HL Deb 13 May 1976 vol 370 cc1134-58

Lord KENNET rose to ask Her Majesty's Government why they consider 6 per cent. the right amount for our share of the herring caught in the North Sea; why they have gone along in the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission with an overall catch which they know to be too high; why they have claimed only a 12–50 mile exclusive fishing zone when the fishing industry wants 100 miles and almost everybody else including the United States, Canada, Norway and Iceland is laying claim to 200 miles; why they think ships which cannot catch foreign trawlers are going to be able to defend this zone; what is so far the cost to the taxpayer (including repairs to the ships damaged) of the 4th cod war; and in general, what is their fisheries policy. The noble Lord said: Although my Unstarred Question relates very largely to an endangered species, I wish to put it into its political context right away by quoting something said by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons on 28th April last. He was asked whether he thought that the harmonisation of foreign policy in the European Community was one of the top priorities and whether it was possible. His answer was that it was one of the most fruitful lines of development in the Community and he said: Indeed, it was in the belief that that was possible that I first became a supporter of our entry into the Common Market. There then follows the word "Interruption" in Hansard, and the Foreign Secretary continued: I am still, on the whole, a supporter as long as the EEC allows the fisheries policy to come all right".—(Official Report, Commons, 28/4/76, col. 370.) That is a measure of the gravity of the situation posed by the fisheries difficulty we have at the moment, and I go along with that formulation. My purpose in raising this Question is not to obstruct or hinder or annoy the Government. I deliberately put all the barbs and pins into the Question so as to show the Government the way I would be going, but I will try to keep them out of my speech; my purpose is to help the Government if possible to adjust to a new world. I regret that I shall not be here next week when the Opposition have made a larger and related subject the subject of their Wednesday debate; it was put down after my Question. They did not mention the Community aspect in their Motion and I hope that today we can draw from the Government some facts which may be useful in the Opposition debate next week.

We are considering all these things against the background of the fact that we are importers of food and that world supplies of food proportionately to world population are diminishing. We have no alternative therefore but to protect our own local supplies of food, not only to keep ourselves alive, but because if we do not it will force us, being a rich country, to import food from others who have a better right to it than we have. It is out duty to eat what we can find on our own soil and in our own seas close to us and not to insist on bringing in food from poorer parts of the world. Against this background, I find British fishery policy at the moment illegible and incomprehensible. It is like a series of marks on a page which is clear in print but it does not fall together into a recognisable whole, and I hope that the Government can help us today to see what a recognisable whole there is. It seems to have three aspects. In UNCLOS, the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, Her Majesty's Government at the moment favour the 200-miles exclusive economic zone, EEZ for short.

At UNCLOS, we are for EEZ. Iceland has taken a 200 miles EEZ and, there, we appear to be strongly against it. In the third place where these matters are discussed, in Brussels, at the Headquarters of the European Economic Community, it is hard to discern what our policy is. Let us take for an example—though there are others—the North Sea herring. The scientists of ICES, which, though not ideal, is the most international and probably the least biased organisation for fish stock assessment which we have in the world today, have said that there should be no herring fishing—and I repeat that—whatever in the North Sea in the second half of this year.

On 6th May, my noble friend Lord Strabolgi tacitly endorsed that when, in answering a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, he said: The proposed catch of North Sea herring— that is, the agreed catch— is more than the stock can safely stand. Nothing could be clearer. We then have to come to the question, Why is it that we appear to have gone along with the proposal that the North Sea catch in the second half of the year should be 73,000 tons? It was 87,000 tons in the first half and 73,000 tons in the second half. What happened in the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission when that question was put to the vote? Did this country vote against it in the knowledge of the ICES advice and knowing that it was more than the stock could bear? If not, why not? Did it abstain? If so, why? Or did it vote for it, and if so, why, why and why again?

I put a concrete question to my noble friend: according to the best advice available to the Government and since we know that the catch is excessive, when will the North Sea herring become extinct? It is simply a question of trend extrapolation. Will it be 1980 or 1990? Before we start calculating, let us remember that it is not only the herring catch which kills herring; it is also, as I see the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, knows, the sprat catch. Sprat fishermen, who are allowed to catch 650,000 tons of sprats in the North Sea—that is about 10 times as much—are allowed, within that catch, up to 10 per cent. of baby herrings; that is, they are allowed to take something roughly equal to the total herring catch in infancy and before breeding as if they were sprats. That is double the official total. That means an extra 65,000 tons of herring—and baby herring at that—which are permitted to he taken annually. The inspectors who at present, with some trepidation, doubt and inefficiency, are allowed to board the vessels of other fishing nations in the North Sea on behalf of this or that country, are allowed to sample the catch of each vessel to see that it contains what it is permitted to contain. Do you know what proportion of the sample of the sprat fishermen's catches they are allowed to look at? Two kilos. On each ship which they board, they are allowed to take two kilos and have a look to see what is the proportion of baby herrings among the sprats. If such a sample of a catch were ever brought to court in any country, I believe that we can imagine the difficulty which that court would have in deciding whether or not it was a sufficient sample. Of course, the inspector would know that before he took his two handfuls to look at.

