Westminster Hall Sitting of 9 February 2000

Preamble
[MR. MICHAEL J. MARTIN in the Chair]

Air Services Agreements
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Jamieson.]
9.30 am
Mr. Tony Lloyd: May I begin by saying how pleased I am to see so many people here this morning, from across the party political divide? The issue of air transport is fundamental to consumer choice, which should be at the centre of any such debate, and to economic development. If I may speak slightly parochially, the statistics showing the importance of Manchester airport to the national economy as well as that of the north-west are a testimony to the tremendous importance of air travel. Manchester airport already delivers £500 million to the economy of the north-west and about £1.7 billion to the national economy. It provides 85,000 full-time equivalent jobs. It is important not only to the future of the north-west region, but to the whole of the north of England: indeed, it is not fanciful to say that it is one part of the infrastructure that is vital to the future of the national economy. It is in that context that I make my first point.
For far too long, Governments have shown a strange reluctance to recognise the importance of airports outside the south-east. Airport policy has been fixated on the development of Heathrow and Gatwick. Regional airports were considered as a bolt-on, viewed simply in terms of the way in which they affected the development of air transport into the south-east. Such an approach may have been understandable, but it is unacceptable in terms of regional development and, indeed, runs counter to the national interest.
In the past, air transportation initiatives have been driven by the need to protect the interests of BAA, the airport operator, or British Airways, rather than those of the consumer. That view was fundamentally mistaken. I restate that the central issue is how to develop consumer choice—how we give consumers the freedom to exercise the choice to fly from where they are best served.
In the non-south-east air travel system, BAA and British Airways have been at best uncertain friends. I pay tribute to the importance of British Airways to the development of Manchester airport and other non-London parts of the system. British Airways is, of course, the dominant United Kingdom carrier. Nevertheless, it has too frequently adopted what it believes is a reasonable, commercially sensitive approach, leading to withdrawal of services or the failure to develop services outside Heathrow and Gatwick. Most recently, British Airways withdrew its service from Manchester to Islamabad, justifying its decision on the preposterous ground of consumer choice. It is difficult to explain to people living in Macclesfield, for example, how their choice is increased when their travel to Pakistan involves them taking a detour through a London airport.
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In the past, British Airways has responded to competitive pressure only when forced to by other airlines choosing to use Manchester. British Airways has then put on rival services. My critique of British Airways is not meant to be hostile—rather the opposite. It is a recognition that it is important to the development of regional air transport. However, it will always operate in its own commercial interests, which we understand.
In the same way, nothing that I say should be seen as a criticism of BAA. It is a matter of practicality that, for a long time to come, consumers in my city and region will have to look to the London airport system for many of their long-haul travel requirements. Flights to Africa, the far east and Latin America, for example, will involve routeing from Manchester through either Heathrow or Gatwick. Therefore, it does not serve the interests of Manchester or any other region outside London for air travel in and out of Heathrow or Gatwick to be restricted.
For every passenger who travels through Heathrow or Gatwick, two passengers travel from United Kingdom regions to European airports, such as Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol and Frankfurt and then go further. That is an astonishing statistic; it means that the use of United Kingdom resources is already being eroded as people are forced to make a different choice. This is not efficient for consumers either in terms of economics or in terms of choice. Consumers are best served if they can fly from an airport that can be conveniently reached from the place where their journey begins. That is best enhanced by the development of a strong regional airport framework. I include Manchester, of course—but everything I say about Manchester could equally be applied to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Prestwick, Newcastle, Leeds-Bradford or Birmingham. This is not simply an argument about Manchester; it is about maximising consumer choice across the nation.
Slots in the London airport system are being severely restricted. That is a fact of life. Slot reductions—or slot rationing, to be accurate—impact on what happens regionally. It takes place not just at Heathrow and Gatwick but more widely. I mentioned passengers travelling through European airports. Last spring, KLM began running a service from Sheffield to Amsterdam. Passengers from South Yorkshire could end their journeys there or—which was more likely—travel on from Schiphol to their final destination. However, KLM came across a slot problem at Schiphol and has now ceased operating that service. Only if services are developed directly from the point of departure such as Sheffield can we be certain that consumer choice will be maximised in the long term.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to give us some comfort on my central theme. We want this notion of fifth freedoms—rather an inelegant expression—maximised so that regional airports can benefit. By fifth freedoms, we mean the ability of airlines to fly into our regional airports from their country of origin and go on elsewhere. Where that happens, it is good for airlines and for the travelling public.
In a rare moment of weakness, I will admit that Manchester airport faces a problem that Heathrow and Gatwick do not have. Demand for services from Manchester is clearly not as strong as at the London airports. Any airline that get its hands on a slot at

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Heathrow will take it, so Manchester's argument for fifth freedoms does not necessarily parallel Heathrow's. Heathrow can fill slots simply by offering them. Manchester's position is different, as the airport is still developing and needs to encourage airlines to come in. The ability for an airline to fly from its point of departure, disembark and pick up passengers at Manchester, and fly on elsewhere would give that airline a strong guarantee that it would make more money than it would if the service were restricted to flying from its point of departure to Manchester and back again.
