Oral Answers to Questions

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words. When interviewed at five o’clock in the morning, I would be hard pressed to recognise my own children, let alone fish stocks. I am grateful to my friends and enemies who have sent me fish charts, with which I wiled away the long winter evenings. He rightly says that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem; there are opportunities to increase effort control, but we also have to deal with the problem of quotas. That is a problem in a mixed fishery and it has been part of the driver towards the number of discards, which we are so keen to reduce.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I know that the Minister is well aware of the pioneering efforts made by the Scottish white fish fleet and the Scottish Government in recent years to reduce dramatically the number of discards going into the North sea—the relevant figure is about 30%. People in coastal communities are pleased that the issue is now getting the wider prominence it deserves and has deserved for a long time. I am grateful to him for outlining his Government’s commitment to radical reform of the common fisheries policy, but I still question whether there really is the political will across the European Union to make the kind of changes necessary to tackle discards. We welcome his commitment, but what are the realistic assessments—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We do have to have a question. I call the Minister.