§ 6. Mr. Vernon Coaker (Gedling)What discussions he has had with EU partners on the control of whaling. [87919]
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley)We regularly co-ordinate policies with other countries opposed to whaling, both inside and outside the EU.
§ Mr. CoakerI congratulate my hon. Friend and the rest of the Front-Bench team on putting animal welfare 419 issues at the centre of their policy objectives and the work of the Department. Will my hon. Friend examine the way in which the International Whaling Commission works, and consider whether it is possible for that organisation to deal not only with the stopping of whaling, but with the management of whaling, and how we can do more to protect the existing whale stock and increase the number of whales in the world's oceans?
§ Mr. MorleyMy hon. Friend raises a good point. The IWC was set up to exploit whales commercially. The Government have made it clear that we reject the idea of a return to commercial whaling, and we want the IWC to concentrate more on global threats to whales, such as environmental threats, global warming and pollution, and to extend its competence to small cetaceans, many of which are under threat internationally. In the IWC discussions that I attended to underline the importance that the Government attach to the issue, we received significant support from other EU states and other countries, without which we could not have made the advances that we have achieved internationally.
§ Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham)In rightly continuing the policy of the previous Government of support for the continuation of the moratorium on commercial whaling, is it the Government's policy to support the exemption to allow the Makah Indian tribe in the United States to continue subsistence whaling which, as I am sure the Minister knows, has been undertaken there for about 2,000 years? If that policy is being continued, what progress is being made?
§ Mr. MorleyWe accept the case for indigenous aboriginal whaling in certain parts of the world. That is regulated by the IWC and a quota is set. However, I thought that the Makahs' case for restarting whaling was unimpressive and had not been proved.