I ask the Minister to think radically about regional airports and fifth freedom rights. There once seemed to be a total ideological blockage on the concept of fifth freedom rights, but we have seen some movement. However, not all the changes have been helpful. For example, FedEx was granted the right to operate fifth freedoms from Prestwick airport for commercial services—freight. As a result, FedEx was able to fly from the United States to Prestwick and on to the far east. Polar Air, which had flown from Manchester, chose to relocate at Prestwick precisely because it could have fifth freedoms from Prestwick but not at Manchester. It is ludicrous that an airline should have to relocate for economically rational reasons because fifth freedoms are available at one airport and not another.
I warmly applaud the decision to grant Olympic Airways the right to fly from Athens to Manchester, and from Manchester to Boston. It is hoped that flights may go on to Toronto, although there are difficulties on the Canadian side. I hope that the Canadians will recognise that it is not in their national interest to restrict flights.
That decision displayed a welcome change of thinking in central Government, but I must temper such free public applause with some criticism by asking Ministers to liberate their thinking. Ideally, we would like unlimited fifth freedom access to regional airports. That idea receives much support from airports, including Manchester, that would welcome the ability to develop their own air services without restriction. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions argues that a bargaining process must be maintained, and that the Government are the custodian of long-term development. It is suggested that short-term consumer satisfaction may not always be best in the long term, and I accept that argument.
However, any restrictions on development of air transportation and the ability of consumers to use air services should be imposed in a way that is consistent with consumer choice, and, therefore, with leisure patterns, family travel and business travel. Too often, agreements on Manchester have been tied to decisions affecting the interests of London airports or British Airways. In the case of Olympic Airways, for example the knock-on deal with Greece—welcome though it was—was that British Airways should have parallel rights in that country. I have no objection to our increasing the capability of a British carrier, but I would be concerned if such trade-offs might jeopardise development at Manchester.
Let me give two examples. First, Biman, the Bangladeshi airline, wanted to travel in and out of Britain. It was offered flights to Manchester, but it wanted flights to London and was not prepared to
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accept Manchester as a second-best option. The irony is that Biman would have accepted a deal if it had been told that it could fly into Manchester and fly on from there. Forced to enter into a bargaining process, Biman was not prepared to accept a deal. Manchester has been frustrated for no clear national gain.
The other example involves Singapore Airlines, which was offered the chance to fly from Singapore through Manchester to New York, but was not prepared to accept that as a second-best option to flying via London.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Chris Muffin): Is my hon. Friend suggesting that we should unilaterally grant fifth freedom rights to countries in which our carriers are subject to restrictions that we would not tolerate?
Mr. Lloyd: No. I want the Minister, in any negotiation on regional airports—Manchester, of course, but also Birmingham, Sheffield and others—to bear in mind the development needs of those airports. It is, of course, necessary to put pressure on others to exercise the same freedoms and develop the same services that we have, but we must get away from thinking that development in Manchester must involve some deal for London airports or for British Airways as the national carrier. We want regional transport to develop for the sake of the regions, but also for the sake of the national airport system.
Air travel is growing enormously, and that will continue. There are also restrictions at Heathrow, Gatwick and other major international airports such as Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol. If British people from outside London are to enjoy maximum choice, we need strong development of regional airports and a strategy that sees them not as an add-on, but as a central part of national air travel.
If that development does not come, Heathrow and Gatwick will suffer. They are already at saturation point, and demand for development at Gatwick will be locally resisted on environmental grounds. There are restrictions on how many people can fly through Heathrow. Granting fifth freedom rights to regional airports is therefore strongly in the national interest.
I know that negotiations are taking place on that, particularly regarding Pakistan's PIA, which may fly into Manchester. The Minister may not be able to comment on the negotiations, which have taken place in recent days and even hours.
My appeal is that we should unblock the thinking that regional development must be conditioned by the view that the true national interest lies in the London airport system; it does not lie there, it never did and it certainly never will. Regional development is a national good. I look forward to a strong indication from the Minister that that old thinking is now a thing of the past, and that in future there will be a strong endorsement of flights into and beyond airports such as Manchester.
I realise that other Members want to speak and I hope that I have said enough to give the flavour of the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) is in rather a difficult position as regards the debate, because he is a Parliamentary Private Secretary. I pay tribute to him because he

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provided the instigation for the debate, as the Member in whose constituency Manchester airport lies. He has played an important role in pushing for the developments to which I referred.
9.50 am
Mr. John M. Taylor: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I do so simply and solely as the Member of Parliament for Solihull.
International access to regional airports is of considerable importance to my local airport, Birmingham international, where only foreign airlines currently provide long-haul services to key business and leisure destinations. Indeed, a previous Conservative Administration first brought that about, by allowing American carriers to start services to regional airports from the United States without reciprocal rights for UK airlines. As a result, Birmingham now has two daily transatlantic scheduled services.