The Government have agreed in the North-Eastern Atlantic Fisheries Commission to a proportion of the North Sea catch of herring for this country of 6 per cent. I wonder what we should all have thought our proportion ought to be. The main littoral States of the North Sea are Britain and Norway, and Denmark has quite a bit. Of course we immediately want to turn to see who gets the rest. If we only get 6 per cent. of the herring out of our own sea, who gets the rest? These proportions are some-what traditional. We find that our 6 per cent. equals 9,700 tons. Iceland, which is nowhere near the North Sea, gets a little less—9,200 tons. The Soviet Union, which is also nowhere near the North Sea, gets a little more—10,500 tons. Norway, which has a North Sea coast about equivalent to ours and a population which is about a tenth of ours, gets 23,000 tons—two and a half times what we get—and Denmark including the Faeroes gets 51,000 tons—nearly 10 times what we get. These are ridiculous proportions in all human, economic and political common sense.

However, the fact of the matter is that the Norwegians and the Danes do not use herrings to eat, as we do. They use them to make into animal fodder in order to breed those battery fed pigs which taste of fish when bacon is made out of them. Here, also, I have a question for the Government: what measures have we tried to use to dissuade the Norwegians and the Danes from raiding the food chain half-way up and making this grossly uneconomic and distorted use of it? The human consumption at the end is something like 10 per cent. of what it ought to be in nutrition value.

Let us look for a moment at what happens elsewhere. We have this over-fishing in the North Sea. We ourselves agree—Mr. Hattersley has agreed—to an amount which we know signals extinction for the total catch and we agree to take 6 per cent. of it, which is about one-eighth of what Denmark takes. If we look at the herring fishing in the North-West Pacific—the biggest possible jump we can take—that is shared between Russia and Japan. The Soviet Union has imposed on the zone under its control a 50 per cent. cut in the herring fishing. There is no question of half measures there. I am not complaining that there has been no reduction in North Sea herring catches, but only that the reduction has been very slow. If we look at the North-West Atlantic—that is, the East coasts of the United States and Canada—we find that those two countries, faced with overfishing which was not nearly so grave as the over-fishing which we have, have both claimed de facto their 200-mile EEZ already and, under that, have negotiated with the Russians—because the Russians were the main culprits there—a reduction of 40 per cent. in the permitted catch. This was done in the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Commission. They got what they wanted by being a little bit firm against the Russians. The Russians got what they wanted by being a little bit firm against the Japanese. Have we got what we wanted? I wonder.

On the question of the 200-mile zone, can my noble friend foresee the time when we and Ireland may be alone in the North Atlantic with no legal rights because we do not take a 200 mile zone to protect ourselves against the incursions of the Soviet Union, Japan and Korea? I shall not repeat again what I have often said to your Lordships, that one of the big Central Atlantic fishing fleets at the moment is Korean. The way the Ministry of Agriculture and the Foreign Office are going, it looks as though we shall. But I should like to take this opportunity of showing your Lordships—and this will be difficult for Hansard—two pamphlets. On the left, is the annual report of the Department of Energy for last year, 1975, and on the right is that for this year, 1976. Your Lordships will see that, on the left, the Department has taken a Continental Shelf of rather modest proportions and that, on the right, they have annexed half the North Atlantic because of Rockall. They have made that change within one year while the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have not made the corresponding change.

The point here is that the ability of unhabited islands to generate a Continental Shelf annexable by the owner of the island is just as much under discussion in UNCLOS as the ability of uninhabited islands to generate the EEZ in the waters superjacent to the seabed. We have an annexationist policy under my right honourable friend Mr. Benn, and we have a recessional policy under my right honourable friend Mr. Hattersley, and I do not know which way to look, but I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to tell me. At present it looks as if the Government regard oil as more important than food, if they are prepared to pre-judge the results of UNCLOS by taking the Rockall Continental Shelf.

Let us now turn to what the British Government have taken as regards fisheries. They have claimed in Brussels a zone, a coastal belt, of national control ranging between 12 and 50 miles, and suggested a quota system beyond that. I have several questions here. First, how does this fit with the Treaty? It appears to me quite clearly to contradict the Treaty of Rome, and possibly the Treaty of Accession; and let me freely admit that the Treaty of Rome contradicts itself in many respects, including respects relevant to this Question. But how can one reconcile that with Articles 7, 58 and 222 of the Treaty of Rome? I will not bore the House by reading them, but they need looking at.

