Fisheries Council

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am delighted that we are able to report that there were considerable increases in stocks that will benefit fishing out of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and that we were able to invoke the Hague preference, which is of particular importance to fishermen in the north-east. We secured increases in whiting, which is of particular interest to his constituents, and I very much hope that we will be able to continue the scientific work that we are doing with fleets based in the north-east on a land-all system so that we can learn what a discard-free fishery means, following it right through the food chain.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on standing up for British fisheries, and compliment him on the deal he got for cod in the western approaches. On the cod recovery plan, he should not have to defend our plan when we are stopping discards. Should we not get the Commission to endorse more of our plans, rather than having to defend them?

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been some really good work in this country on reducing the number of discards, which was acknowledged by the Commission, so it was rather perverse that there was the possibility of measures being introduced that could have brought an end to precisely that good work. In his area, for example, Project 50% saw a more than 50% reduction in the number of discards in the beam trawler fleet. That would not have been possible under the proposed reduction in days that we were facing but luckily managed to reverse.