In the absence of UK airlines that are willing to serve regional airports such as Birmingham, the Government should encourage foreign carriers to do so instead, on a third or fourth freedom basis, but also on a fifth-freedom basis. UK airlines should not be able to prevent foreign airlines from doing that through the influence that they can exert over existing bilateral negotiations.
If foreign carriers were allowed to operate such services, the economic benefits to the regions would significantly outweigh any detrimental impact on UK airlines. It would also demonstrate that the Government were looking after the interests of UK consumers, who increasingly want to fly from their local airport, irrespective of the nationality of the airlines that operate there. That last category also includes me.
9.53 am
Mr. Peter L. Pike: I am glad to have the opportunity to say a few words in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) on initiating the debate. Like him, my main purpose in speaking is to draw attention to the effects on services at Manchester airport. However, my remarks also apply to the other regional airports.
Manchester airport is not merely the airport for Manchester; it serves the whole north-west region and beyond—Yorkshire, for example. Without question, it is the most successful regional airport in England. That is because the former Manchester city council was always prepared to invest in it.
In the 1960s, in Manchester, I was a backroom boy, as a Labour party political organiser, when decisions were taken to develop the airport. People said, "It will not pay until 2000." Yet those developments of the 1960s have long since disappeared as air traffic has grown—terminals 2 and 3 and other developments make what was done at that time seem insignificant.
The difficulty is that we still expect people to travel into the country via London, and we should not do so. A few years ago, I was asked—as a representative of the House—to visit NATO in Brussels. I had to travel on a Monday morning and was told by the House authorities that I had to come down to London, because they expected me to travel from here. No one took into
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account the facts that the fare was dearer, that I had to come down to London on the Sunday before, or that a convenient flight from Manchester arrived in Brussels 10 minutes before the flight that I was expected to catch from London. None of that was included in the equation. It was only when I insisted that I would not go if I could not travel from Manchester, that it was conceded that I could do so. Even our own House authorities sometimes do not do all that they can to encourage the development of our regional airports.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central referred to fifth freedoms; that is extremely important. We want more freedom to be opened up. However, I understand the difficulty to which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary referred: such reciprocal arrangements can pose problems. Nevertheless, it is nonsense for a plane to touch down at an airport without being able to pick up passengers—it is not economic.
At times, all Members who have an interest in regional airports have received letters from various companies, such as Singapore Airlines, which want to fly into different airports but have not been given slots to do so. In many cases, they battle for several years before they are finally allowed to run flights into those airports. We want other airlines to be able to do that too.
I regret the decision of British Airways not to use Manchester airport for their flights to Islamabad. That is a retrograde step because many people in the north-west want to travel to Islamabad with BA. It is true that they can use another airline, but they should have been given the choice of using BA.
There is always too much concentration on bringing people to the south-east. How many tourists come into the country through London who would have found that the north-west, or even Scotland or other parts of the UK, have as much to offer? They could fly into those places and visit them, rather than having to travel into London and fight their way out of it to get to other parts of the nation. Instead of visiting Stratford-on-Avon and other parts of the country for a couple of days, they could base their holiday in those places and visit London from them.
I look forward to the Minister's response on these important issues, although I accept that they are difficult ones. We want our airports to be given more freedom to develop their traffic potential, so that airlines can use all the regional airports. We also want our airlines to have the same freedoms to pick up passengers in other countries. The point is to give passengers—the consumers—what they want. We do not want them to experience the difficulty of having to come to London and to travel from Heathrow or Gatwick when it is not necessary. That is a major problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central has focused attention on these issues. As a Member representing a Lancashire constituency, I support his case, because the bounds of Manchester airport go well beyond Lancashire. We want Manchester airport—and others, such as Birmingham—to grow and flourish, and to give passengers freedom of choice.
10 am
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I support fully the excellent case advanced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd). Like the hon. Gentleman, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins), who I hope will catch your eye, Dr. Clark, in the debate. He plays an important role as the chairman of the all-party group that seeks to promote and represent the interests of Manchester international airport.
I speak as the Member for Macclesfield, an important constituency in the north-west. That area contributes substantially to the economy and to the viability of the region. The benefits that flow to my constituency from the locality and the existence of Manchester international airport are very great.
I hope that the Minister will understand from the number of Members present in Westminster Hall today the strong feelings that exist about the importance of regional airports. From my point of view, Manchester is important, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor) pointed out, Birmingham international airport is, too. Regional airports play an important role not only in transport, but in the overall economy of the United Kingdom.
We hear that there are problems with overcrowded skies in the south-east. Why do the Government not direct their attention to those parts of the country, such as the north-west, that could take the pressure off the south-east? There is room in the sky and runway capacity in the north-west. Many of us will be more than aware that the second runway at Manchester airport will come on stream in the not-too-distant future. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Central said, Manchester is only too willing to accept additional flights and they will bring great benefits to the economy of the region.
The north-west economic strategy identifies the development of Manchester international airport and other airports in the area as very important to the future prosperity and development of the region. In particular, it identifies the system of international route licences operated by successive Governments as a continuing constraint on the growth of international scheduled flights
"which are the key to attracting new investment and supporting economic growth".
