EU Fisheries Negotiations

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Minister will recall that I have called on a number of occasions for the abolition of the common fisheries policy and for the Government to press that on European colleagues. I still believe that we should do that. Would it not be sensible to return to the national limits that we used to have, so that we can manage our fish stocks and monitor our fishing? That is how the Norwegians do it, and their fisheries are much better than ours.

The question that I really want to ask relates to Spain, which has in the past refused to give information about its fishing. Indeed, there have been suggestions that it is landing black fish illegally. Is Spain being properly regulated now?

[Richard Benyon]

Sadly, Spain is not alone in having had problems in the past with black fish landings. We have to make sure that all houses are in order when we criticise countries for failing to obey the rules. I want to make it absolutely clear that if people land black fish—illegal, unreported and unregulated landings of fish—they are stealing those fish from our fishermen. People such as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) have made that important point consistently.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) is consistent in his view of the common fisheries policy. I certainly would not have started from this point, and I think that most Members would agree with that. As we develop the policy further, we need to recognise that the “common” part of the common fisheries policy is not necessarily wrong. We need to manage this on an ecosystem basis. Fish may spawn in one country’s waters and then swim to those of another country. They do not have passports and we need to manage the situation on a sea basin basis, and that is where our regionalisation agenda is going.