Fish Discards

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

No, but I failed to achieve them only by about a year. We can argue and quibble, but the important thing is that we agreed a general approach. Had we not done so, we would have becalmed the whole reform of this broken policy, possibly for years, and sent a message to the European Parliament that the Council does not really think it is important, and those who believe the current system works would have won, which would have been a disaster.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

As someone who sat up into the early hours of the morning listening to the negotiations, I really congratulate the Minister. Can he confirm that any discard ban will not prevent fishermen from Looe, Polperro and the Rame peninsula in my constituency from discarding seasonally prevalent fish, such as the red gurnard, that are not assessed as under pressure by the Marine Conservation Society?

[Richard Benyon]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable about these issues. I do not know the details stock by stock, but what we want is an end to discards. There were proposals made in the negotiation process that, through de minimis levels that we considered much too high, would in effect have meant that there was not a discard ban. We must be clear about where we want to go, but we want to ensure that we work with fishermen in her constituency and elsewhere to achieve that.