The Government rightly state—successive Governments have done so—that they want continuing economic growth in the United Kingdom. A more realistic approach to regional airports could make a major contribution to support the growth that we all want to see.
The hon. Gentleman cited statistics on Manchester airport. He said that, in 1998, it had been estimated that the United Kingdom income impact of Manchester airport was £1.7 billion, of which £585 million was in the north-west. As I am sure we all agree, that is a dramatic statistic. The hon. Gentleman also referred to the impact on total United Kingdom employment, which was estimated to be 85,000 full-time equivalents with more than 15,400 jobs on the airport site itself. He did not add that the 1999 census on working population shows that 17,900 people are employed on the site at the airport, an increase of about 2,500 in 12 months, which is the
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equivalent to the creation of seven new jobs every day. Is that not something that we want to encourage and to continue?
Forecasts of traffic at Manchester suggest that the airport could be handling—this is an amazing figure—40.7 million passengers in 2015, with a UK income impact of £4 billion to £5 billion and an employment impact of between 137,000 and 177,000 full-time equivalents. The catalytic effects, such as those on tourism, are not included in those estimates. However, the passenger forecasts are underpinned by the assumption an increased range of destinations will be served, and frequencies offered in international scheduled services. The hon. Gentleman ably made that case. I emphasis to the Minister that regional economic impacts will not be achieved if further liberalisation of air services does not take place.
I stress that several Members from across the political divide are here today to highlight the importance of regional airports. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull made an excellent case for Birmingham international airport. Before I represented Macclesfield, I lived close to what was then Elmdon airport in Birmingham. I know just how important the international airport is to that major industrial centre. Obviously, I claim that Manchester is the second capital of the United Kingdom and its industrial contribution to the country is substantial. In 2002, Manchester will host the Commonwealth games and, if many colleagues visit Manchester, they will see a city and a region that has been transformed in recent years.
As a Conservative, I am happy to pay tribute to the contribution that the Labour-controlled council has made over the years to the economic success of Manchester. Members from the north-west appreciate the role of Manchester and there is often cross-party support for many of the actions that are necessary to ensure that the city can continue to play a major role in the economy not only of the north-west, but of the United Kingdom as a whole.
There is full liberalisation of air services in the European Union and the Government have accepted that. It has resulted in many new services to regional airports throughout the United Kingdom. There is unilateral access to UK regional airports for United States carriers on what is known as the third and fourth freedom basis. That is a complicated term, but those who understand the subject know what it means. The Government have also accepted that, and it has resulted in additional services to Manchester and to Birmingham.
The transport White Paper identified a role for regional airports to maximise the contribution that they make to local and regional economies. In addition, as I have already said, they should reduce the pressure on congested south-east airports. I refer particularly to Heathrow and Gatwick, but I might also include in that equation Luton and Stansted because they contribute to the overcrowded skies in that part of the United Kingdom.
We need also further to minimise unnecessary surface journeys. Expanded scheduled services to Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere in the regions can make a major contribution to that. The hon. Member for Manchester, Central has drawn attention to FedEx and

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the problems resulting from its development, which has contributed directly to an increase in lorry movements on our roads, which the Government say they want to reduce.
I say to the Minister that regional airports cannot fulfil the role that the Government and others want them to fulfil while they are subject to bilateral constraints that prevent services from operating where there is demand.
Airports are major economic engines in the areas that they serve. They create local jobs, on and off airport sites, offering the widest range of skills. As the hon. Member for Macclesfield, I know that they stimulate the local economy, and that is a prerequisite for social inclusion. The regional liberalisation deal has had only limited take-up, and further action is necessary. It is not the correct mechanism; it is flawed and misunderstood, and it has not maximised the potential contribution that regional airports can make.
I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the debate. The subject raised and initiated by the hon. Member for Manchester, Central has strong cross-party support. I hope that the Minister will try to get his Department and the Government to make changes that will bring immense benefits not only to Manchester international airport, which is so important to my constituency, but to other regional airports that can contribute to the improvement in the UK economy.
10.12 am
Mr. Paul Goggins: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) on securing this important debate, and thank him for his warm remarks about my role. I thank also the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) for his warm remarks, and I pay tribute to his role in articulating strong arguments in favour of Manchester airport in particular, and regional airports in general. It is important that different parties and regions are represented in the debate.
My starting point is as the Member of Parliament for Wythenshawe and Sale, East, which is home to Manchester airport. As we all know, there have been many debates about the development and growth of the airport, not least about the construction of the second runway. Opinion in my constituency and throughout the region is strongly in favour of the airport's development because 18,000 people have a job there and the possibility of future growth is a great cause for optimism in the local economy.
The regional development agency, local businesses and the local authorities that own the airport all agree that it is a major driver in the regional economy. It connects the people of the north-west with destinations throughout the world. Crucially, it is a gateway through which global companies come and invest in the north-west of England.