Furthermore, how long is the 12 to 50 mile deal for the control of fisheries proposed? Articles 100 to 103 of the Treaty of Accession envisage many changes in the fishery situation between 1978 and 1982. Article 102 in particular says that the Commission must propose, on the basis of studies and surveys, a new fisheries deal for all Community nations by 1978—six years from accession. This has not been done; it has not even begun to be approached yet. It is quite clear that the surveys called for have not been done; all we have from the Commission is a single working document referring to the figures for the 1973 catches only. There are no details of trends, no history, or no observation of what goes up and what goes down.

I am labouring this frankly abstruse point about the 15 to 50 miles in the Community context versus 200 miles in the UNCLOS context because the ownership of resources in the waters of EEZs will be exactly the same as that of oil under, and lobsters on, the seabed in Continental Shelf law; that is to say, total State ownership—or so at least everything that has so far happened at UNCLOS seems to suggest. And here is my punch question, my Lords: are the Government taking proper account of the fact that within the EEZ, which we tend to want, all natural resources will belong to the coastal State?—that is to say, there will be no difference between the fish in the water, the lobsters and the sand on the seabed, and the oil and the gas beneath it, about which everybody from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to the present Government have proclaimed their pride of ownership. The Government's discussions in Brussels about fish seem to envisage the fish having, in some way, a different status. Can the Government explain this difference in approach, given that the Treaty of Rome does not allow one Member State or the Commission to appropriate the property of another Member State; and these fish, if we take an EEZ, will be our property?

My Lords, I turn quickly to the last two points in my rather over-long Question. Let us consider the Jura-class boats. As we all know, these are boats, or rather large ships, which will carry no helicopter and will have a maximum speed of 16 knots, and a cruising speed of 13 to 14 knots. Soviet trawlers not fishing but getting away, can make 20 knots, as against 16 knots. The Government said at earlier times that it does not matter if they cannot catch the Soviet trawlers; all they need is to have very good sea-keeping qualities for rough weather and to be able to detect vessels fishing at low speeds. I ask the Government: what about Iceland? Is that what we ourselves have found in the cod war—that the Icelanders have been content to detect vessels fishing at low speed, and then pursue the matter in some international or national court? Have they not, on the contrary, cut our warps and engaged in collision tactics, and so on? What reason have we to expect that trawlers which can go faster than our own defence vessels, and belonging to a not-too-friendly Power, will adopt any different tactics from those which the Icelanders have in the North Sea? I should also remind the Government that the Canadians were able to get what they wanted in the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Commission only by boarding and examining no less than 300 fishing vessels in order to discover how the existing regulations were being flouted; and Jura boats could not do that.

Lastly, I turn to the question of the cost to the taxpayer. We do not know about this; we should like to know. We know that 16 frigates—16 separate ships—have been involved in the cod war up until 9th March this year. I think that others have been involved since which were not there before. Eleven of them were damaged between 25th November and 6th April, and more, we know, have been damaged since. We know that the cost to the taxpayer of chartering civilian vessels is £74,000 a week. Can the Government give us a global estimate of the cost of this cod war?

I believe that at this point Ministers should be being affable in Iceland and severe in Brussels. The threat to the British fishing industry does not come nearly so much from the 200-mile declaration of Iceland as from the natural, not culpable, ignorance by Brussels of fisheries and fishery management. I do not blame Ministers; I blame those who have, over the years, failed properly to inform Ministers.

7.7 p.m.

Lord BOOTHBY

My Lords, I rise to speak for a few minutes only because for over half a century I have been closely connected in public life with the fishing industry. I have already told your Lordships that when I was a Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire for 34 years we used to export over 1 million barrels of cured herring every year to the continent of Europe and to the Soviet Union, and that brought in a considerable income. But they were cheap. One could still buy in this country six herrings for a few pennies. They have now become a luxury fish, and this is absolutely outrageous. I do not know all the causes of the disappearance of the herring from the North Sea, but I know that in my time there were two great fishings: one in the summer out of Fraserburgh and Peterhead, and one in the autumn out of Yarmouth and Lowestoft. They were tremendous fishings. We were able to export herring all over the world, and did.

I went down to them both every year, and it was a fascinating sight. Both these fishings are now extinct. Fraser-burgh and Peterhead—from the point of view of herring—and Yarmouth and Lowestoft are dead ports, and the stocks have steadily diminished over the past few years. Some of this must be due to gross overfishing, especially of immature fish and sprats for industrial purposes. No Government in this country have done anything about it at all. Since the war, successive Governments have had no fisheries policy of any kind; and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has raised this subject this evening, because perhaps we might get from the Minister some explanation of what the Government have in mind about the future of the fisheries industry.

When Mr. Khruschev came to London, I was introduced to him. He said, "Your salt herrings are no good without vodka". I said, "I quite agree; you give us the vodka and we will give you the herrings". In due course a large order for herring came from Moscow. We could not fulfil it. The herring had begun to disappear, and since then it has disappeared steadily. There is a moderate herring fishing industry off the West Coast of Scotland, but most of the herring fishermen as I knew them have abandoned it and have given up, and have gone over to inshore white fishing. The other day I asked a question of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, about the recent agreement, which I thought was a certain advance. In reply he said it was open to great objection, because the quotas fixed for herring were too high. I was surprised at that, because I really thought we had made an advance. But in reply to another question he said that the quota system was not really the right answer—zoning was the answer. Quotas, he said, were very difficult to enforce, whatever figure you fixed. It may be that he can tell us something about that this afternoon.

