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European Union (Amendment) Bill

The UK Government are happy to have that situation based on case law enshrined in the treaty, and they would have accepted it as the status quo in the previous draft constitution. That is completely unacceptable. I note with interest that recently the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation maintained that fish stocks are best managed not through intergovernmental organisations such as the EU, but through exercising national jurisdiction over natural resources, and further warned that at an international level, governance arrangements are inadequate and do not result in effective management of fisheries. Amelioration is possible. My friend who represents the same constituency as me in the Scottish Parliament, Richard Lochhead, the Scottish Fisheries Minister, has worked hard to seek changes within the present set-up. It is a tremendous improvement on the previous regime, as was recognised by the European Parliament, which adopted a report that praised the SNP Scottish Government for implementing sensible measures to conserve fish stocks and encouraged other member states to follow the Scottish scheme. Therefore it is possible to make improvements, but we need a quantum leap in approach to this policy, not the smaller managerial steps that are possible with the CFP as constituted. The UK Government support a policy that allows literally millions of perfectly edible healthy fish to be thrown overboard, and that is outrageous—not that we have heard anything from those on the Treasury Bench about how advantageous it is. Throughout all these days of debate in this House, not once has anybody from the Treasury Bench got up to say how great a policy it is. Of course they cannot—it is indefensible.