Illegally Tethered Horses
Debate between Lord Benyon and Nigel Adams(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Nigel Adams
Fly-grazing is a huge issue in my constituency, and I met one of the Minister’s colleagues to discuss it. It would be useful for the Minister’s Department to remind local authorities that they have obligations. One Traveller site in my constituency is controlled by the local authority. No animals are supposed to be on that site, but when it was visited a couple of weeks ago, horses were found tethered inside the camp. If local authorities have obligations, surely we should remind them to meet them.
Richard Benyon
I know that my hon. Friend speaks regularly with his local authority, and I suspect that it will have a Traveller liaison or welfare officer, or dedicated staff who should be conveying their concerns on issues of animal welfare to the people involved. I assure him that our Department takes animal welfare extremely seriously; we talk regularly with the Local Government Association and I will happily raise his point to ensure coherence across local authorities, and the development of best practice.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Benyon and Nigel Adams(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Richard Benyon
We will be consulting the industry shortly about changes in the operation of our domestic fleet and about how we can help it to secure greater sustainability. The issue really comes down to the sustainability of stock. Approximately 1% of the egg survey is in Icelandic waters. There is an obvious way in which the Icelanders can negotiate. I urge them to operate in the way that we do across fisheries—to sit down and talk, rather than acting unilaterally.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
2. What steps she is taking to reduce fish discards; and if she will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
The United Kingdom Government are pursuing a policy of minimising discards through the reform of the common fisheries policy in 2012. Work is also being undertaken domestically with our fishing industry to increase the selectivity of fishing and to improve the utilisation of the remaining unavoidable fish catches. Levels of discards from the UK fleet have been decreasing year on year since 2002. I am committed to taking further action.
Nigel Adams
Are there any lessons to be learned from countries such as Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which have managed to replenish their fish stocks and in which the common fisheries policy has completely failed?
Richard Benyon
It is beyond doubt that the common fisheries policy is broken. It is based on a centralised top-down system, and we must reform it by decentralising it. We must also make the management of our fisheries relevant to the way in which we manage the marine environment as a whole.
We can learn lessons from other countries. As our exchanges on the previous question made clear, they are not repositories of pure virtue, but there are certainly lessons that we can learn about the local and regional sea base and management.