HL Deb 20 March 1996 vol 570 cc1276-8

3.00 p.m.

Viscount Mountgarret asked Her Majesty's Government:

Why the common fisheries policy requires the dumping at sea of fish caught in excess of quotas rather than the reduction of future quotas.

Lord Lucas

My Lords, it is important to have effective deterrents to discourage overfishing in order to conserve stocks for future years. However, the Council of Ministers is currently considering a proposal which would allow national quotas for some stocks to be exceeded by up to 10 per cent., provided that the same quantity of fish is deducted from the following year's quota.

Viscount Mountgarret

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. There seems to be a little light at the end of the tunnel. Is he aware that a short time ago a trawler skipper in north-cast Yorkshire accidentally caught too many sole when fishing for another species? He was required to dump perfectly good dead fish back into the sea when I believe that there is already a shortage of fish. If a skipper exceeds his quota on any occasion, why is it not possible to restrict the fishing boat's activities until such time as the equivalent quota would have been caught?

Lord Lucas

My Lords, I believe that we are pursuing something of that kind at the moment. We seek some way of allowing fish which are satisfactory for eating and which have been caught by mistake with other fish nonetheless to be landed and consumed by people rather than being dumped back in the sea. However, fishermen being of infinite resource and sagacity, if we give them a regulation they will doubtless find ways around it and will make more out of it than we thought they would. We must be careful that we have concern for the health of the fish stocks in the sea as a whole.

Lord Carter

My Lords, will the Minister agree with Mrs, Emma Bonino, the Fisheries Commissioner, that there is no connection between the ownership of fishing vessels, the recent judgment by the European Court of Justice and national quotas?

Lord Lucas

My Lords, I do not have the words spoken by Mrs. Bonino in my briefing. Indeed, from reports in newspapers or elsewhere I am not at all clear exactly what the lady said. She seems to have been pretty Delphic in her utterances. However, we are clear that she is seized of the problem that the common fisheries policy represents, not only from what she said when she was here but in the draft Commission report which was leaked yesterday. We are confident that the matter will be tackled with energy by a lady who has a great deal of that quality.

Lord Campbell of Croy

My Lords, can my noble friend comment on a similar wasteful practice required by regulations, the dumping of under-sized fish—wasteful because they do not survive? Can more be done to promote agreement on sizes and shapes of meshes of nets to enable more juvenile fish to escape before a catch is hauled on board?

Lord Lucas

My Lords, this is a worldwide problem because the dumping of juvenile and under-sized fish is generally done because there is no market for them. It is done by fishermen, whether or not they are under a quota system and whether they are in the United Kingdom, America or elsewhere. The principal way of dealing with the problem is to restore fish stocks to a level where fishermen will wish to discriminate and to concentrate on shoals which are mostly of large, high value fish rather than, as at the moment, going after whatever they can find.

We are also considering technical measures. There have been encouraging results in the shrimp and prawn fisheries in terms of mechanisms which let juvenile fish go. There have been proposals that we should use square mesh panels in trawls, but recent research indicates that even when such devices are used very few of the small round fish caught in such trawls survive, even if they escape from the net.

Viscount Waverley

My Lords, why not distribute the excess fish to other people's existing quotas?

Lord Lucas

My Lords, the problem is that the fishermen do not find it worth keeping and landing the fish.

Lord Willoughby de Broke

My Lords, British fishermen can sell their quotas to fishermen from other countries. Are fish quotas, unlike milk quotas, transferred internationally between countries of the European Union? Is this question associated with quota hoppers; that is, if the British fisherman wishes to sell his quota, he is able to do so to, say, a Spanish or Irish fisherman. Is that the case?

Lord Lucas

My Lords, clearly the Spaniard or Dutchman—those are the two principal nations involved—can fish against British quotas if they purchase British licences and the British quotas that go with them. That is one of the principal problems with the common fisheries policy at the moment. It is one which we are tackling through the IGC and any other route open to us.

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