Clearly, there is no dispute that the Government acknowledge the role of regional airports in transport policy and economic development, and they said as much in the 1998 transport White Paper. In that White Paper the Government promised greater liberalisation and they have already delivered the open-skies policy for
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airports other than Heathrow and Gatwick, provided that there are reciprocal arrangements with other countries and carriers.
At about the same time as the White Paper was published, we had a report on regional air services from the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee. The report went further than the White Paper and made a strong recommendation for
"unilateral liberalisation of international access to regional airports, including fifth freedom rights, in addition to the limited liberalisation that has been announced."
Clearly the Government have not so far heeded that advice, and no doubt the Minister will go to some lengths to explain why that is so. The debate gives us a good opportunity to take stock and assess the current position.
I want to suggest, as colleagues have done, ways in which the system of air agreements could be improved, but we have to set those recommendations against the success that has already been achieved in the UK's aviation industry. As a whole, it contributes some £10 billion to gross domestic product. UK airports are now handling around 160 million passengers a year, and it is predicted that by 2015 that number will almost have doubled.
Some 180,000 people are employed directly at airports, and a further 200,000 are employed in service industries that support the aviation industry. A figure that bears repeating is that for every extra 1 million passengers who are attracted to airports in this country, 1,000 jobs are created. The industry is therefore important and already very successful.
As we look to the future, we have to tackle a number of constraints. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central spoke eloquently about the first, which concerns not only a physical but a psychological and cultural barrier: the belief that one can only run an international airport from London—that regional airports are only there to offer holiday charter and low-cost flights and are served by low-cost carriers, and serious international flights must go to Heathrow or Gatwick.
Mr. Pike: On that point, should we not stop calling Manchester a regional airport? Is it not a national airport that happens to be in the north-west?
Mr. Goggins: Indeed, I generally refer to it as Manchester international airport, because that is not only the reality but reflects the airport's aspiration. Just over half the flights out of Manchester are chartered, and just under half are scheduled, and the majority of the scheduled flights are international. The aspiration is to increase not only the number of passengers travelling through Manchester airport, but the number of scheduled flights and the proportion of such flights with international destinations. Manchester airport is becoming more international, and that should be the aspiration of other regional airports.
If it is possible for Denmark, which has a GDP smaller than that of Manchester airport's catchment area, to have an airport such as Copenhagen, there is no reason why a regional airport such as Manchester should not also be an international hub. If Milan and Frankfurt, as regional capitals, have major

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international airports, why cannot some of our regional airports also be major international airports? The London-centred mindset must be fought on a number of fronts, but it is particularly important to overcome it in aviation.
The second constraint is economic development. Time will not stand still, and if we do not succeed in turning some of our regional airports into major hubs, business will simply pass us by and passengers and carriers will go to other European international airports. My hon. Friend quoted a figure that demonstrated that far too many people from the north-west have to travel internationally via London, but twice as many go to international airports in Europe, such as Paris and Amsterdam. If we do not act now, when Gatwick and Heathrow are full to bursting, passengers and carriers will go to other European hub airports, and we will miss the opportunity fully to develop our regional capacity.
The third issue is fifth freedoms—an inelegant phrase, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central said, but essential to the development of long-haul services to our regional airports. Fifth freedoms have been essential to the development of Manchester airport's long-haul routes. Qantas Airways first developed its route from Melbourne to Manchester via Amsterdam, and other airlines did similarly—Emirates Airlines from Dubai via Zurich, and flights from Hong Kong via Amsterdam and Paris, and Pakistani International Airlines from Islamabad via Copenhagen.
The end result of the development of a fifth freedom may eventually be a direct route, but fifth freedoms are essential for carriers if they are to minimise risk, to develop passenger numbers, and to develop the market. As my hon. Friend said, the present negotiations on fifth freedoms are far too London-centred, and far too focused on the interests of Heathrow and Gatwick and the demand of international carriers for slots there. As a result, we are missing the opportunity to develop travel through our regional airports.
The fourth point to be confronted is a current issue. It seems that many of the partial liberalisations and mini deals are not working or are beginning to unravel. We all hoped that mini deals would lead to progress, but I fear that they are taking us in the wrong direction. Only last week, the possible mini deal between the UK and the United States appeared to have stalled. That has massive implications for Manchester and the north-west region.
Mr. Winterton: Has the hon. Gentleman received the letter that I have from British Midland, commenting on the failure of the talks between the UK Government and the United States, which could put under threat the 2,000 jobs that British Midland had hoped to create, many of them in the region? Does that not show how important it is that we get it right?
Mr. Goggins: I entirely agree. As I understand it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, some 600 jobs have been lost from Manchester as a result of the difficulties in negotiating that mini deal.
We heard earlier about the fifth freedoms granted to FedEx and Polar Air for daily flights to Prestwick, but we also heard the recent announcement from FedEx
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that it is suspending those flights. FedEx also wanted fifth freedoms to Stansted, and regards it as unprofitable to have fifth freedoms into Prestwick only.
