Oral Answers to Questions

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to ensure in his discussions with local delivery bodies that the projects now being put in place by the Government are delivered effectively in his local area. If he has any concerns about that, I will of course be happy to take that up locally.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

18. Towns in my constituency, such as Hade Edge and Marsden, are still struggling with poor broadband provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that with snow coming and threatening to cut off businesses in such rural communities, strong broadband connections are vital for our local rural economies?

[Dan Rogerson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that broadband is crucial for the future of the rural economy. He sets out that if other communication links are cut for any reason, businesses will be even more reliant on it, so it is absolutely right that we press forward with it. I hope that communities in his local area will receive the benefits of schemes that we are putting in place nationally.

Upland Sheep Farmers

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Glyn Davies]

That is a very good point. Earlier I mentioned the description by the Prince’s Trust of the circumstances that we were experiencing before the snowfall. A number of elements, connected with the weather, the Schmallenberg disease and other issues, had combined to put the sheep in a very difficult position. The businesses of the farmers who were hit by the huge snowfall, however, have been put under real threat.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising the issue of the plight of sheep farmers; my Pennine constituency was also badly hit by the snow. Does he agree, however, that sheep farmers were already struggling because a wet summer had reduced the quality of hay feed? Some of them told me that they were having to rely on sheep nuts and sugar beet shreds, both of which cost about £7 a bag. They were already challenged by the financial cost of making up for a very wet summer before the snow hit.

[Glyn Davies]

I agree, and I was interested by my hon. Friend’s reference to sheep nuts. Lorries have not been able to deliver them, and everyone else wants them to feed to their cattle. A huge shortage of food has made a disastrous position even worse.

Horsemeat (Food Fraud)

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this needs resolving fast. I do not think any greater unity of intent could be seen than in my conversations today. Minister Le Foll from France was emphatic: the moment I suggested the meeting, he was determined to come along. We are quite clear that we all have an alliance of interest in resolving this issue as fast as possible. The hon. Gentleman is right that this issue could damage confidence, but I stress again that this is a case of fraud and mis-labelling: it is not a problem with food safety.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I very much welcome the wider debate about where our food comes from. Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the increased popularity of shop local campaigns, local food co-operatives and farmers’ markets, all of which are booming in my constituency?

[Mr Paterson]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. I think shopping local is good: it is good for animal welfare, good for food quality and good for local employment. I strongly support the initiatives my hon. Friend mentions.

Rural Communities

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Managing housing stock effectively is absolutely right. We need a supply of retirement bungalows so that people can move out of three or four-bedroom houses and live in their own area. I am a great believer in encouraging people to move, not browbeating them. It is essential to have such housing in an area.

I congratulate the Minister on what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been doing about red tape in farming and agriculture. We want to extend that beyond farming to all small businesses. We are a nation of shopkeepers and small businesses, and nowhere are they more essential than in the countryside. We need much less regulation so that businesses can thrive.

Food prices are rising. Although many people might not welcome that, it is a stimulus to the countryside in many respects. It stimulates not only agriculture but food processing. I would welcome the Government announcement that we hope for in the Queen’s Speech of a grocery trade adjudicator to ensure that the right proportion of the prices that we pay in shops returns to those who produce and process the food. That is absolutely essential.

I know that I will not make myself entirely popular with those who represent constituencies involved with the oil industry when I say that what has driven up the price of petrol at the pumps is the fact that crude oil prices have risen. If crude oil prices have risen globally, the companies are making vast profits, because their investment has not increased. We should tap into that a little more in order to reduce fuel prices in the countryside. Fuel is not a luxury; it is a necessity. I do not care how much money the Government invest in rural bus services; in many places in my constituency, if one waited for a bus, it would never come, and if it came, it would probably be going in the wrong direction. That might be facetious, but it is absolutely true. We must face up to the reality that in many small rural areas, bus companies will never run efficiently. Where we can make that happen, we must, but we need to consider it.

Tourism is hugely valued and is linked with agriculture and the countryside, and we must help it. I welcome the Government money for that in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I return to the start of my hon. Friend’s speech, which is positive about our rural communities. I agree that they are absolutely thriving. Over the Easter period, I visited an engineering business in my constituency that is expanding so fast—it has 70 workers now—that it cannot find premises. We have 11 micro-breweries in my Yorkshire constituency, and a new dye house—so there is lots of vibrancy in our rural communities.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. The intervention is too long.

