ensure that they work, because it is in the interests of the fishermen to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

I know; I blame myself. I apologise for having drawn myself into the very cul-de-sac that I was saying was the reason why we failed to make progress before.

As a result of the regional advisory councils, we were able to develop measures such as the Trevose ground closure, around the north coast of my constituency, each spring, which ensures that large numbers of vessels are not going in and plundering the stocks in that area. We have seen a significant improvement in the health of several species following that measure. The proposal was originally made and instigated by local fishermen, but rolling it out required international agreement.

[Barry Gardiner]

I seek to bolster the hon. Gentleman’s position, not to attack it. Does he agree that if we are to have truly ecosystem-based management of stock, it must be based not on regional advisory councils but on regional management?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman emphasises my point. We need to move from advice to management. We have a far too centralised common fisheries policy and, as we have been saying for decades, we need to decentralise it.

The fundamental problem, as many hon. Members have said, is the blunt instrument of the quota system. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test implied, we do not want to replace that overnight with the blunt response of stopping all discards. That could have immediate catastrophic consequences. We need to move to a situation where there is no need for discards of dead fish from trawlers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

One hundred and fifty years ago, in 1861, using wooden boats and primitive technology, UK fishermen caught 12 to 15 times more cod in the North sea than they do today with sophisticated sonar to track the fish and extraordinarily advanced gear and nets to catch those fish. That is why this debate is important.

At the heart of the motion is the demand that CFP reforms adopt

“an ecosystems-based approach to fisheries management”.

Some people may misinterpret that as putting the benefit of the fish before the benefit of the fishers, but without sustainable fish stocks there is no sustainable fishing industry. The history of our coastline, sadly, bears witness to that, as fishing communities from Stonehaven to Newcastle, from Grimsby to Cornwall, have declined over the past century.

I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for pressing the issue both inside and outside the House, and to the GLOBE secretariat, whose work on a global oceans recovery strategy has been under way for the past two years as part of the International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems, which I chair. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that regard. The Minister has co-operated with the GLOBE commission, and I am delighted that he will respond to the debate. I am sure that he will wish to be constructive, as always.

Last night I attended the launch of Project Ocean at Selfridges. The Prince of Wales opened proceedings, followed by a private party attended by Elle Macpherson, the folk rock band Noah and the Whales—[Hon. Members: “Whale!”] It is not my normal Wednesday evening activity, and I have no doubt that I was invited only to add a bit of glamour to the event. How extraordinary that fish discards have now become so sexy. I pay tribute to Selfridges and to the work of the Zoological Society of London. I pay particular tribute to the work of Professor Jonathan Baillie and Professor Alex Rogers of Oxford university, not only for the sound science that they have brought to Project Ocean and their work on CFP reform, but for helping to popularise it in this way.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am terribly disappointed that I was unable to see my hon. Friend adding glamour at the event he referred to. Would he give some message to my constituents, who are particularly concerned about discards, on how Project Ocean will deal with that problem and what it can add?

[Barry Gardiner]

I am very pleased to do so. There are three key areas of discards, which are often not well understood: over-quota discards, which are calculated to be about 22%; undersized discards, which are calculated to be about 24%; and non-commercial discards, which are calculated to be about 54% of discards. I will deal with each of these in turn, but first I want to talk about the importance of the ecosystems-based approach.

The ecosystems-based approach is fundamental to sustainable environmental management. It establishes a strategy for the management and sustainable use of natural resources by considering them in the context of their role in the entire ecosystem. The current EU common fisheries policy and the EU marine strategy framework directive already commit the EU, in principle, to this ecosystems-based approach. The tragedy is that that has not been reflected in practice.

True ecosystems-based fisheries management would require systemic reform through the introduction of a regionalised management framework. A regionalised management system within Europe would divide the EU fisheries into management regions according to ecosystems, rather than nations, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) suggested. Unfortunately, fish do not carry passports about their person. They do not know when they are travelling from one nation’s waters into another’s. Therefore, one must look at the ecosystem and not simply the national boundaries.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My simple point is that nothing will happen in terms of the proper management of fisheries without self-interest—the self-interest of the member states and of their fishing industries. If a simple regional and scientific basis is used, that essential self-interest will not be built into the system.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am glad that my hon. Friend makes that point, because that is exactly what I wish to challenge. It seems to me that we can assure the fishing industry and fishers that there is real self-interest in promoting this approach.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

No, I am already pressed enough for time.

Certain decision-making powers would be devolved to regional management bodies, in consultation with local stakeholders, in order to tailor the application of central policy objectives for EU fisheries to the specifics of each ecosystem. A fully regionalised management system would include the following features: quotas allocated on the basis of ecosystem regions in order to manage fishing pressure according to the necessities of the different ecosystems; regular scientific assessment of all marine species, not just fish stocks, within a given eco-region to establish the impact of fishing on the ecosystem as a whole; quota allocation on the basis of eco-regions with different licences used in different ecosystem regions and no transfers between the regions.

The discards in the North sea are between 40% and 60% of total catch, while in other European fisheries, such as that for west of Scotland cod, they can total as much as 90%. The vast majority of fish discarded overboard of course die. In an effort to limit fishing to sustainable levels, EU regulations under the common fisheries policy prohibit the landing of commercial species above a given annual quota. However, in practice this often results in the discarding of thousands of tonnes of saleable fish—the over-quota discards—as fishers are forced to cast overboard their excess or non-target catch before landing, so as not to contravene EU law.

