Fisheries

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to my honourable colleague for that intervention. It emphasises the point, although I do not think that the negotiations at the December Council will be an opportunity to reopen the issue of relative stability. I do not wish to cause earthquakes in Scotland as a result of suggesting that we do that now.

The issue goes back to the ‘70s and the basis on which, and how, we entered the European Union. That and the basis of our involvement in the common fisheries policy left us with a legacy that has created a complete absurdity. We are not saving any cod. Cod, due to their nature, are bottom fish. They suffer from the bends, so when they are thrown back they are dead. There is no question about that, and not a single life is saved as a result.

The Minister will have received representations from the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation. This is repeating the point that I have made to Ministers in the past on spurdog and porbeagle: zero quotas on both of those do not save a single porbeagle or spurdog. What we need is recognition that it is good for science, as well as for the industry, at least to record what is being caught, even if we do not realise the market value of the fish. I will not go into the detail of what is proposed by the CFPO on spurdog and porbeagle, but I think that it certainly has a good case on landing and recording every porbeagle over 2 metres, and that equally applies to every spurdog over 1 metre.

We need to have a further debate in future; I hope in Government time in the new year. The common fisheries policy has been mentioned on a number of occasions, and it clearly underpins everything that we are discussing today. Given that we need to look at the future of the CFP post-2012, I hope that the Minister will agree to a debate. Members who have been able to get here today and those who could not get here to engage in this debate would like, as early as possible in the new year, to debate this on a cross-party basis. These debates are often consensual, as we have found today, and we could establish a British view on the future of the CFP: a view that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) mentioned earlier, would be heavily based on a decentralised model—much more decentralised than now—with genuine management powers available to regional management committees.

The absurdity of using the blunt instrument of the quota regime has been highlighted by many Members. Quotas may be needed because it is not possible to distinguish between intended and unintended by-catch, and I am sure any regime would need an indicative quota of some sort, but it is vital that we look at other measures. [Interruption.] I am just about to finish but I am happy to give way.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and absolutely endorse what he has just said. Does he think that in addition to a more decentralised approach within the CFP, we should also have a much more forceful distinction in our policy response between the interests of smaller-scale, more traditional fishing communities and operations and the large factory fishing units? The interests of such units are not always aligned with those of conservationists and general mainland consumers, whereas the interests of the smaller fishing communities, as we have heard, are absolutely necessarily aligned with the interests of everyone else in the country. A clear and much more forceful policy distinction would reap great rewards.

[Andrew George]

I strongly support what my hon. Friend says. We have not debated, and do not have time to debate today, industrial fishing and fishing for animal feed, or the comparison between industrial scale fishing and the more artisanal approach, which I have also highlighted. I wish that we had an opportunity to debate the future of the CFP.

It was a pleasure for me to go along to support the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan on the Backbench Business Committee on 15 November in arguing that we should have at least this opportunity for debate. I am sorry that having said that I would be brief, I have taken a number of interventions and spoken for longer than I intended. I strongly endorse all the comments that other Members have made.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) for securing this debate. She spoke for everyone here when she said that this debate should take place on the Floor of the House in future so that we can give this subject the forum it deserves.

This is an important time for the industry, and I want to put the fishermen themselves at the heart of our considerations. I pay tribute to those who have lost their life or been injured in this dangerous profession. Fishermen work off a dangerous platform in a dangerous place, and too many pay the price for that. Bereaved families and many other parts of the fishing industry are wonderfully supported by organisations such as the Seamen’s Mission and the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. I echo other hon. Members in paying tribute to them and to organisations such as the RNLI and the coastguard for their bravery and courage and for serving our marine environment so well.

We tend to approach this debate with a sense of groundhog day, as we trawl through the same old arguments. There is a general ennui or depression about the way in which we manage the system, but there are glimmers of hope here and there. What I have detected in my time, both as spokesman for my party when in opposition and as Minister, is that there are some reasons to be cheerful, I intend to put all my effort behind those chinks of light to make them wider and clearer as we progress in the months ahead.

We face a very difficult time; let us not pretend otherwise. If I am asked to present in a sentence my vision for this industry and for the marine environment, I would say that we take an ecosystems-based approach, which was referred to in the GLOBE document. Such an approach has sustainability at its heart—sustainability of the marine environment and the ecosystems that we need and value and from which we get so many services, and sustainability for the industry, and the communities that it supports. Members from all parts of the House have spoken movingly about communities in their constituencies which are dependent not just on the, sadly, too few jobs, but the families, the processing industry and all its supporting infrastructure.

