Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and George Eustice

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

While the common fisheries policy does not allow the exemption of a whole fleet, there are other exemptions—for instance, exemptions for species that survive after being discarded, and if handling discards is disproportionately costly. On quota, we are in the process of permanently realigning some of it from producer organisations to the inshore fleet. In addition, as part of this consultation, we are considering giving the inshore fleet a greater share of the quota uplift that forms part of the CFP.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Given the collapse of our bass stocks, and the fact that the latest figures show a worrying 30% increase in the number of commercial landings of bass, will the Minister please finally take meaningful action to save our bass? Will he, for instance, provide for an immediate increase in the minimum landing size, which is something that I signed off 10 years ago when I was the fisheries Minister?

[George Eustice]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has been pursuing this issue. As he will know, at the December Council we argued strongly for measures to be taken on bass. We pressed the European Commission to take emergency measures to ban pair trawling, which was done in the new year. We are currently discussing with other member states and the Commission the possibility of a bag limit for anglers, and also catch limits for the remainder of the commercial fleet. I can also tell the right hon. Gentleman that we are considering raising the minimum landing size nationally.

UK Sea Bass Stocks

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and George Eustice

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[George Eustice]

It was the CEFAS report of 2012, which was commissioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, which we will put in the Library. That report concluded that a minimum landing size increase applied at European level could have quite a big impact, but pointed out that, because a lot of fishing mortality is caused by foreign vessels in UK waters, a unilateral, UK-only minimum landing size would not necessarily have the desired effect.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I urge the Minister, in the last couple of minutes, to discuss the designation of bass as a recreational species.

[George Eustice]

I was going to try to cover some of the other points.

First, on the value of recreational angling, I should declare an interest, because my brother fishes bass in Cornwall and regularly lobbies me on bass stocks. Recreational angling has a significant economic value. At the end of last week, I met Charles Clover, the chairman of the Blue Marine Foundation, to discuss its latest report, and we recognise the value of that. What I am sceptical of, though, is having an outright ban on commercial fishing sectors, as has been trialled in Ireland. Anecdotally, there are quite a lot of reports of by-catch in Ireland and of bass having to be discarded because they are a by-catch of other fisheries. Ireland has found that, in the absence of a wider European agreement, just having a total ban on commercial fishing has not been effective.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) talked about me facing down legal advice. I can say that, on this issue, unlike on many other issues in DEFRA, where there is frequently legal advice about European law, I have not come across any particular legal advice that is an obstacle. This issue is much more about the best way to deliver the outcome we want, and although there are difficulties and frustrations in negotiating such outcomes at a European level, we can start by having effective measures at that level, which we can then supplement with our own national measures, and I intend to do both those things.

In the 10 seconds I have left, let me say that we should recognise the role that IFCAs can play. Many already implement their own measures to protect bass. Finally, I will be going to Europe and to the Fisheries Council to get the best deal we can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and George Eustice

Thursday 27th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Last November I attended the launch of Sea Angling 2012, which did just that. It found that, in 2012, English anglers had spent £831 million on the sport. When indirect and induced effects are accounted for, that could support a total of more than £2 billion of spending. The report is available on the Marine Management Organisation’s website.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Will the Government please have another look at the exclusion of 70,000 leaseholders from their new flood insurance scheme? Most of those people are on modest or low incomes, and a number of them live in my constituency. As a result of their exclusion from the scheme, they either face massively increased premiums or cannot obtain insurance at all.

Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and George Eustice

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I start by acknowledging that the discussions and negotiations on this matter have been incredibly difficult and contentious for those of us who have been close to them. It would be fair to say that no love has been lost between the editors on the one hand and the Hacked Off campaign group on the other. It is also no secret that immediately after the Leveson report was published, I found myself in the slightly unusual situation of being closer to the position of the Opposition Front-Bench team than to that of my own Front-Bench team.

[Mr Bradshaw]

At the risk of doing dreadful damage to the hon. Gentleman’s career, may I congratulate him on his courage and attention to detail on this issue? To be perfectly honest, without the work that he and other Government Members did, we would not have produced an agreement today that was compliant with Leveson.

[George Eustice]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for doing that damage. Before I move on, it is important to note that all party leaders have behaved very responsibly in this matter and I would like to give credit to the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), for the way in which she has approached it; she genuinely tried to seek agreement in a very difficult situation. I find myself in the unusual, almost unique, position of agreeing even with the Liberal Democrats. I speak as someone who campaigned against the euro and dislodged a Lib Dem MP to get elected here. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I campaigned against the alternative vote and then voted against Lords reform to boot. On this issue, however, I have been able to work with the Liberal Democrats.

Most of all, I want to thank and congratulate the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and, indeed, the Minister for Government Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), because it is good to be re-united with my own party on this issue. The Prime Minister told me back in November not to worry, as he had a plan to deliver Leveson, and I think that what is before the House today does deliver the Leveson proposals—perhaps even in a slightly better way than in Leveson’s own plan, as I shall explain in a few moments.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) pointed out, the important thing to understand about the Leveson report is that it explicitly said that statutory regulation of the press was not being recommended. Rather, Leveson was recommending a system that was about self-organised, voluntary regulation, to which news publications would be encouraged to subscribe voluntarily. He recommended statute to do two quite simple things. One was to establish the right incentives to join such a body, and that is the protection afforded through exemplary fines and costs; I am delighted that those will be debated later today. The second was simply to establish an independent public body that would judge a regulator—not every week, every month or every year, but every two to three years—on whether it was working effectively and meeting a certain set of criteria.

This may appear a rather ancient device to achieve what we want, but it is undoubtedly the case that a body established by royal charter is an independent public body that can perform the task equally well. There is one important advantage of establishing the body in this way, and that is that the press are more comfortable with it. Before people say, “Well, we should not be doing what the press want,” it is important to realise that in Lord Justice Leveson’s own plan he said that this would be a voluntary system. If we want publications to join something voluntarily and to seek recognition under a system, there will be a benefit in their being comfortable with it—provided, of course, that we get the detail right.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) picked up on some detailed points that I would like to touch on. He said that all the crimes committed related to defamation and breaches of privacy, so that the measures before us will do nothing to address those problems. That is not right, because what we have before us establishes an arbitral arm, which is a new thing, and it will provide affordable or even free adjudication on issues where there is a cause of action that previously only millionaires or celebrities could afford to take up through the courts.

My right hon. Friend also seemed to suggest that it was a bad thing for newspapers to make corrections and put right errors, but in all the difficult negotiations we have had the press did not raise this as a problem; indeed, it is what the PCC already does. There is nothing new about this. The criteria in the charter explicitly say that pre-publication advice is simply that—just advice, with no obligation on anyone to take it. A regulator will not have the explicit power to prevent anyone from publishing anything.

The £1 million fines are reserved for very serious and systematic breaches of the code, after prolonged investigations have taken place. I personally believe that we will not see many people being fined £1 million. Whenever I hear people mention them, I am reminded of the Austin Powers film in which Dr Evil says that he is going to hold the world to ransom for $1 million. What we have is a backstop power if there are really serious breaches, but what we are likely to see—this is a good thing—are more prominent apologies, corrections or perhaps lead page corrections for serious breaches.