All I know, my Lords—and I am sad—is that the herring industry, which I played a part in building up, has now practically disappeared; that herring, which I love, are too expensive; that the herring fishermen have thrown in their hand; and that Fraserburgh and Peterhead are done as fishing ports, and also Yarmouth and Lowestoft. It was such fun in those days. My constituents then consisted mainly of small farmers, crofters and fishermen. They were all poor, and they were all happy. I went up to my old constituency the other clay to have a look. The oil is coming in to my constituency through Cruden Bay and St. Fergus. The pipes are being laid. Aberdeen is like a "hick-town" in Texas 50 years ago. Some people are making a great deal of money; others are faced with colossal rises in prices for everything. None of them is happy. I know we have to do it, but I am sad when I think of what oil is doing at this moment to the North-East of Scotland. Sooner rather than later it will pass, and then they will have to go back to farming and fishing, and they will be happier.

I want to say one word about the white fishing industry, which is also important. I wish the Government would give up this ridiculous cod war against Iceland. It is foolish and it is dangerous, because the Icelanders have right on their side. What they are striving to do is what we should all strive to do—conserve the stocks of fish with a view to their rehabilitation. It is dangerous because it threatens the whole NATO Alliance, upon which we depend absolutely for our defence. Stop this grabbing, these frigates and these gunboats, and the bullying—because it is bullying—of the Icelanders because they are weak. It is all they have to live on, and they are trying to preserve their way of life and their way of living.

I cannot understand the fishing policies of successive Governments since the war. In fact, they have not had any policies at all. I sometimes think that we ought to have a Ministry of Fisheries, because they have not much to do with agriculture, and I think the combination of the two is rather a mistake. I view the present situation with concern and sadness, because I have seen what was once a very great industry dying for the last 10 years.

7.16 p.m.

Lord RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, I intervene because I have been moved as most of us would be by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. I come from his part of the world, too, and I sympathise with everything he says about the old herring fishing days—and it is not entirely nostalgia. It was real, it was meaningful, and it could still be. We are now faced with a situation which has got so completely out of hand that it has nothing to do with human beings, with the people who put out to sea in ships. It has nothing to do with them: they are the victims of the circumstances; they are the victims of the policies; they are, as somebody in your Lordships' House said the other day, the victims of the vacuum cleaners. If you go out to fish with vacuum cleaners and pick up the small herrings and the baby sprats, then what is to happen? But the thing which appals me—and again I follow the noble Lord, Lord Boothby— is that I cannot see the sense of this Icelandic war. Do not think I am unpatriotic; I am not, but I have not got that degree of blind patriotism. What I do not see is how we can be consistent or pretend to be consistent. At the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference—I have just come from it—we are on record as supporting the 200-mile limit. This is what the Icelanders are claiming. It is true that in legal terms they are out of court because it has not been confirmed or reaffirmed. But what are we doing? We are playing the game of "dodg'em," like children, in the Arctic. We are bumping each other. For what?—for time to reconcile something which in terms of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference should be at this moment reconciled. The whole thing has gone to blazes—the Conference. We shall be back arguing again in New York in August; but what is manifestly clear is that nobody there—except myself—disagrees about the 200-mile limit. Everybody accepts it. Everybody has been bought and sold on it. The one thing you can say about the 200-mile limit is that it is the greatest freak of international law which exists. It is totally and completely meaningless. But we are committed to it. The Icelanders on their own basis have taken a stand on it. The Congress of the United States have passed a law, and the President has signed it, which conies into operation next year and which claims the 200-mile limit for the United States.

My Lords, 200 miles is what? What are we talking about? This is what drives me crazy—really crazy. Are we talking about what is the behaviour of fish—where they go, where they come from, who catches them, who eats them? The answer is that 200 miles is totally and completely irrelevant. What the Icelanders are talking about are the edges of the shelves, the banks and so forth, where the fish manifest themselves. What we are complaining about here, what my noble friend Lord Kennet has been complaining about, is the disappearance of the herrings and the mackerel and so forth. They are an entirely different set of circumstances. Where do they come from and where do they go? We had a classic case two years ago, the complete collapse of the Peruvian fishing industry to the extent of 12 million tons a year. The biggest fishing industry in the world was Peru's. The only things they caught were anchovies. They did not eat them; they did not give them to their own people. They fed them to stock in America, to the pigs, to the battery-fed poultry and the stall-fed cattle. It was third stage—at three removes from—human consumption. Then it collapsed. Why? Peru had already claimed the 200 miles. They were the first. Peru claimed their 200 miles, as did Colombia. This was their patrimonial sea, as they called it. The U.S. did nothing about it; they paid the fines of the tuna fishers who were caught. Peru claimed their 200 miles because they were protecting their fisheries. They brought in all kinds of restraints and restrictions against overfishing—and, in fairness, it must be said that they did a real job in controlling overfishing in Peruvian waters.

