Fisheries Council

William Bain Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend will know that I have been particularly keen in this job to see a better deal for the inshore fleet. I believe that the pilots we are about to start will show a new way of managing the inshore fleet and I can assure her that the scientific evidence we require for that will be vital. As we roll out the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the marine conservation zones, we will see further investment in information about what is going on in our seas, on the seabed and so on, to ensure that we protect those areas as much as possible.

My hon. Friend asked about regionalisation and it is vital that we get this right. This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity, and, frankly, I do not believe that we will have another chance if we do not get it right this time. Decentralisation must mean an end to the top-down detailed decisions that I described earlier being taken so far from the fisheries. The problem we have in the United Kingdom is that our fisheries are complex. They are mixed fisheries with species swimming alongside each other, which means that if one species is targeted another is caught. Systems of management such as the cod recovery plan that operate from the sub-Arctic waters of the north down to the waters of Spain simply do not work because they are a one-size-fits-all solution and that simply does not work with fisheries.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister guarantee that the result of the Council last week still places the European Union on target to achieve maximum sustainable yield by 2015? Does not the outcome of the Council make a powerful case for the introduction of long-term reforms to the CFP and of long-term catch quotas to deal with the problem of by-catch and discards? Is not that reform preferable to the abolition of the CFP, which is the policy of Scotland’s separatist party?

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We very much stick to our international agreed position of seeking to achieve maximum sustainable yield where possible by 2015 and good environmental status by 2020. He is right that long-term management plans are the way forward. I have just been rubbishing one long-term management plan, the cod recovery plan, which is a bad plan. What we want is good long-term management plans, and we certainly can achieve that. The problem with the common fisheries policy is not that it is common but that the policy is wrong. We will always need a degree of common working and all but a very few people in this country recognise that where there is an arbitrary line, such as the one that goes down the Irish sea or the median line through the channel, fish do cross those boundaries. We simply cannot work our management systems on just one side of that line; we must work on an ecosystems basis. That is why we need co-operation with other countries.