Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking to reduce fish discards; and if she will make a statement.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to reduce fish discards.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I applaud the Fish Fight campaign, which has been conducted very ably by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. My one criticism is of the line that the fight back starts here. I should say in fairness to the previous Government that the fight back started many years ago—and the present Government, too, have worked extremely hard on catch quotas, fishing for the market, and a variety of measures to reduce the number of discards. I am happy to work with anyone. We need to win public support and, in that regard, the programme was a great success.

[Tony Baldry]

Speaking as the last Conservative Fisheries Minister in the Major Government, I can tell my hon. Friend that I thought he was considerably better at identifying fish at Billingsgate than I could ever have been.

I believe that the whole House supports my hon. Friend on the need to reform the common fisheries policy. Let me say to those who oppose quotas that reducing fishing and protecting fish stocks by reducing effort is no easier an option, and that we must face the reality that fishermen will not want to keep their boats in port.

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words. When interviewed at five o’clock in the morning, I would be hard pressed to recognise my own children, let alone fish stocks. I am grateful to my friends and enemies who have sent me fish charts, with which I wiled away the long winter evenings. He rightly says that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem; there are opportunities to increase effort control, but we also have to deal with the problem of quotas. That is a problem in a mixed fishery and it has been part of the driver towards the number of discards, which we are so keen to reduce.