Although the intention behind the partial liberalisations and mini deals is entirely honourable, they do not always work out as we hope. There is a strong argument for removing uncertainty by taking the politics out of the matter. We should leave it to the airports and carriers to work out the routes and services, making those decisions on the basis of their commercial assessments. I recognise, as the my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out in his intervention, that the protectionist attitude that exists in some other countries and among some carriers must be confronted, but if we do not move ahead, we will miss a huge opportunity to develop our regional airports.
Manchester airport will soon have a second runway. It is under construction as this debate takes place. The airport has the aspiration, and by 2015 will have the capacity, for 40 million passengers a year to travel through it. Gatwick and Heathrow are already approaching capacity, with little or no likelihood of further expansion in the near future.
We have a choice, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Either we create a level playing field which gives regional airports in this country a real opportunity to grow, or passengers will simply move elsewhere. They will travel via Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Copenhagen. The implications for jobs, growth and prosperity in our regions are immense.
Dr. Michael Clark (in the Chair): Order. For the convenience of hon. Members, may I point out that there are four Deputy Speakers allocated to this Chamber. I am not one of them. I am a member of the Chairmen's Panel, standing in for a Deputy Speaker. Therefore it would be appropriate to address me by my name.
I call Mr. Harold Best, confident of the fact that he will accommodate me by bearing in mind that I have three Front-Bench speakers to call, starting at 10.30 am.
10.24 am
Mr. Harold Best: Thank you, Dr. Clark. I echo the observations made by previous speakers about the importance of international airports in various corners of the United Kingdom. It is difficult to overstate their importance to industry, commerce and people.
The idea of regional international airports is not new. We have heard references to cross-party support, and there is also trans-Pennine support for Manchester's airport. When I was a member of West Yorkshire county council, we joined others in trying to impress upon the Government of the day that such an international airport should be developed in the north of England.
Caroline Flint: Is my hon. Friend aware that in my constituency there will, we hope, be Doncaster Finningley international airport, which will be the only airport in Yorkshire able to provide the long-haul services that our region desperately needs and the finance that Manchester currently enjoys?
Mr. Best: I am aware of those proposals, but my hon. Friend is not entirely right. The airport in my

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constituency, Leeds-Bradford, has that capacity now and for some years has been able to handle flights to anywhere in the world. Concorde is a regular visitor to the Yeadon site in my constituency—not always welcome, however, because of the noise that it makes and the pollution that it leaves behind.
The freedom to get goods, services and people in and out of a region is essential for the future of the northern part of the United Kingdom. That is why I find that intriguing phrase, "the fifth freedom", so attractive. However, there are problems, which it would be remiss not to mention.
There is resistance in my constituency to the further development of an intercontinental airport, because of the huge increase in the associated road traffic and the pollution that that might bring. With considerable foresight, the planners and developers of the international airport in Manchester supported the idea of a permanent rail link between that airport and Leeds city centre. It is now possible to travel freely in both directions, making use of a good service.
An important factor in the control of pollution and damage to the local environment is the simple, almost accidental fact that the railway track that serves Harrogate through Leeds passes within three quarters of a mile of the end of the airport runway at Yeadon. A study is under way to examine the feasibility of extending and developing a terminal for the railway service at Yeadon airport. That will not detract from other facilities, but will expand in an intelligent and environmentally friendly way the services essential to such an airport.
I am mindful of your injunctions, Dr. Clark.
In my constituency, we welcome the expansion of air transport. It is important that it should be seen to be fair and evenly distributed throughout the United Kingdom—"fair" not just in the sense that one should play the game fairly, like cricket, but fair in the sense of industrial, commercial and travel opportunity for the people of the United Kingdom.
Only those who have to face the certain knowledge of the nightmare journey from the north of England to Gatwick or Heathrow to catch a plane to other parts of the world understand the pain of travelling and the massive inconvenience that it causes to the commercial and industrial interests of the north.
It is difficult to resist the arguments that have been advanced for an expansion of the fifth freedom. I believe that we should have open skies, as far as that is possible and practicable, but we should do what is necessary in planning terms to protect the immediate environment and provide the transportation facilities to ease the burden on our existing road network.
10.30 am
Mr. Michael Moore: We have had a useful and timely debate on an important subject. I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) on choosing the subject and securing the debate.
Having listened to the debate for the past hour, it is incumbent on me to provide not only an element of political balance—hon. Members have stressed the consensus that exists—but a small amount of regional
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balance. The speakers have been predominantly from the north-west, especially Manchester. I pay tribute to Manchester airport, which has received a great deal of political support. It is a successful airport, which will develop this year through the second runway. However, to someone from north of the border, Manchester is to the rest of the regional network what the London airports, especially Heathrow and Gatwick, are to Manchester and other places. We are lured to Manchester to go on our holidays.
Caroline Flint: It took me more than two hours to get to Manchester airport by public transport last year. It also takes me two hours to get to London. A long-haul airport in the south of Yorkshire is important for my constituents and the other 4 million people who travel south to go abroad.
Mr. Moore: I welcome that intervention and I wish the hon. Lady every success in securing a regional airport for her area. It is important to strike a balance, not only between London and the rest of Britain, but within the regions.