Then came El Nino, which means the Christchild. It is so old in South American tradition. It is part of the folk lore. It happens! Somewhere in the Western Pacific Sea, thousands of miles away, a hot current generates and comes in over the Humboldt current which brings the nutrient to the surface to produce the anchovies—and the guana from the seagulls. This was the equivalent of a land drought. It just swamped and killed off the nutrient of the anchovies. It was nothing to do with the 200 mile limit, it had little to do with overfishing. The Peruvians might just as well have put a claim on the entire Humboldt current. That is the only way to control it: to take over Nature! You cannot draw fences in the sea. There is no way.

Lord KENNET

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interject? Would he not also agree that part of what went wrong was that an international commission of fisheries experts suggested a maximum catch level and the Peruvian Commission said, "Oh, they are pessimists. Let us up it by 10 per cent." The Government said, "They are only scientists." and they upped it by another 10 per cent. So this is a lesson for the politicians.

Lord RITCHIE-CALDER

Yes, my Lords, for the politicians to keep out of science. I would agree in large part; but it was the natural circumstances which were something completely different. The catastrophe was not the degree of overfishing. Here you have the problem in the ocean itself—and that is what we are supposed to be talking about at the Law of the Sea Conference: how the foresight of mankind can see a way in which to overcome these things which we are now blundering into and handling so stupidly. The answer is that until we get some real understanding of how we are going internationally—I extend the whole thing—from Brussels to Reykjavik to Washington and to Ottawa, where are we going to find sense in this situation which says "you must cooperate or else". We ought to be talking about what is happening to the fish. How much do we know about what happens? We know there was a situation with the pilchard in which simply a cold spill-over from the Arctic, from the Wycliffe Thompson Submarine Range, drove the pilchard out of Cornish waters just as sardines have been driven out of California. All these things belong to a bigger system than we can legislate for. Beyond all question of doubt, we must sit down and think in these terms; and not in silly terms of how we can bump Icelandic trawlers.

7.25 p.m.

Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH

My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name on the speakers' list. My excuse for intervening is that for 14 years I have been a director of a fishing port in the South-West. There, we have been fortunate-and I agree so much with the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie Calder—because unexpectedly, due to climatic and weather changes, we have been enjoying in the last few years a most extraordinary increase in the shoals of mackerel. This has increased the number of trawlers at our berths from 11 to over 90; and it has encouraged a lot of poaching from ships from the Continent-particularly the enormous factory ships which the noble Lord mentioned, which are far bigger than any of our trawlers, sucking in the shoals with sonic equipment. Unbelievably, their experts can tell whether they are in a shoal of sardines or mackerel or whether they are over plaice. They know exactly what they are going to suck up. They take quantities in one catch equivalent to the catch for a dozen trawlers from our harbour. They poach frequently and on two occasions in the last year they have been brought in.

I would not expect an answer this afternoon; but there is one point of very real concern and disaffection in the South-West. Perhaps the Minister might consider it at his leisure. It is the matter of the penalties when Navy boats bring in these large ships. On two occasions we have had Russian ships arraigned and brought into Plymouth. On the first occasion they had taken tens of tons of mackerel. They were ordered to disgorge the mackerel on to the docks. It was a very hot summer's day. It was all very fine and a matter of much delight to the local trawlermen; but on that hot day the poor Queen's Harbourmaster had a steadily growing hillock of slithering mackerel which he must get rid of. He dare not sell it. This would have infuriated the local fishermen, who would lose their own market. He could not give it away; for the same thing would happen. The problem gave rise to many hours of frustration before the fish were sent to the Midlands for animal food.

On the next occasion, another boat was brought in with tens of tons of mackerel poached in the 12-mile limit. They were not going to have the same dilemma this time. All that they did was to give a rebuke. Her Majesty's Government should endeavour to find some effective penalty—perhaps holding in port for two or three days; or something that would be more effective than giving great problems to comparatively small ports if vast quantities of fish are unloaded, perhaps in hot weather, either at Plymouth or at Brixham or at any fishing port in the South-West.

There is another point on which I agree with the noble Lord. What good does a 200-mile limit do in the Channel? It is inoperative and impossible. We ourselves in the South-West are basking in very heavy catches of certain varieties of fish; but no one can forecast when the swarms may move away or when climatic conditions, or hot or cold streams, may eradicate them so that the trawlermen who come to the area find their catches are too small.

We need serious and urgent consideration by the Government of these problems for our fishermen all round the seaboard. I speak with knowledge only of that South-Western port. I would urge the Government to treat it as a matter of really serious urgency. Fishing has been one of the age-long and traditional occupations in this country and, as an island, we should strengthen and maintain it.

