Common Fisheries Policy

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am going to have to introduce a time limit of 11 minutes, due to the number of Members who wish to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

The hon. Lady says that there is no simple solution. As the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) suggested, either the quota system, which is a blunt instrument, could carry on in its present form, or we could get rid of it and base fishing policy on effort control. The problem with getting rid of it is that quota is marketable and has great value, and I do not think that any Government would want to compensate all those people who have valuable fishing—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Can we have shorter interventions? A lot of Members still want to speak, and I would say to anyone who tries to make a speech by means of an intervention that it is not going to happen.

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting and quite radical suggestion, which brings me to my next point. Perhaps the Minister should consider an independent review of some sort. There are so many different interests involved, and so many ways of trying to move the goalposts and achieve one outcome or another, that I am not sure it is possible for one Minister to act as referee. Perhaps he should consider appointing an arbitrator to conduct an independent review, in order to achieve an outcome on which all the stakeholders could agree.

One proposal on common fisheries policy reform that our report has looked at involves transferrable fishing concessions. My concern, and that of other Members, is reflected in the report. It is that such concessions would not be good for the under-10 metre community. The evidence from other countries is that they have worked against smaller communities, and that the under-10s tend to suffer under them. Those communities tend to lose out in the initial allocation of quota, there is no route for new entrants, and the environmental and social performance is not taken into consideration. Under the present proposals, there is 5% of potential quota allocation for environmental and social performance. I would propose—this is not in the report—that, if we had such a system, there should be a far greater amount allocated to social and environmental performance, which is incredibly important. That would also help to stimulate the under-10 metre communities, which tend to do a lot of social and environmental work locally

The nub of the matter is the question why can we not have a fisheries policy that supports fishing communities? Our current policy has failed—the evidence of that is in our report. Communities find themselves diminished, and the discards continue. We need a new impetus, a new effort and new ideas. Under the new Government, we definitely got the new effort. We began well, by introducing a measure that the smaller, under-10-metre communities had been seeking for a while—namely, a one-off re-allocation of the quota. Obviously, as someone who comes from such a community, I would say that that was not enough, and that it was too conservative, but the Minister will have found, when he embarked on the re-allocation, that he had entered a swamp of divisiveness and infighting between the different interests. The previous Government tried to work with the under-10-metre communities, but they ended up suffering from fishing reform fatigue and gave up on their effort to help. Another great advantage of having a Conservative coalition Government is that we have a new impetus and a new effort. I say to the Minister: keep up the energy and the enthusiasm, so that we can get the reforms that this country so badly needs.

I want to reiterate my concerns about the transferrable fishing concessions. We must not allow them to cement what should be a public resource as a private commodity. When the Committee went down to Hastings and held discussions with both sectors, they acknowledged the need for decommissioning. As hon. Members have said, however, there have been problems with that in the past, even though it was supported by Government money. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) mentioned that the process had had limited success.

In Hastings, we also welcome the support for alternative initiatives. We have been lucky enough to receive £1 million of the £8.7 million put aside under a European initiative involving Fisheries Local Action Groups—FLAGs—to help to support fishermen into new initiatives. I urge fellow Members to come and look at the exciting, adventurous work being done on the Stade in Hastings, where our fishing fleet is, to find alternative methods of employing fishermen and to upgrade their kit and provide new tractors. That is a positive way of trying to help our fishermen into the future.

Above all, when we consider how we can help our fishermen, we need to try carefully to find the balance between satisfying the environmentalists, which we all are, the fishermen who need to continue their lives and the needs of the population who will not accept a system that has so many discards. I am fortunate to come from Hastings, where fishing is so important. It is crucial that my residents in Hastings and Rye know that this issue is taken very seriously. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply and the remaining comments from other Members.