Fisheries Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Owen Paterson

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock)—it is always good news when she finishes. In a competitive field, fishing is a clear winner of the stakes of the area in which the EU has shown maximum incompetence and caused maximum damage. I was made the shadow Fisheries Minister a long time ago, way back in 2004. I travelled all around the coast of the United Kingdom, down to South East Cornwall and up to Whalsay in Orkney and Shetland. I also went right across from east to west, seeing really successful fisheries in Norway, the Faroes, Iceland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and down the coast of the United States, and I went to the Falklands. My conclusion, which I do not resile from, is that the common fisheries policy is a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster. It is beyond reform, and I do not resile from a single word of my Green Paper, written back in January 2005.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

On the common fisheries policy, just in case the right hon. Gentleman should be tempted to try to rewrite history, I hope that he acknowledges that despite all the bluster that we are hearing from Government Members about the CFP, the Conservative party’s fingerprints are all over it. The Conservative party was compliant in its creation and has been actively implementing the CFP for the past 40 years. Will he acknowledge his party’s role in implementing it for the past four decades?