Welfare of Laying Hens Directive

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Miss McIntosh]

The Minister will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments, and I invite him to respond. It is perverse to introduce regulatory costs for manufacturers, retailers and processers at this time.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Miss McIntosh]

I would like to make some progress.

I put it to the Minister that he has three options before 1 January. The first is to do nothing, as he set out in his recent written statement to the House, and to let the ban lapse before it even takes effect and to offload the costs of policing processed products—not shelled eggs, but eggs in powdered, liquid and other forms. That would be unacceptable.

The second option is to take unilateral action, and the Commission clearly states that the Minister would be entirely within his rights to do so. Indeed, he said in the Government’s response to the Committee’s ninth report on the welfare of laying hens directive:

“We will be pressing to ensure that the Commission initiate infraction proceedings against Member States whose caged egg producers are non-compliant”.

He went on to say that the Government would also consider taking unilateral action:

“The Government has thoroughly investigated the possibility of taking unilateral action and bringing in a UK ban on all imports of egg and egg products which have been produced in conventional cages in other Member States”.

What has changed the Minister’s mind between the quite recent date of publication—25 November—and today? The Minister should take unilateral action, rejecting shell eggs or egg products in powdered, liquid or any other form, based on the legal letter and the legal basis of the directive, backed up by the commissioner’s response to the Committee.

The third option that I invite the Minister to consider is to tour European capitals. It is not up to members of the Committee. We had a warm response from the incoming President, the Danish Agriculture Minister, when we made a visit two weeks ago. She asked the Committee which other capitals we had visited, and which other Ministers we had met. I regret to say that I had to respond that we are not allowed out very often, so it is not really the role of the Committee. It is the role of Ministers from the 14 compliant member states to tour member states to secure—if the Minister does not want to take unilateral action—a multilateral ban on their part. There are 14 or 16 other countries—we are not entirely sure how many—who will not comply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with the shadow Minister; it is a case of name and shame, and we need to know where the eggs have come from. I have looked at where all the beef, lamb and so on in supermarkets comes from. It would be good to discover not only the method by which the eggs have been produced, but where they have come from. I believe that the British public are more and more interested in where their food comes from and are keen that it is produced not only under higher welfare standards, but in this country. It would be a double-edged sword: we would look at not only non-compliant eggs, but where they were produced. That could be very good.

[Jason McCartney]

I join my hon. Friend in praising my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for securing the important debate. I am here because two egg producers from my area got in touch. One has willingly and enthusiastically invested tens of thousands of pounds in new facilities, believing in high welfare standards in the UK. However, I would like to echo the point about the economic argument. At a time when supermarkets are pushing prices down and when people are suffering because of the economy, it is important not to put such producers at an economic disadvantage. We need to support them in any way that we can. I like some of the ideas that we have just heard on naming and shaming and supporting high welfare standards in British eggs.

[Neil Parish]

That anticipates my final point. The industry has to deal across Europe in a single market. The European Commission is not taking the right steps to ensure that that single market works properly; there are inferior eggs on the market, and it is not doing enough about it. I commend the Minister for the agreements that he has made with retailers and supermarkets. If we can work with them to stop as far as possible these eggs coming in and drive down the price of B quality eggs, so that they are uneconomic to produce, it will not take so long for those countries that have not conformed to do so quickly. In the end, we have to ensure that we look after our own highly competitive producers, to ensure that their investment bears fruit and that we have high-quality, good welfare standard eggs, which we can all buy with confidence.

Fisheries

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

For the second time today, I declare a special interest as the custodian of an under-10 metre commercial trawler, although she is not fishing at present. May I also thank all hon. Members for the support and kindness they have shown me following Neil’s death? It is a great comfort to me and my children that so many people have been thinking of us.

I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee and to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for securing this debate. Europe’s fish stocks are shared out according to Council regulation 2371/2002, which must be reviewed by 31 December 2012. This is the third review we have seen. I will not dwell on the history, although I will go back over a little of it. In 1972, the UK accession to the European Economic Community agreed equal access to a common resource. In 1976, the UK declared a 200-mile limit or median line, even though we had by then ceded control of fisheries to the EEC. In 1983, the total allowable catch—TAC—and quota system was agreed, along with the principle of relative stability, which is a mechanism of sharing out the European TAC among the member states according to their historical record of fishing. That agreement was reviewed in 1992 and the fishing industry was looking for some change, but it never came. In 2002, we were given a promise of change, but still TACs and quotas continued, with this Minister’s Department and, more recently, devolved Administrations responsible for the domestic quota management. So much regulation has been heaped on fishermen over the past 40 years, is it any wonder UK fishermen feel they have been served a very bad deal? I agree with their view.