The result is a policy that fails to prevent fish mortality above levels deemed biologically sustainable. That is a particular problem in mixed fisheries—the majority of EU fisheries—where fishers will catch more than their landing quota for one species as they continue fishing for others that swim with it, in order to maintain fishing throughout the year. The Government estimate that over-quota species account for about 22% of English and Welsh discards.

The introduction of catch quotas in place of the current landing quotas would make fishers accountable for their total catch, rather than for what they land, thereby eliminating the legal catch and discard of over-quota fish. The current CFP also prohibits the landing of quota species below a certain minimum landing size—MLS—to ensure that they are not caught before reaching maturity, thus preserving the reproductive capacity of the stock. In practice, however, many under-sized fish are still caught and simply discarded at sea. An estimated 24% of discards are quota species below legal MLS, so too small to land. The introduction of minimum catch sizes in place of minimum landing sizes has been successful in Norway in incentivising the use of selective gear in fisheries and minimising the catch and mortality of under-sized fish.

An estimated 54% of English and Welsh discards are of non-commercial species caught as by-catch. Stimulating the creation of new or stronger markets for under-utilised sustainable species such as dab and coley in UK fisheries could result in the elimination of unnecessary waste, greater profits for fishers and a reduction in fishing pressure on other more popular and over-exploited species. We need to be careful, however, that that policy does not encourage the creation of markets for species whose population could not support a sudden increase in harvesting.

There is currently no obligation to conduct regular stock assessments for most non-commercial species in EU waters, as they are not subject to quota restrictions, so there is little understanding of the impact that increased fishing of them would have on their stocks and on the wider ecosystem. The first priority of any policy that aims to eliminate discards and improve demand for under-utilised species, therefore, should be to mandate regular stock assessments for all species, with a view to introducing management plans, including catch quotas, for all species caught in EU fisheries.

At the Johannesburg world summit on sustainable development in 2002, the EU committed to achieving a maximum sustainable yield for all fish stocks by 2015 at the latest, but in 2010 it estimated that 72% of its fisheries remained overfished, with 20% fished beyond safe biological limits, risking the wholesale collapse of those fisheries.

The EU marine strategy framework directive requires that all EU fisheries achieve good environmental status by 2020, which includes the attainment of sustainable fishing levels for all stocks. The European Commission requests scientific advice for the establishment of fisheries management plans on the basis of sustainability, but the European Council is under no obligation to adhere to that advice when agreeing total annual quotas for stocks. The result is that the European Council sets total allowable catch limits that are on average 34% higher than the scientifically recommended sustainable limits.

Ensuring that all fish and shellfish are harvested at sustainable levels is an absolute prerequisite of the future profitability and survival of EU fisheries. By requiring the delivery of that target by 2015, we will ensure that the EU fulfils its international and domestic commitments to achieve sustainable fisheries and end overfishing.

A legal requirement to end overfishing of all fish and shellfish by 2015 will necessitate the following key measures: first, rendering scientific advice binding, thus preventing quotas from exceeding biologically sustainable limits; and secondly, introducing stock assessments and management plans for all fish and shellfish, including non-commercial species that are currently unmanaged, in order to establish sustainable limits for harvesting.

Co-management is an approach whereby Government authorities involve local communities and other stakeholders in management decision making, monitoring and surveillance. The approach aims to encourage co-operation and a shared sense of responsibility, and it has been shown to improve compliance with regulations as well as to improve the effectiveness of management measures, because it draws upon community knowledge to address local socio-economic and ecological issues.

The establishment of regional advisory councils is cited as a key success of the 2002 CFP reform, because they have served as forums for stakeholders to inform policy implementation at the regional level, but they have no decision-making powers.

Small-scale and artisanal fishing represents a vital link between the industry and historical coastal fishing communities, and often utilises lower-impact methods—more environmentally sustainable methods of fishing that draw on local traditional knowledge. A future common fisheries policy must reverse the balance of incentives by allocating access rights to fisheries on the basis of environmental sustainability, so giving priority to vessels that utilise selective gear and low-impact methods of fishing. By enabling the UK to introduce higher standards of management and conservation for UK and foreign fishing vessels within its inshore fisheries, without recourse to the European Commission, we would regain powers to determine and manage our coastal marine ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) spoke of the importance of ITQs—individual transferable quotas—and the problems that will arise from them. Under this proposal, which is probably the most dramatic in impact of any EU proposal, skippers would be guaranteed shares of national quotas for periods of at least 15 years, which they could trade among themselves—even, if the relevant national Government agree, with fleets from other countries. This is already practised on a smaller scale in several EU member states, including the UK, but it has been taken much further in other countries.

A global survey published three years ago showed that fisheries managed using ITQs were half as likely to collapse as others, which is one of the reasons why the Commission is so enthusiastic about them. However, the blanket nature of its proposals gives rise to serious concerns, and I echo those that the hon. Gentleman expressed. Ecologically, ITQs diminish overfishing and seek to protect the sustainability of fishing in the area concerned, but experience shows that they can give rise to the privatisation of fisheries. That is a very serious point, which the Minister has to take on board.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Barry Gardiner]

I have no more time left, so I cannot give way to the hon. Gentleman.