Common Fisheries Policy (Reform)

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate. I know that the fishing industry is of huge importance in his constituency. I welcomed the opportunity that I had last year to make the long journey to visit his constituency and meet industry representatives.

I will try to cover as many of the points raised by hon. Members as I can. However, I will first give my reflections on my job from the two years that I have been Fisheries Minister. The marine environment is incredibly complex. No man-made policy designed to manage it and deliver sustainable fisheries will ever be perfect. The science will never be perfect, and we will never be able to pick up every interaction between different elements of the marine environment. If we want sustainable fisheries, there is no alternative but to have some kind of catch limit on vessels and some kind of quota system. Whether we were in or out of the common fisheries policy, we would have that quota system, just as Norway, the Faroe Islands and other states pursue catch limits, and we would still have arguments with other countries about allocation of fish stocks and seek reciprocal access arrangements.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland asked about forums for discussion with countries such as Norway and Iceland. Those forums exist. The coastal states meeting takes place each autumn, where we argue about, for example, the allocation of mackerel quotas in his part of the world. There is already an EU-Norway agreement that precedes the discussions at the December Council.

We should all pay tribute to the great work of my predecessor in this post, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who I believe made some important breakthroughs on reform of the common fisheries policy. Unlike the negotiations on reform of the common agricultural policy, which were very difficult and where we made little progress, even I, a strong Eurosceptic, recognise that good progress was made on CFP reform.

Four key things were delivered. First, there was a legally binding commitment to fish sustainably—to fish at MSY by 2016 where possible, and everywhere by 2020. Secondly, there was the discipline of a discard ban to ban the shameful practice of discards. Thirdly, in order to help deliver the policy and make it a reality, there was the regionalisation of policy making, so that nation states multilaterally agreed between themselves how they should manage the waters in which they have a shared interest, with the role of the Commission reduced to simply rubber-stamping those agreements at the end. That is really important. Although it is sometimes difficult to get member states to reach those agreements, it forces them to work through their differences, and these are the countries that actually have an interest in an individual fishery.

The final important element in making the discard ban work, as a number of colleagues have alluded to, was the introduction of flexibilities in the quota system. Those flexibilities include the ability to bank and borrow quota from one year to the next, which has been extended, and an inter-species flexibility, so that if a fisherman runs out of quota for one species—say, haddock—he can count some of his cod quota against haddock within certain limits. There were exemptions involving survivability on certain flat fish, for instance, and a quota uplift to take account of the fact that fishermen are no longer discarding. The deal to the fishermen is, “Stop discarding the fish and we will increase your quota by the amount that we estimate has been discarded previously.”

We should also recognise that good progress has been made. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) said, the most recent assessment shows that we now have 32 stocks being fished at MSY. That is up from 26 in 2014 and from only around 13, if we go back around a decade. That progress is starting to feed through into benefits for the fishing industry. In relation to the North sea, last year’s December Council was much easier, and there were recommendations for increases. In fact, in certain species, such as cod and haddock, there is a similar situation this year, so where we have shown restraint, we are starting to see benefits accruing to the fishing industry. I always try to get this point across to fishermen: “If you show restraint now and allow stocks to recover and achieve that maximum sustainable yield, you are safeguarding your own financial future, because you will have more fish tomorrow.”

We have made good progress with the regional groups. A number of people have mentioned the importance of getting the industry involved, and I confirm that there is an industry regional group. The regional groups have been successful in developing the discard plans, both for the pelagic species, which is now in place, and for the demersal landing obligation, which was submitted in May. Following on from that discard plan, we now have the multi-annual plan for management, for instance, of the Baltic area, and we will shortly be beginning work to take forward ideas for our own plan. Therefore, good progress has been made, and as we made clear in our manifesto, our primary objective during this Parliament is to ensure that we get the hard-won CFP reform properly implemented.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland commented that some of the science is out of date, and it will not surprise him to learn that I hear that all the time from fishermen. The reality is that we always try to make sure that we have the most up-to-date science. At last year’s December Council, we brought scientific results that were collected during the month of November/December straight to the Council. ICES always tries to project trends, so when it publishes its advice for a particular Council, it is not as dated as people suggest, because it factors into that the ongoing trends. I sometimes hear fishermen say that it goes where the fish are; that it goes to the same part of the ocean each year when it does its surveys. That is true, but some kind of basic yardstick is needed, which is consistent from one year to the next, so there is a control. In addition to that, we put scientists on actual fishing vessels, so that they can see fishing activity and the stocks that fishermen are landing.