When I visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray)—it was the first place that I visited when I was appointed as shadow spokesman—I saw an industry that was surviving. It has had its moments and difficulties, but it has the support of a fish market, merchants, chandlers and many others. If one of them were to go, how viable would be the remainder? That is something that I frequently find as I go round the coast of Britain.

As we embark on the next few weeks, with the December Council and CFP reform, I have to say that I am supported well in this difficult job by some very able officials, who have so much more experience than I of this sometimes Kafkaesque process. There is a great sense of unity across the devolved Governments. If people want an example of cross-party co-operation, they need look no further. We have a Minister from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government working with a Minister from the Scottish National party in Scotland, a Sinn Fein Minister in Northern Ireland, and a Labour Minister in Wales. I am determined that we should approach this round with a sense of unity, because it is only by working together and being on the same page that we can achieve what we need to achieve. I am grateful to all of them and to their respective officials for their support.

I will rattle through some of points that were made and try to respond to them in the time remaining. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan led the way in calling for regionalisation and an end to the top-down management of our fisheries and the common fisheries policy. She finds a ready and supportive audience in me. Earlier this week, I was at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council. In a discussion between all the Ministers and the commissioner, everyone who spoke mentioned the need for regionalisation and an end to the current centralised system. In the same way, people often talk positively about long-term management plans, but the proof of what is said lies in what is done, particularly with the current reform process. I sense that among some of our European partners there is, to quote Hilaire Belloc, a desperate desire to

“always keep a-hold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse.”

I do not think that anything can be worse than what we have now. We must have a decentralised system, and that is what I will be leading on in the reform process.

The hon. Lady represents the two important ports of Peterhead and Fraserburgh, and my two visits to her constituency have proved to me the importance of the fishing industry there. I value the clear way in which I was briefed about her fishing interests, and she was right—as were other hon. Members—to point out the affront of discards. Discards are first and foremost an affront to fishermen, and they are increasingly an affront to the public and the consumer. I was recently interviewed at Billingsgate market by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whom I congratulate on leading an important campaign to raise awareness of this issue. His questions surprised me, as he seemed to think that I would somehow be a Minister in a suit who would try to defend the status quo. He was surprised that I out-outraged him with my hyperbole and my opposition to discards.

We must look at where we can succeed. Some schemes have been mentioned today; the hon. Lady mentioned catch quotas, and others have spoken about Project 50%. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) raised that issue, and on three occasions, I have heard the commissioner quote it as a shining example of what can be achieved. I intend to build on those important points.

[Zac Goldsmith]

How realistic is it to say that we will move to a system of catch quotas? I have no doubt that the Government are committed to dealing with that problem, but realistically, how likely is it that we will see a change in policy?

[Richard Benyon]

I forget the figures for the English fleet, but in Scotland, there are 17 vessels in a catch quota system. That represents about 20% of that fleet—perhaps not; I cannot remember the exact figure. At the moment, that system is a trial. We tried to persuade the Commission—and we will continue to try—that we must move beyond a trial. We want to get every vessel possible into a catch quota system because, for reasons that I will mention, that is the solution. Fishermen are incentivised to do something that gives them more fish, ends discards and is a bottom-up approach. It makes fishermen part of the solution, and instead of being the battered person at the end of the line being hit by a stick, they are given a carrot to find a solution. I will go on to talk about mackerel, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) echoed the point about decentralisation and I know the importance of nephrops to his constituency and the difficulties that are faced there. He rightly mentioned the difficulties of displacement. When we create a management regime that results in less activity in one area, there is a displacement effect. Too often, we have seen the malign effect of displacement round our coastline, and he is right to raise that issue. However, he sensibly discussed the world in which we live. I would love to debate how we got to this point, but that would be a waste both of my time and of the House’s. We should put all our energy into working with a system that we think we might be able to change. For the first time in my adult life and in the experience of people who have been in the House for many fisheries debates, we find the door open to a level of reform that we must try to achieve. I recognise that that is important.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) is an able chairman of the all-party group, which benefits from his knowledge of, and passion for, the subject. He rightly pointed out the importance of the processing industry. We must remember the jobs at stake and the importance to our food security of keeping the infrastructure that we require on land to support the jobs that we are discussing and get the product to market that our fishermen bring ashore. I think that he is rather depressed about the prospects for CFP reform. That probably comes from years of experience, but I hope that we can work with him.