Lord BOOTHBY

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down may I ask her one question? Can she tell us why the pilchard—a delicious fish which comes from her part of the country—has, for all practical purposes, disappeared?

Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH

My Lords, I do not think it has wholly disappeared. Something in the trends of climate may have brought us the glut of mackerel and the decline in pilchards. Some are still caught, but there is a heavy demand to buy them from the Continent.

Lord RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, on a point of information, the fact is that there was a cold water spill-over from the submerged Wycliffe Thompson Range which acts as the weir of the Arctic. A cold current came down the West Coast, chilled the North Atlantic Drift and pushed away the pilchards.

7.30 p.m.

Lord STRABOLGI

My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Kennet for putting down this Question tonight. I am particularly grateful to him for spelling out so clearly on the printed Order Paper the details and different points that he was going to ask. I listened with great interest to the speech which followed by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. I know what a great interest Lord Boothby has taken in this subject. As he said, he put down a Question only the other day. I have also listened with great interest to my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder and the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith. I will do my best to answer all the questions which have been raised.

There is one matter upon which we can all agree, and that is that the fishing industry is unique in the uncertainties and, indeed, sometimes in the danger, which it faces as a matter of course in supplying our food. Those who work off Iceland are of course beset by particular hazards at present, as has been mentioned by noble Lords. I will refer again later to Iceland, if I may. I hope noble Lords will agree with me in paying tribute to the whole industry for the way in which they have always faced up to their special problems. The Government are firmly of the view that the United Kingdom fishing industry has a key role to play in the provision of an essential part of the nation's diet. To this end, Her Majesty's Government are pledged to supporting that industry and maintaining the stocks on which both the consumer and industry depend, as well as securing arrangements for the access of our fishing fleet to the resources it needs.

We all recognize—at this time more than ever before—that there are a great number of uncertainties surrounding the future operating conditions of this great industry. Noble Lords have mentioned several of these issues already. First, there is the extension of fishing limits. International law on jurisdiction over fisheries resources is undergoing great changes at present. Widespread international support for a 200-mile limit has emerged at the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, which has just adjourned a further session in New York, and which will resume, as your Lordships know, again in New York on 2nd August. The Government support this concept and hope that the Conference will reach agreement on 200-mile fishing limits in the near future as part of a comprehensive Convention. As my noble friend Lord Kennet has said, a number of important maritime States are preparing to extend their fishing limits whether or not international agreement can be reached beforehand. The Government have long recognised the clear trend towards extended fishery limits. I can assure the House that if other countries unilaterally adopt extended limits we will be ready to take whatever action is appropriate to protect our legitimate interests. But we continue in the firm belief that a really satisfactory solution can be reached only by international agreement, and we will continue to seek agreement at future sessions of the Conference.

I hope therefore that there is no misunderstanding of the Government's support for the concept of 200-mile fishing limits. It is the Government's intention to move in an orderly way towards the adoption of such limits, preferably as part of a comprehensive agreement on the Law of the Sea. This brings me to my second point, the question of the reappraisal of the Common Fisheries Policy.

Lord KENNET

My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to interject a question which is a crucial one? He has said that if everyone claims 200 miles in a disorderly way before international agreement, the Government will take whatever steps are necessary to protect our interests. There are two kinds of steps that they can take, and they are contradictory. Do we mean we shall continue to fish under armed protection, as we do in the Icelandic 200-mile zone; or do we mean, on the other hand, the opposite policy, that we shall take a 200-mile zone of our own and keep everybody else out of it? We cannot mean both.

Lord STRABOLGI

I wonder whether my noble friend would be patient and allow me to develop my speech. I will try to answer all these various points.

My Lords, I was about to deal with the Common Fisheries Policy. When fishery limits are extended, the United Kingdom, with the wealth of fish resources around its shores, will contribute the lion's share of the combined resources of the Community; and we stand to lose more than any other Member State from the exclusion of our fishing vessels from their traditional distant water grounds. The adoption of extended fishing limits by maritime States will in any case lead to great problems for our industry, which will need to adapt to a reduction in distant water fishing opportunities and to an increased reliance on the waters around our shores, where the mix of catches will be different from that which it has traditionally taken. But because of the common access provisions of the Common Fisheries Policy we will not be able to benefit from the exclusive control of our own 200-mile zone, and that is why we are seeking modifications in that policy.

There is no question, therefore, about our support for extension of fisheries jurisdiction. But within these extended areas the proper division of resources requires changes based on two elements: a system of coastal belts reserved for the fishermen of the coastal State concerned; and a scheme for the division of the remaining resources under the jurisdiction of Member States which takes adequate account of the particular importance of fishing to the United Kingdom, and which is related to a system of conservation measures which can be properly enforced.