The right hon. Gentleman and a number of colleagues asked about the renegotiation and the Prime Minister’s plans to renegotiate our relationship with the EU. The Prime Minister probably would not thank me if, here in a Westminster Hall debate, I were to add something to his renegotiation list, but I will say that, in common with the CAP, we have regular reforms of the common fisheries policy. They happen every 10 years. The next one is due to commence around 2019 and to be implemented from 2022, so there is a natural timetable for the next reform of the CFP.

Although our focus now is on making the existing reform work, I can say that the next reform might look at a couple of areas—it is too early to say whether it will. The first is to move from the rather arbitrary single-stock quota system to something a bit broader that recognises that biomass would be a natural step forward from MSY—but that is difficult to achieve. The second is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and a number of colleagues mentioned, to look at the issue of relative stability. The reference period for the quota system that we have was set between 1973 and 1978. It is undoubtedly dated. However, we should not enter that venture lightly, because many other countries would believe that they have a claim for more fisheries, and we always have to be cautious that we are not unlocking something that would leave our industry at a disadvantage. They were set in that way at that time to end disputes about who should have access to what.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the Minister give way?

[George Eustice]

I will carry on, if I may. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) gave us a very detailed history lesson, and I will not challenge her historical knowledge of these things. However, we should recognise, as the shadow Minister said, that fish stocks were in a really bad place in the 1930s. We had suffered overfishing. Although we hear now about the discard ban and how the common fisheries policy created that, the truth is that as long ago as 1942, George Orwell was complaining about the discarding of fish. The fish stocks were basically saved by the second world war. We then had a period of plenty for the fishing industry during the ’50s and ’60s, but we then needed to move on to a quota system.

Along with a number of other colleagues, my hon. Friend mentioned the issue of access. She is right that when we joined the EU there was equal access in the 12 to 200- mile, or median, line in our waters, but access to the six to 12-mile line was for countries that had access agreements prior to accession. It is also important to recognise that we have access to other European countries’ waters. If someone were to talk the French industry, they would find that it complains, usually to the fishing Minister, about British access to, for instance, the bay of Biscay and the baie de Seine, which is important to part of our fleet. We also have access to waters in Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney made a very important point about the under-10s, which I recognise. We have consulted on top-slicing 25% of the quota uplift for stocks and allocating that to the under-10s, on the basis that at the moment, they have to discard quite a lot of the fish that they catch because they do not have enough quota. He is right that during the reference period in the late 1990s, there was patchy reporting, which means that the under-10s do not really have a fair deal at the moment. We have already taken on Mr Bumble, as he would have it, and we have had legal challenges with the producer organisations to realign some of the quota. We will be doing more on that as well.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) raised the issue of choke species, among other things. The flexibilities that we have in the common fisheries policy can, I believe—if deployed correctly—deal with those problems. We start by not having every species covered from year one with the discard ban, and with the key species that define the fishery. For instance, in Scotland, fishermen often cite hake. Hake does not define the fishery in the North sea, and it is a species that would be returned to later in that window, closer to 2020. However, I was pleased to meet her, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) earlier, with representatives from fish processors in her constituency. I recognise its importance there.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr) mentioned relations with the Scottish Government. We are fully engaged and work very closely with my opposite number, Richard Lochhead. He attends trilaterals with the Commission at December Council and we will be working closely together, leading up to that.

Finally, the shadow Minister asked lots of questions that I cannot answer in full now, but he also asked about the precautionary principle. Of all the countries in the European Union, the UK has the strongest history of relying on and arguing the science, so we do have a science-led approach to fisheries management.