UK Fisheries Policy

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Thank you, Mr Paisley. May I begin my thanking my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) and congratulating him on securing this debate? I know that this is very important to him, as a fellow Cornish MP. All of us, including my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) and for St Ives (Derek Thomas), are very aware of the importance of the industry to our area.

We have had many contributions from Members from a whole range of coastal communities, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), who has probably got more fisheries in his constituency than the rest of us put together. It is a huge industry in his constituency. We have also had very thoughtful contributions from many Members, including my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who made some important points. The last reform of the CFP, which he was instrumental in, established some important principles. As we leave the European Union and the CFP, it is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that the principles behind policies such as fishing sustainably, using MSY as a key target and making a legal commitment to do so, the discard ban and the landing obligation were right.

Several hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), asked for an update on the situation. He will have noticed that we published our agricultural Command Paper today, and when it comes to fisheries, he does not have much longer to wait. That paper is well advanced: various drafts are being worked on and hon. Members can expect it to be published later in spring. My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Queen’s Speech set out a clear commitment for a fisheries Bill in this Session. The intention is for it to be introduced later this year, possibly—probably—before the summer recess. That is the timescale we are working to.

My right hon. Friend asked whether we would be ready in the event that we come out of the European Union at the end of March 2019 without any agreement, including without an implementation period. The answer is yes. On all fronts, Government are working on contingency plans to ensure that we are ready. In the case of fisheries, that predominantly means ensuring that we plan to have adequate capacity for processing catch certificates, for example, which will be important for our export trade, and adequate enforcement capacity to police our exclusive economic zone.

As we leave the European Union, the international legal position is straightforward and beyond doubt. Under the UN convention on the law of the sea, the UK becomes an independent coastal state, just like the Faroe Islands, Norway and Iceland. That means that we take control of our exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles or the median line, in which we have responsibility for managing access and managing that resource. UNCLOS also requires us to co-operate with our neighbours on shared resources and shared stocks, which we intend to do anyway.

Several hon. Members mentioned the 1964 London fisheries convention. Last July, under the terms of that convention, we gave two years’ notice of our intention to quit. That historic agreement gave us some access to some member states in our six to 12-mile zone, so it seemed important to withdraw from it at the same time as we review access arrangements.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) pointed out, there is a huge imbalance in the apportionment of fishing opportunities. In each year between 2012 and 2016, the EU fleet took 760,000 tonnes of fish on average from UK waters. In that same period, the average annual take by the UK fleet from EU waters was 90,000 tonnes. We have been clear that, as we regain control of access and the management of our resources, our intention is to rebalance that arrangement.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) pointed out that the European Union’s Committee on Fisheries—PECH—would like things to stay the same, but it would say that. Why would it not, when the deal is so imbalanced? However, at the end of the day, it does not really matter what the European Union asks for, but what we are prepared to grant it. That is the approach that we will take. We will work in an honourable and sensible way with our European partners, while recognising that we will have control of our exclusive economic zone.

[Huw Merriman]

On that basis, does the Minister agree that we can have our fishcake and eat it?

[George Eustice]

That is a very good way of putting it.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall talked about some of Fishing for Leave’s proposals. I have met Fishing for Leave on several occasions. Our officials in the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have also met with it about its proposals.

At the heart of it, one of the things I have learned as a fisheries Minister is that nothing ever quite works—there are pros and cons to everything, because the marine environment is incredibly complex. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) pointed out, quota regimes tend to work well where there are single-species fisheries, particularly for pelagic fish such as mackerel. It would be inconceivable to move away from a quota regime if we were targeting those pelagic fish. An effort regime can work better where there is a highly mixed fishery with different species and where there is an inshore fleet with a limited quota, but it is quite bureaucratic to send small inshore fishermen out with a quota of 20 kilos of cod for an entire month and expect them to manage with that. We are looking at some of those ideas.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

With regard to mixed fisheries, if we did have an effort regime, would it have the flexibility to compensate fishermen by allowing them to land the bass catches, for example, that they find in their nets?

[George Eustice]

If I have time, I will return to the bass. In principle, it probably does not make a lot of difference, because it would depend on the bycatch provisions.

There are pros and cons to those systems, and we are looking closely at them, as well as at the hybrid model that my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall outlined. It is something that we would want to introduce carefully—my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, pointed out that his Ramsgate trial was not altogether successful.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall raised the issue of trade, but I regard that as a separate negotiation: there is a discussion on fisheries management and a separate discussion on trade.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

There is a tension between having devolved matters in fishing and agriculture and a UK approach to trade. Does the Minister agree that there needs to be some reconciliation of that tension? How does he propose to deal with that?

[George Eustice]

Fisheries negotiations are international, so they are a UK competence, but we always take members of the devolved Administrations with us as part of our delegation. Trade and fisheries are both UK competences, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall that they should be kept separate.

We have a huge trade deficit in food with the European Union. A sensible basis for the discussion is that we will buy its food, if it buys ours. However, the difference in fish is not as big as some envisage, although we have a trade surplus. We export just over £1 billion of fish to the EU, but we import just short of £1 billion.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall mentioned the issue of spider crabs and promoting other fish species. A levy body called Seafish is responsible for that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[George Eustice]

I will try to make a little headway, otherwise we will not get to anybody else.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall also mentioned pulse trawling. I have previously made clear that we have concerns about that and I have asked CEFAS to look at it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous)—whose constituency is the home of CEFAS, the world’s leading centre for science in fisheries—raised the issue of the small inshore fleet, for which he has been a consistent campaigner. Through the discard quota uplift, we have already sought to give the inshore fleet a significant quota increase, but leaving the EU is another opportunity to look at some of those management operations.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) mentioned the complex issue of skates and rays. There are over 20 different species of skates and rays, some of which are prohibited, and it is very difficult to get their management right. Our long-term objective is to break the composite total allowable catch down into individual species.

On the issue of bass, which my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall and for North Cornwall raised, there should have been a larger bycatch provision for trawlers, as there was last year. We did not agree with the Commission’s approach, but we were unable to win the argument this time.

We have had a good debate. It was clearly not long enough, because nearly every hon. Member had their contribution cut short. I reassure hon. Members that we will have plenty of time to discuss the issue in future.

I have time to mention the issue of trade from countries such as Norway. Several hon. Members pointed to the small tariffs on those countries, but they ignored the autonomous tariff-rate quota allowances, which are tariff-free quotas that we could create and that the EU creates. On species such as cod, Norway does not pay tariffs and we import large quantities of fish from Iceland that is tariff free under the preferential trade or ATQ—autonomous tariff quota—system. There are many devices that we can use in international trade to deal with those issues.

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, and no doubt we will have many more such debates in the months ahead.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered future UK fisheries policy.