Fishing Industry

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:39 pm on 9 December 1992.

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Photo of David Curry David Curry , Skipton and Ripon 9:39, 9 December 1992

It is not my intention to table presidency proposals that will be put forward as part of the debate. It is impossible to conduct negotiations on that basis. In any case, most of it takes the form of amendments to existing texts. The role of the Select Committee on European Legislation is to scrutinise the proposals that the Commission puts forward. I appreciate the difficulties, but we are in negotiation. I have given the hon. Gentleman as full an account as I am able, as I did in Committee this morning on a different matter. He must recognise that I try to give the House the best and most accurate information available.

Mackerel flexibility is one of the traditional conditions for which we go in the negotiations. It is important to take a percentage of the mackerel catch east of the four degrees west line because of the change in the migratory pattern of the stock. Fish are tiresome because they change their migratory pattern. The cod that used to be found west of Greenland are now migrating to the east of Greenland and perhaps around the Icelandic waters. That has implications for our deep sea fishery.

I recognise that the closure of fisheries presents problems for many people. I took the precaution of checking the latest figures to see where we are making such closures. I have a list of all the closures that we have been forced to undertake. I shall not read through it, but it shows that in all the areas where a fishery has been closed, by the time the last figures are available, we will have hit the quota. Therefore, we have not closed a fishery prematurely without enabling fishermen to take their legitimate catch; we have closed where experience has taught us that we have exhausted our quota or will do so.

The allocation between the sector and non-sector group of fishermen is something that one cannot fine-tune perfectly. I am willing to do more to make that allocation more satisfactory. Closures represent difficult decisions, but I want to be sure that, by and large, we have got it right. The figures in the list, which I am perfectly happy to give to those hon. Members who are interested, illustrate that we have got it about right.

Norway presents a difficult problem. It has been mentioned by several hon. Members, but I hope that they will understand that, with the short time available, I shall deal with issues rather than individual speeches. We have five jointly managed TACs with Norway. If we have no agreement, we set autonomous TACs and quotas for the Community zone, which means that we have no access to Norwegian waters until an agreement intervenes, nor do the Norwegians have access to our waters. The problem with deferring the economic area agreement is that the 2·9 per cent. share of the cod quota, which we run as part of that agreement, does not necessarily trigger. That share may be modest, but it is a share of a TAC that is increasing to 500,000 tonnes this year, so it is a large amount of cod. Equally, the 6,000 tonnes of fish that Spain, Portugal and Ireland wanted for their first entry into that fishery does not trigger either, so the so-called "cohesion fish" does not trigger. When we get the deal, access will have to be restored.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby has links with the processing industry because of his constituency interests. It will be necessary to renegotiate the terms that we negotiated last month because of the failure of the EEA to come into force on 1 January. I have written to the Commissioner asking him to put the new proposals forward so that we can act on them.

I do not wish to go over the grounds of the haddock quota, except to repeat that I am convinced that to catch small fish on the margin of the landing size would be a mistake. We wish to see that fishery preserved to go into the spawning stock and we want a healthy stock to emerge as a result. I am glad that Opposition Members understand those problems.

On the multi-annual guidance programme targets, if one considers what the United Kingdom must do, excluding the catch-up, one will find that we are extremely comfortably positioned. The United Kingdom has a 10 per cent. cut; Portugal, 10 per cent.; Germany, 12 per cent.; France, 10 per cent.; and Belgium, 16 per cent. Even with the catch-up—I do not pretend that there is no catch-up, and I am concealing nothing from the House—Belgium must do 34 per cent.; Greece, 24 per cent.; and the Netherlands, 21 per cent. The United Kingdom is in the middle of that pack: we shall manage to achieve a balance between the decommissioning scheme and the other measures that tackle capacity, and the measures related to days at sea.

Discards are a major problem for all of us as no one wants that to happen. As I explained in an earlier intervention, it is difficult to find a formula that does not present equal problems. It may be a technical conservation measure to some extent, moving in certain circumstances towards multi-annual TACs and multi-annual quotas. We shall explore all those to tackle a problem which we all admit brings a great deal of disrepute to the industry, which no one likes to see. I have outlined the difficulties that that presents for us.

Hon. Members have mentioned many matters that relate to their fisheries and the TACs and quotas in them. The House will understand that those are detailed matters. Regretfully, I cannot deal with them now, although I have copious notes to do so had I had enough time. If hon. Members wish me to give the details, I shall make the information available in a condensed form so that they can make a judgment.

On the Community negotiations, we shall have a session the weekend before Christmas. It will he a difficult session. Traditionally, many items are piled on to the agenda. The Norwegian problems will be an extra item on the agenda. Although we had already cleared it once, we must return to it. We have the TACs and quotas to sort out and it will be hard work getting the work done in time to have matters in place by the new year, simply because of the inevitable rush at the end of the year. We shall achieve it. We are working hard in Committee and my officials are working extremely hard. We want to ensure that the industry knows where it is as soon as possible.

Let me make one thing clear about the Bill. We have £25 million worth of decommissioning and we shall have effort control—those two go together. Without effort control, there will be no decommissioning. We have said that from the start of the Bill's passage and I repeat it today. The money was not secured without difficulty, and it is important that the two issues should be seen to go together.

As I promised, we are licensing below 10 m. We have a programme of technical conservation measures, which are known by, and by and large approved by, the industry. The measures form a package that is designed to secure the industry's future and that of the fishermen. The policy is based on conservation and common sense. I commend it to the House and ask hon. Members to support the Government.