The basic proposition that we have discussed is well understood. We all agree that strong regional airports are good for regional economies. Many hon. Members have referred to both Birmingham and Manchester international airports, as well as using the old names by which those airports were known 20 or 30 years ago. We know Edinburgh international airport as Turnhouse airport as much as by its modern, wholly appropriate name. That airport is being vastly expanded so that it can cope with the huge growth in demand that it, like many other airports throughout the United Kingdom, is experiencing.
Dealing with air service agreements and providing for the fairest and most open system possible are crucial to ensuring the development of the success that has been achieved so far, and making the most of it. There is a chicken-and-egg aspect to our considerations. Does a successful regional airport drive the local economy, or does a successful local economy drive the need for a regional airport? Many hon. Members in the Chamber are frequent fliers. I applied to become a member of two frequent-flier schemes, as I travel from Edinburgh to London. We are often stacked over Watford, and have to wait for a long time to land in London airports.
Our areas provide evidence of the development of regional airports and the importance of giving them the strength—through the extension of the fifth freedom deal, or other measures—to improve their contribution to their local economies. Airports contribute to the local economy directly through jobs and indirectly through the service suppliers to the industry. Several hon. Members have highlighted the direct leverage effect of increasing the number of passengers in specific airports. The growth in leisure travel and cargo is crucial to complementing the lucrative business markets with which many of us may be most familiar.
When we are considering the development of our regions, many of us focus on the importance of inward investment. Good regional airports, be they in Yorkshire, the north-west or Scotland, are important in attracting that inward investment. Until recently, I served on the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. Last

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year, we carried out an important investigation into inward and outward investment. Time and again, we were told by officials, agencies such as Locate in Scotland, or companies, which described their motivations, that the infrastructure links, especially air links, were crucial to the decision to locate in an area. Tourism, which is vital to our regional economies, can be developed only if there are worthwhile and useful air links to promote it.
Airports are not much use if the business, leisure or cargo services are not available at them. I want to focus briefly on two issues that have been mentioned in passing this morning: the impact of disputes over transatlantic scheduled services, and cargo. Regional airports' efforts to develop transatlantic services will be stymied if we cannot make progress on the issues affecting Heathrow. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) referred to the letter from British Midland. I also received a copy. As a keen supporter of that airline's role in increasing competition and providing consumer choice—another theme of this morning's discussions—it is important the such airlines can develop their services and participate in transatlantic flights. Clearly, the immediate focus is on Heathrow, but British Midland has suggested that it is keen to work with Manchester airport.
Many participants in the debate will have followed the recent transatlantic talks and watched as public expectation increased that a break-through would occur. The break-down of those talks is worrying and I hope that the Minister will be able to shed some light on it. It is widely suspected that the commercial interests of British Airways and Virgin may have been as influential as the American Government in curtailing the talks and causing them to fail.
Let us consider cargo. Many references have been made to Prestwick. The relaxation of fifth freedom rights for Prestwick was widely welcomed in Scotland. However, that welcome has been turned on its head by the disappointing news that FedEx will cease its service. Again, commercial negotiations, and the desire to fly in and out of Stansted, are clearly important. I agree with the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) that piecemeal developments in fifth freedom rights are not the answer. However, they can be important in such areas as Prestwick, where airports have developed their businesses largely through their cargo facilities.
I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Mr. Best). If we are to develop regional airports, which are key drivers of local economies, and if we are to gain the necessary freedoms to increase the flights and respond to consumer demand, we must consider the integrated nature of the available transport. It is a source of constant amazement that there is no rail link from Edinburgh airport, which is 200 yd above the main east-coast rail line to the north of Scotland, to the city. That story is repeated in many places around the country. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that in his reply.
There is cross-party consensus that liberalisation and responding to customer demand are important. The Government must knock heads together to ensure that we do not stymie important local developments.
10.39 am
Mr. Damian Green: The number of hon. Members who have spoken or who wished to speak, and the passionate advocacy of the various airports that we have discussed from Members representing all political viewpoints will have convinced the Minister that the negotiations in which the Government engage in pursuit of liberalisation of air services are vital not only to the industry, but to many people in the areas surrounding those airports. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) that we should perhaps not refer to them as regional; they are international airports that happen to be in the regions.
Conservative Members are entirely in favour of liberalisation. As the Minister and others will be aware, the previous, Conservative Government consistently negotiated hard and did an enormous amount to achieve a degree of liberalisation—although not enough—in Europe and elsewhere. The Minister will also be aware that that liberalisation must be balanced with the interests of airlines and airports and their right to maintain their business as best they can with the travelling public. We have discussed the development of various airports. Manchester has a number of advocates, but Birmingham international and Leeds-Bradford are equally important, as are other prospective international airports that hon. Members clearly desire for their regions. They have all done a lot to encourage economic growth in the areas surrounding them and to achieve regional development. That has been possible under the existing terms of air service agreements and much has been achieved through flights between United Kingdom regional airports and the United States.