On the question of the width of the coastal reserved belts which we are seeking, my right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office described in another place last Thursday the proposals which he put to the meeting of the EEC Council of Ministers in Luxembourg earlier last week. My right honourable friend made it clear there that a 12-mile exclusive zone, outside which Member States would have free access to each others' waters, as the Commission had informally proposed, would not meet our needs. In looking at the key areas beyond 12 miles, however, we had found that many of them lay within 35 miles and all of them within 50 miles. As the noble Lord has reminded us, the industry has indeed called for an exclusive belt of 100 miles. But in the Government's view this is neither a realistic nor a necessary demand. We must not see the question of the coastal belt as if it were an isolated issue, but we must have regard. I suggest, to the content of the Common Fisheries Policy as a whole whose principles we have accepted and which involves not just questions of access but marketing policy, structural questions and, increasingly, conservation of resources.

We are not of course dealing here with the question of whether or not we should extend our fishing limits to 200 miles. As I have already indicated, the Government support such a development as part of a comprehensive agreement—and I stress the word "agreement"—on maritime questions. The fish stocks in our potential 200-mile zone and in the waters adjacent to it are migratory, and their habitats transcend lines drawn on maps. The stocks of most species. as my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder has said, and particularly the stocks of fish such as herring and mackerel, can migrate over distances of many hundreds of miles in their development from larvae stages to juveniles, and finally to mature fish. In terms of effective management of fishery resources, therefore, this means that their exploitation must be a matter for international action. The question at issue is how the resources of those waters which will fall within the extended fishing limits of EEC Member States are to he divided and how, when Member States extend their fishing limits, the access provisions which the previous Government negotiated need to be revised to deal with the new situation of a wider Community fishing zone.

My noble friend Lord Kennet asked for how long was the 12 to 50 mile zone proposed to last. I can say that we are seeking permanent changes now in the light of the permanent adoption of 200-mile zones. The noble Lord also raised an interesting point about the comparison of the Continental Shelf and the EEC. The Department of Energy is interested in the Continental Shelf to which, under international law, we have undoubted rights. There are no international rights to a 200-mile zone for fishing yet.

I should now like to deal with the question of conservation. Equally important to coastal belts, therefore, is the question of the enforcement and policing of quotas and other conservation measures. Before considering the future position, I should perhaps deal with the points which my noble friend raised about the existing situation. It is true that all the important commercial fishery resources in the North-East Atlantic area have come under increasingly heavy pressure as a result of advances in fishing technology, and the drive to find protein resources for human consumption as well as for the manufacture of fish meal. Successive Governments have strongly supported the work of the conservation bodies such as the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission in pressing for adequate international controls to safeguard and manage fisheries in a rational way. We are determined to see these measures work properly, and have been instrumental in securing the Commissions' agreement to quotas on stocks and restrictions on the gear that may be used to fish them.

We are particularly concerned about the rapid increases that have taken place in fishing for reduction purposes. As was mentioned by my noble friend, it is a very indiscriminate type of fishing, having essentially no regard for the age, species or quality of fish taken, and it can therefore be excessively wasteful if not used carefully and in a controlled way. We accept, of course, that some species of fish have little or no value for direct consumption. But the tendency in the past has been to fish for all of those species that were readily available, and substantial by-catches of human consumption species have led to the decimation of some stocks, such as herring in the North Sea, and pose a serious threat to others such as haddock and whiting. This is a deplorable waste of much needed fish, and the United Kingdom delegation to NEAFC has consistently pressed for measures to control industrial fisheries of this kind. I am glad to say that there is now a ban on industrial fishing for herring in the North Sea as well as stringent limits on the percentages of herring which may be taken in other fisheries, though these have not yet been accepted by Denmark. There are also new quotas to control the sprat fishery itself, much of which goes for industrial purposes. Effective measures to control the by-catches of whitefish have, however, so far been blocked. This is of great concern to the United Kingdom and we are pressing for the improvements which are needed to protect stocks.

The proposed catch of North Sea herring is indeed more than the stock can safely stand, as has been said, though the 1976 agreed catch level is nearer the limits proposed to NEAFC by its scientific advisers than previous catch regulation agreements have achieved. At the NEAFC meeting last month, the United Kingdom pressed for more stringent measures, including a ban on all directed fishing for herring in the second half of the year, as the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, has said. This was agreed by our industry who stood to lose the valuable autumn fishery. They were prepared to agree to this, if all other countries would too, in order to stabilise the stocks. It was to our great regret that some countries would not accept this formula.

My noble friend asked what the United Kingdom did regarding the vote on North Sea herring. My Lords, we abstained. We wanted a zero catch for July and December, as proposed by our scientists. The 10 per cent. rule is for individual landings. The quota covers all catches of herring, as by-catches and catches for human consumption. With regard to the sampling of catches which my noble friend mentioned—

Lord KENNET

Before my noble friend leaves that point, would he say why we abstained? Why did we not vote against it?