There are several parts to this motion. An ecosystems-based approach to fisheries management is sensible, and I am pleased the Minister is already looking at marine protected areas. However, I have grave concerns that despite in excess of £4 million being spent since 2009 on consultation, my local fishermen in Looe and Polperro feel that the information that they have supplied has been completely ignored by Finding Sanctuary and Natural England. Scientists, environmentalists and fishermen should work together, but to make this work fishermen must be confident that they are equal partners. I hope that the Minister will confirm that no marine protected area will be imposed upon the south-west unless and until there is buy-in from the fishermen. I attended one of the Finding Sanctuary consultations with my husband, and we were asked to give details of where the fishermen worked so that the marine protected areas would not prevent them from earning. I am shocked to be told by those very same fishermen today that those very areas are now identified for closure or restriction.

Socio-economics must be a major factor when marine environmental measures are introduced. The discarding of fish is a wicked waste of nutrition. I congratulate Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on bringing the issue to the attention of the public and to that of the European Commission. In the early 1990s, south-west fishermen covered Royal parade in Plymouth with plaice to illustrate the waste caused by the quota, but 20 years on we are still talking about the problem. There are anomalies to a discard ban. Lobster and crab survive capture. Crab pots are not size-sensitive, yet if all the babies were landed, it would lead to the extinction of the species.

I think that 2015 is a realistic target to ensure we fish sustainably. British fishermen do not intentionally set out to catch baby fish; they continually adapt their nets with square mesh panels and separator grids to avoid catching small fish or the wrong species. I understand that only two days ago discussions at a meeting north of the border centred around introducing a trial of a net to reduce discards in the nephrops fishery. I have been told that it would take only half a day to adapt an existing nephrops net to this design. Fishermen cannot avoid capturing unwanted fish and, in my constituency, they sometimes find their nets full of undersized red gurnards. Those are non-pressure stock and, according to the Marine Conservation Society, the data have shown an indication of their stability in recent years. We need to find a use for these fish, however.

Scientists and environmentalists will often talk about fish without considering the fishermen. Many people forget that a fishing skipper needs expertise in a number of fields: engineering, fish biology, navigation and weather forecasting, as well as the usual requirements for running a small business. Imagine how soul destroying it is to tow gear for hours, haul in a net and find the cod-end full of the wrong species, then throw them back and return to port with a massive fuel bill and no money to pay for it! It angers me when I hear scientists dismiss out of hand the fishermen’s assessment of the stocks. The fishermen—and some fisherwomen; we have at least one in Cornwall—are experts and should be treated as equals.

Let me move on to deal with fishing within territorial waters. According to paragraph 2 of article 17 of the basic regulation, fishing activity is restricted in waters up to 12 miles from the baseline under the sovereignty or jurisdiction of member states to local fishermen or those from other member states with historic rights—until the end of 2012 when the limits that have been in place for 30 years could be abolished.

I believe that abolition of this protection would be a move too far. We have a referendum lock in place for new EU treaties, so why not have a referendum if the protection of our sovereign territorial waters is threatened? I believe the 12-mile limit should be reserved for small inshore UK vessels that are unable to migrate to fishing grounds further from their home ports. These vessels support coastal communities. Small vessels—even small trawlers that operate with a single trawl, many fitted with rockhopper foot ropes and vented trawl doors to avoid damaging the sea bed—have a lower impact on the marine environment than more powerful vessels or vessels towing two nets at the same time.

Under 10-metre vessels have been disadvantaged by the UK system. The underestimation of the quota came to light under the last Government, who failed to resolve the problem. We now find that the very vessels that caused the least amount of damage to the stocks are struggling to survive.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I praise my hon. Friend not just for the knowledge and expertise she brings to this debate, but for the dignified way in which she has spoken. I speak as an MP for a landlocked area, and we are lucky that a number of fresh fish sellers come daily into my local villages in Colne Valley and West Yorkshire. We also have Fairtrade shops, so we know what kind of chocolate or coffee to buy. Will my hon. Friend advise my constituents on what kind of accreditation marks they should look out for if they want to make a knowledgeable purchase of sustainable fish products?

[Sheryll Murray]

Yes, the Marine Conservation Society accredits species of fish caught in an environmentally friendly way—pole fishing for tuna, for example, or mackerel handlining, which is particularly important in the south-west. I understand from a question put to the Minister earlier that there is cause for concern in Cornwall about the cost of accreditation for mackerel handline fishermen.