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Fisheries

First, let me associate myself, and my right hon. and hon. Friends, with the Minister's very appropriate expressions of condolence to the families of the 10 fishermen who have lost their lives since last year's fisheries debate. Let me also record my appreciation—and, probably, that of all Members—of the skill and expertise of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is often called upon when fishermen are lost, the selfless bravery of the search and rescue helicopter crews, and in particular the lifeboat crews who offer their services on a voluntary basis. I welcome the Minister to his first fisheries debate. He takes up the brief at a time when the debate in the House is slightly less febrile than it has been, certainly in my experience, but he and his Department still face massive challenges, and I think it is in the interests of all of us who represent fishing communities and all of us who care about the sustainability of fish stocks for him to succeed in his job. I also pay tribute to the Minister's predecessor, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), who is now a Health Minister, and also Minister for the South West. He took on the job when he was on a fairly steep learning curve, but he got to grips with it in time, and I believe that his view was respected in the industry by the time he gave it up. I have to say, though, that when he left the Chamber at the start of this debate, there was an ever-so-slightly wide grin on his face. In recent years this debate has been dominated by the issue of cod stocks, and that issue has featured prominently again today. I am delighted that it is now accepted on all sides that we are seeing an upturn in the health of the spawning stock biomass of cod. Hansard will show that for the last couple of years a number of us have told the Minister that the upturn was already happening. It was perhaps unfortunate that not enough regard was paid to that, but I am pleased that at last the advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea seems to be catching up with anecdotal evidence from the fishing industry. I note in passing that this year's ICES report speaks of ““unaccounted removals””—a somewhat curious expression. Presumably they are unaccounted removals because there were never ““accounted presents”” in the first place, ICES never having accepted that the fish were there. Essentially, of course, it speaks of discards; but its acceptance of the position is welcome, as is the public evidence that it has supplied. It should be borne in mind that the improvement has not been achieved without pain. The United Kingdom white fish effort in the North sea since 2000 has declined by 70 per cent., and in the west of Scotland it has declined by 80 per cent. I am privileged to serve on the national council of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and I often speak to lifeboat crews in different parts of the country. They tell me that they are increasingly called to incidents involving boats with problems at sea. Ten years ago, that simply would not have happened: a fishing boat would have been within range and would have gone to help the boat that was in trouble. The fact that that task now falls to the RNLI is a mark of the change that the industry has undergone. At a time when attention has suddenly focused on discards, I think the House and all parties should bear in mind the real pain that fishing communities and the fishing industry have undergone in the past when the subject was not quite so politically interesting—certainly not sufficiently interesting to attract the attention of the ““Today”” programme. There are, of course, a range of other external pressures on the industry. One of the main pressures on the fishing fleet in my constituency is the high cost of fuel, which is having a serious impact. Fishermen in this country look with some envy and not a little irritation at the situation across the channel, where the French Government are giving fuel subsidies to their fleet. When I raised the matter with Commissioner Borg when I was in Brussels last week, no real answer was forthcoming. The Minister may wish to pursue it with the Commissioner at the December Council. The industry is also still immensely over-regulated. I was amused to read the following observation in the brief supplied by the Northern Ireland Fishermen's Federation:"““Finally, it is worth noting that one of the few annual increases in the EC's proposals is the amount of paper used. In 2002 the number of pages in the regulation was 102. In 2003 it was 109, in 2004 119, in 2005 151, in 2006 183 and in 2007 213 pages. The proposed regulation for 2008 is 224 pages long. So much for the EC's promised simplification agenda.””" I want to say a few words on the recent EU-Norway settlement, to which the Minister has made reference today. He is right to say that the increases in the cod and saithe total allowable catch figures, in particular, are very welcome. They are not, however, the whole picture, which is immensely complex and still very challenging, not least because the increases for cod and saithe have been coupled with cuts in the TACs for whiting and haddock. Therefore, on the one hand something good is given, but on the other hand something good is taken away. One benefit of the cod increase is that it affords us an opportunity to tackle in a realistic way the question of discard switch, which I am delighted to say has now found its proper place higher up the political agenda. At Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions today, the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) said he risked incurring the wrath of the fishing industry—no doubt the fishermen of Croydon will have been listening closely to what he had to say, and he will be accountable to them for his comments—by drawing attention to the question of discards. On the contrary, the fishing industry has been trying to draw attention to discards for as long as I have been involved in politics, and doubtless for some substantial length of time before that. Discards are representative of a situation where quotas do not reflect the balance of the amount of fish in the sea. That is a fundamental problem, especially when dealing with a mixed fishery such as the North sea white fish fishery. Allied to that, I urge the Minister to resist the argument that because there has been an increase in the cod and saithe TACs there should be a commensurate reduction in effort, in particular in terms of days at sea.