Mauritania (Fishing Agreement)

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) both on requesting and on securing the debate, building on the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). I should also acknowledge the powerful contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I shall explain shortly why this debate comes at an opportune moment. It is important that we debate such issues not only in the House, but where it counts, in the European Union. I shall go on to explain the Government’s policy on the external dimension of the common fisheries policy.

The future of the fisheries partnership agreement with Mauritania is important, as is the future of all EU fisheries partnership agreements with other countries. The EU spends around €120 million each year on fisheries partnership agreements with countries outside the EU in exchange for EU vessels being permitted to fish in their waters. That is a large amount of money, representing 15% of the total EU fisheries budget. I am determined that these agreements should provide value for money, support good governance and apply only where the exploitation of fish resources is sustainable.

Over the past four years, the EU has paid €305 million to the Government of Mauritania so that its vessels can fish there. In total, the EU catch is about 300,000 tonnes of fish each year. Rather than it all being landed into the EU or Mauritania, much of it finds its way to other African countries, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall said. In fact, very little of the fish caught in Mauritanian waters by EU vessels is actually landed into Mauritania. In 2006, only 8% of the EU’s catch was landed in Mauritanian ports. In response, Mauritania insisted on the inclusion of a clause in the latest protocol stipulating that, if vessels did not land into Mauritania, they had to pay higher licence fees. That has encouraged some additional landings but even now they are only around 12% of the total.

Vessel operators claim that they are unable to land into Mauritania because the conditions are simply not adequate for them to do so. In some cases, they say that to land into Mauritania could put the safety of the crew at risk, cause significant damage to the vessel and risk damage to the wider marine environment through oil spills. In 2011, the European Parliament issued a declaration that called on the EU to support the rapid construction of adequate facilities for landing fish into Mauritania. That would increase local consumption and support local employment—the kind of aims that a real partnership agreement should seek to achieve and, indeed, aims that are supposed to have been fulfilled in this agreement. The European Parliament also considers that more effective mechanisms must be in place to ensure that funds earmarked for development, and in particular for infrastructure improvements in the fisheries sector, are used properly. I entirely agree. We must be able to demonstrate that these public funds are being used for the purpose for which they were provided.

An independent evaluation of the Mauritania agreement indicated that, although it was better than previous agreements, there were still substantial deficiencies. For example, it concluded that most stocks offered to the EU by Mauritania were either fully exploited or over-exploited. If the EU wishes to be regarded as a responsible fishing entity, it must only fish against stocks considered sustainable. The scientific advice must be more robust and then adhered to by both parties to the agreement. The EU should not be contributing to overfishing in the waters of other countries by vessels that are, to all intents and purposes, subsidised by our taxpayers.

I am pleased to report that we are making progress. For example, all agreements now have to contain a clause allowing the EU to terminate them in the event of serious human rights concerns in the countries with which the agreements have been negotiated. I have also noted that the European Parliament has recently added its weight to the debate and called for money paid as compensation for access to fish stocks in Mauritania waters to be decoupled from financial support, so that reductions in fishing opportunities do not necessarily lead to reductions in financial aid.

I want the proportion of funding for fisheries agreements that is paid for by vessel operators to be increased significantly so that public money is not used to subsidise EU vessels fishing in developing countries. In 2012, only 20% of the money given to Mauritania was contributed by vessel operators themselves. We must ensure that these agreements represent value for money to the EU taxpayer and the local populations, and that these subsidies do not work against precisely what we seek to achieve on the development of sustainable fisheries.

We have been criticised for allowing vessels to operate around the globe that are no longer economically viable for fishing in EU waters. That criticism is well founded and we now need to take action to address it properly. I also want to ensure that, when these vessels fish under these agreements, they are subject to the same standards of control that apply to vessels fishing in EU waters. That means ensuring that a sufficient proportion of the funds under the agreements is spent on strengthening inspection and enforcement capability.

In that regard, I note what my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall said about a factory ship landing in Las Palmas. We will certainly make inquiries with the appropriate authority to investigate that. What she described is a disgraceful situation—if it can be proved—and we will work hard to ensure that, where possible, such matters are decided.

I should also report to the House that my discussions with other Fisheries Ministers from west African countries have shown me that what they require is a single point of contact with the Commission, so that if an EU-registered vessel is held and those concerned are arrested for malpractice of any kind, that information can be transferred to the Commission and appropriate licensing action can be taken by the EU. At the moment, that does not happen. We currently have a crazy situation, where a vessel can leave a port and just go out to sea, perhaps carrying on fishing illegally without the kind of sanction that should be applied by us, as the EU, from where it is licensed.

I have already been pressing those points in a number of forums. Over the coming months, we will have a number of opportunities to tackle the issues and bring about real change that will improve the governance of the agreements, ultimately benefiting both the EU and—more importantly for this debate—the countries with which we have those agreements. That is why this debate is so timely. The first such opportunity falls in about 10 days or so, at the March Fisheries Council, where I will be discussing with fellow EU Fisheries Ministers the external dimension of the common fisheries policy, as part of the reform of the common fisheries policy to deal with fisheries partnership agreements. I can assure hon. Members that I will be maintaining the pressure and reflecting the mood of the House this evening.

The UK’s position is clear. We want a common fisheries policy that promotes the genuinely sustainable use of fish stocks, wherever they are. We are seeking to ensure that fisheries partnership agreements are based on robust science, allowing EU vessels to fish only for stocks where a genuine surplus exists and providing value for money to the EU taxpayer. I want fisheries partnership agreements to place a greater financial burden on the vessel operators who benefit from them, and I want to see the same standards of control and enforcement as are currently applied in EU waters. I also want a mechanism that separates the money paid for access to fishing grounds from development aid, and provides a real benefit to the indigenous populations and fishing communities of the countries with which we have such agreements. Critically, any agreement must be subject to a rigorous assessment, to ensure that its sustainability is assured before, during and after its life cycle.

I end by offering this assurance to my hon. Friend and the House. I will continue to argue strongly for improvements to both fisheries partnerships agreements under the current CFP and the future policy frameworks under a reformed CFP, for the benefit of taxpayers, developing countries and the fish stocks themselves. I would also say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton. He may not share the view that not all fisheries partnership agreements are wrong. However, if we can get this right and develop a sustainable fishery off a country’s coastline, so that the fish are caught sustainably and landed there, with value added to them by local fish processing businesses—perhaps with the support of aid from countries such as ours—and if those fish can then be sold on the world market, all that can benefit both the indigenous populations along those coastlines and the economic development of that country as a going concern, as well as helping with better governance and greater scientific understanding of what is happening in the seas around those coasts. That is what I am trying to achieve, by making a virtue out of what is, really, a black mark, in what has been the sorry history of the common fisheries policy, both at home and in its external dimension. I can assure the House that I am working hard with all those with an interest in the agreements, to ensure that we achieve real and meaningful improvements to the current framework of fisheries partnership agreements.

Question put and agreed to.