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Common Fisheries Policy Report

My Lords, it is a tall order to analyse the problems of the common fisheries policy, produce the Government’s response to the problems, reflect the nature of this excellent report and respond to speeches that have been very precise with reference to the report, but have also raised issues beyond it. I have less than 15 minutes, so the House will forgive me if I produce somewhat more abbreviated comments than otherwise I would have done on a number of issues. First, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Sewel both on his introduction to the report today and on the enormous amount of work that went into the report, which analyses the situation in such a way that the Government are in a position to endorse a great deal of it. As my noble friend made clear, it was important that we should have this debate against the background of the Commission’s Green Paper, so that we have a context in which to work as we seek to produce changes on these matters in Europe. I turn to one or two extraneous points. My noble friend Lady Jones indicated that we should take more interest in the carbon footprint of the food stocks that we use, particularly fish. She gave us a very interesting analysis of how fish arrive in the shopping basket. We now have clear food labelling that helps us to identify where food has come from. It gives us the chance of some long-term sustainability of the European Union’s fish stocks through improvements in traceability and a full audit trail of fish products. I want to reassure my noble friend that we have in mind the issue that she raised. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, asked me to consider where the World Trade Organisation’s principles might fit into the common fisheries policy. The UK agrees that subsidies which give rise to distortion of commercial activity and place some fleets at a competitive advantage over others should be prohibited. We are, however, prepared to consider targeted decommissioning on any funding to help to attain sustainable fisheries, a point which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. He was quite forthright in his condemnation of subsidies and we agree. We do not think that we should subsidise fuel costs, including fuel costs for commercial fishing vessels. Such subsidies can lead to overcapacity, can distort business conditions and can act against the long-term interests of the industry. However, the noble Lord recognised that there might be a case for some support for decommissioning of vessels. I accept the point that he made. On the more general issues raised by the report and in the speech made by my noble friend Lord Sewel, we endorse the committee’s main statement that the common fisheries policy has failed to deliver sustainable fisheries. My noble friend, I think, referred to it as broken and busted. The Government might not go quite so far in their language, but we accept certainly the trenchant criticism of the CFP, which is why we are concerned to effect changes. Reform of the CFP must be radical and we intend to make progress as far as we are able. This report is timely in these terms, as is the Green Paper. The House will recognise that changes in Europe are such that we have a timetable whereby we can now influence the emergence of the new CFP. Of course, we have a great deal of work to do on that. The main principles behind the debate, my noble friend’s speech in introducing the report and the Government’s position are largely coincidental on what needs to be done. Certainly, I would want to emphasise that a reformed CFP cannot exist in isolation from other policies. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and others who served many long hours on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill are all too well aware that that Bill raises issues which interrelate with the fisheries policy. We need to ensure that our marine environment is analysed, exploited and conserved as a whole, rather than in terms of partial individual polices. A reformed CFP must be an appropriate and effective policy for managing not only fish stocks but also managing the impacts of fishing activity on marine resources and the marine environment more widely. The UK and other member states need effective measures at their disposal by which to limit the impact of all fishing activity where we have clear conservation objectives, while at the same time ensuring that fishing is able to develop in a much more successful way than in the past. We all know the problems which the common fisheries policy has failed to solve. It is early days in the debate on CFP reform, but Commissioner Borg has acknowledged the importance of integrating better fisheries policy with others elements, such as marine environment policy. I hope that his successor recognises that importance also. We will certain be pressing along those lines. A reformed CFP also needs to be based on economically rational principles. It should enable a more prosperous, economically resilient and efficient fishing industry and promote vibrant fishing communities. Again, that important matter was expressed by the committee. It is distilled from the evidence that it received from fishing communities which emphasised just how important the industry was to the social and economic lives of their areas. We therefore recognise the case for a reformed CFP having some kind of social element, but this must be consistent with the need for the industry overall to become more prosperous and efficient, and must be based on a sound understanding of the full social, economic and environmental aspects. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, referred to discards in very emphatic terms, as did my noble friends Lady Jones and Lord Sewel. We clearly need to reduce discards. The report makes clear that action is needed to drive down discard levels incrementally. Changes could be made now to the current system to reduce discards. Ultimately, we need to see a fundamental change in the way in which the CFP influences decisions taken by fishermen on a daily basis. After all, a discarded fish is in the main a dead fish. No one derives any benefit from it—not the fishermen or the consumer and certainly not the fish stocks on which the fishermen and the consumer depend. A reformed CFP must provide the incentives and regulatory framework to enable us to catch less, but land more. Those are the principles we wish to see taken forward in our pressure for reform. I agree with my noble friend Lord Sewel on his point about the registration of buyers and sellers and how that has improved the position on enforcement. There is no doubt at all that our implementation of registration has made a difference to the level of unreported landings, and the UK takes every opportunity to urge the European Commission to ensure that every effort is made to implement that regulation and all enforcement issues equally across the EU. As the report indicates, however, and as noble Lords who have contributed to the debate have emphasised, the issue of enforcement is of very great significance. For that, we need agreement on the principles of what needs to be enforced, and it is a drive towards that which is the Government’s goal in building on this report. Of course, we agree with the report that the current CFP is overcentralised and that greater emphasis should be placed on the regional advisory councils. We can see progress from these councils in terms of a more intelligent strategy for fishermen and the acquisition of their consent regarding the objectives laid out at a more local level. We certainly need to end the overcentralised CFP which now exists and develop the regional advisory councils, which will help toward achieving the objectives indicated in the report. We also cannot escape one of the themes of the report: effective control and enforcement. One of the contributing factors to poor compliance is overcapacity. After all, that is what puts more fishing vessels at sea than have the right to take the catches. The European Commission’s Green Paper on CFP reform suggests that overcapacity may be tackled by a combination of rights-based management and targeted decommissioning. We agree with both those strategies. We therefore have a report that has been extremely well worked through and well thought out, based on evidence taken from a wide group of well-informed sources—a report which, this evening, has had the benefit of very careful interpretation, not only from my noble friend who is chairman of the committee, but from all those who contributed to the debate. There was very little in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, with which I did not concur in relation to the Government’s strategy on this issue. There are very significant British interests at stake in respect of the common fisheries policy. That is why it is so important to win the support of the European Union, which is larger than the body that set up the original CFP. It is a major task ahead—a battle for which the Government are girding their loins. We have encouragement from Commissioner Borg in his analysis of the position, we have the Green Paper from the European Commission, and we have this report to help guide us. On that basis, I have no doubt we will make progress in seeing a radical reform to the commons fisheries policy, which all who spoke in the debate agree needs very radical reform.