Lord STRABOLGI

My Lords, it is not usual in NEAFC to explain particular votes or attitudes which have been taken. This is a question of a whole negotiation, and I should not like to go further than what I have said.

Lord KENNET

My Lords—

Lord STRABOLGI

My Lords, I am sorry; I am not prepared to go further than I have done. I have already gone further than my original brief said I could. With regard to the sampling of catches, two kilos is a minimum size of sampling only. It is up to the international inspectors to take whatever samples are necessary to establish a case which national Governments can act upon.

As to our national allocation of the agreed figure of 160,000 tonnes which is the total catch, our share is 9,700 tonnes which, as my noble friend Lord Kennett has said, is only 6 per cent. However, 6 per cent.—and this is a fact which my noble friend may not appreciate—is higher than our average share over the past five years, because these quotas are based on catches, not on coastlines or on anything like that, as my noble friend seemed to suppose. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the quota shares are determined on the basis of historic performance in the fisheries concerned: traditionally, in the North Sea area we have taken a small percentage of herring. In contrast, our share of the West Coast of Scotland total herring quota is over 50 per cent.

With the extension of fishery limits, coastal States will have a much more important role to play; and the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to the importance of the control measures at our disposal. The Government recognise that the present fisheries protection arrangements will need to be augmented. Five new offshore vessels are under construction and arrangements are being made to provide additional air surveillance. This force will patrol both fishing grounds and oil rigs, and I am confident that together with the existing forces it will be adequate for the future. I am certainly not going to pretend that on their own the new ships which have been ordered would be able to police fishing in every square mile of our 200 mile zone, when established. It would be impossible for any class of ship to do that. What is important is that we should have the right combination of surface vessels, air surveillance and onshore controls such as statistical monitoring, to enable us to police our extended responsibilities adequately. Obviously it is equally important that the measures being policed themselves provide for easy enforcement. A great deal of work remains to be done on these questions—that I readily admit—but I can assure noble Lords that the Government are determined that practical and effective measures will be evolved.

I should now like to turn to the Icelandic dispute. Here it is the Government's aim to secure a negotiated solution from which both sides will benefit. Although Iceland's unilateral action in adopting extended fishing limits is illegal, our approach is not based on a narrow legalistic attitude. As I have said, widespread adoption of extended limits is on the way. But for this to be achieved fairly, it must be by international agreement and not by unilateral acts of force. We have always been prepared to recognise the Icelandic interest in the fish around Iceland's shores, but we must also consider the interests of our own fishermen who have operated there for centuries. In particular, they must be protected against the attacks of Icelandic coastguard vessels when carrying out their legal right to fish on what is still the high seas under international law.

As to my noble friend's question about the cost to the taxpayer of the current Icelandic dispute, I can tell him that the cost to date of chartering and operating the civilian defence vessels is estimated at about £1.6 million since last November when harassment began. Apart from some extra costs, the running costs of Royal Navy ships operating in waters off Iceland are broadly those that would be incurred wherever the vessels were deployed. Final and detailed repair costs arising from collisions between Her Majesty's Ships and Icelandic coastguard vessels will not be available until after work is completed in each case.

With regard to the point about the South-West and the landings of mackerel, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, I will, if she does not mind, look into that and write to her. However, I readily admit, on the general question of the South-West and the mackerel, that there has been no quota because, until recently, there has been nothing to be much concerned about. But I now agree that there has been so much over-fishing that the question of a quota will certainly have to be very seriously considered, and that is being borne in mind.

I think I can say, in general, that the Icelandic dispute is symptomatic of the complex of changes that are bound to lead to changes in the shape of our fishing fleet. There will be changes, too, in the quantities and varieties of the fish which they exploit. And socio-economic changes will follow for the industry's workforce and for those working in the ancillary industries. This is a testing time for Government and industry alike. It is our aim, with the help of the industry, to create the best possible conditions so that this great industry may respond and continue to catch the fish we need.

Lord KENNET

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether I may go back over two quite specific questions. He was not able to tell us why we did not vote against the 73,000 tons herring catch in the second half of this year, instead of abstaining. But he did tell us that we wanted these Fisheries Commissions to be effective. I wonder how he reconciles those two statements. Secondly, he asked me to be patient earlier about what we will do, if people go on claiming 200-mile EE zones, to protect our interests. Will we claim our own, or will we invade theirs? I was patient, my Lords, but I heard no answer to that question.

Lord STRABOLGI

My Lords, on the question of the allowable catches, I think we must put this into perspective. When one thinks back to 1974–75, taking the summer period in each case, the total allowable catch then was 500,000 tons. We have now got that down to 160,000 tons, as the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, was kind enough to say when I answered his Question. We think that a safe catch is 110,000 tons. We have not got it down as far as we can, but these are questions for negotiation. What went on at the conference in detail, I am afraid I cannot tell my noble friend. I was not there, and I cannot say any more than I have said. With regard to his second question, I think it is a hypothetical one which I am not prepared to try to answer.