Negotiations with the US are often at the heart of the problems that we face. The Bermuda 2 agreement is clearly not perfect, but it represents a step forward. We must be realistic and recognise that we have to build on what is in place. Despite the restrictions and imperfections of Bermuda 2, the UK aviation industry is a success story and has done much to encourage regional development. The link between successful airlines and successful airports is clear, as is the link between successful airports and regional development. The debate is about how we can best maximise the growth and continued success of the aviation industry and the associated benefits that that brings to the regions.
We must consider the negotiations and refer in particular to the FedEx and Prestwick case. I hope that the Minister can explain where he sees that going. I understand that FedEx was given fifth freedom rights at Prestwick with no reciprocity, which disadvantaged other airports around the regions. Also, there was no benefit for British carriers to the US, which was a double whammy on the downside. As we have all heard in the past few days, after that rather dubious agreement was reached, FedEx pulled out anyway, leaving Prestwick with no benefit and the disadvantage of hoped-for jobs not being created. That is a catalogue of disasters by any standard.
Mr. Moore: The hon. Gentleman should bear in mind the fact that FedEx represents 10 per cent. of cargo handling at Prestwick. He may be giving the impression that it represents cargo handling in its entirety.
Mr. Green: No, no. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right, but I am sure that he agrees that an enormous head of optimism built up on the back of the FedEx deal. Obviously, that has been deflated and I hope that the Minister will explain where he sees things going.
The problems over the FedEx deal bring home the importance of cargo issues. Most of the debate dealt with passenger services, but, as the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) said, cargo is equally important. Indeed, cargo is a key industry for some airports. For example, DHL has done much to bring investment to East Midlands airport and independent cargo airlines such as Channel Express have invested heavily in Bournemouth airport.
Caroline Flint: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that cargo and maintenance needs in Yorkshire are not being met by any of the Yorkshire airports? That niche could be filled by Finningley, especially if air services were liberalised.
Mr. Green: The hon. Lady is persistent in getting her message across, but I have no intention of engaging in what appears to be an intra-Yorkshire debate. I have learned in life and in the House that it is wise to steer clear of them.
The British Cargo Airlines Alliance estimates that access to the US market could create 4,000 UK jobs by 2005. Everyone would welcome that, but it depends on the Government achieving the best possible deal for UK carriers in the open skies negotiations with the US. I hope that the Minister reaffirms that they will continue to push for a slice of the American market for UK airlines. The direct impact on regional airports would be not only economic growth, but the environmental benefits of which he will be aware. For example, the more we spread the freight load being carried to different international destinations, the shorter lorry journeys will be. With the right infrastructure around airports and if more freight could be carried from different airports around the UK, heavy-lorry traffic would be minimised.
Several hon. Members mentioned the British Midland letter and expressed disappointment about the failure of the negotiations, but I was struck by how positive it is about using Manchester airport. The letter says that
"Manchester Airport has been supportive of our efforts to establish a new hub … this remains a key element of our … strategy."
That will be welcomed by those who advocated the case of Manchester international so eloquently. Many such problems inevitably hit the logjam of the question whether the Government can negotiate successfully, with the Americans in particular, and there will be no progress without successful negotiations.
The underlying figures are slightly disturbing in respect of not only the individual competitiveness of our regions, but our national competitiveness. British business travellers can travel direct to only 10 US cities, but there are 18 direct services from Frankfurt for German business travellers. Greater diversity of services from this country is clearly necessary. For example, Manchester provides only 48 direct services a week—operated by the four UK-US airlines—to only five cities
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and no services to the US west coast, which is a vital and growing market. We would all like those services to be increased. Birmingham, which is at the heart of many of our industries, has only two airlines operating 14 services direct to only two US cities. Glasgow has only one direct service. Not only is that inadequate for the individual airports and cities concerned, but it puts the whole country at an economic disadvantage compared with some of our European partners and economic competitors.
The Minister will be aware that he and the Government have an important job to do in negotiating those various new services. We are all aware that Ministers face a difficult task and he will have heard this morning that, effectively, he is being urged to give unlimited fifth freedom access to many of our airports, even though that may not be in the interests of some of our carriers. I am also aware that "open skies" means something different in America from what it means here. The American definition seems to exclude cabotage, ownership and control, wet leasing, the fly-American policy and other arcana of the debate.
Perhaps the Minister could spend a few minutes explaining what the future negotiating stance will be after the recent failure of the talks. That stance will be important not just to airlines and to the various airports, but to the possibility of successful regeneration in many cities. I hope that the Minister will give us some information and comfort on that point.
10.50 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Chris Mullin): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) for initiating what proved to be an interesting debate in which, possibly with one exception, Members of all three main parties have spoken with one voice.
My hon. Friend made the central charge, which others echoed, that for too long airports policy has been fixated on London. I assure him that we recognise the importance of the regions. Indeed, I represent a seat in the north-east of England which has an expanding airport at Newcastle. I am sure that it would make the same arguments as my hon. Friend has made on behalf of Manchester airport.
We also recognise that, given the demand for air travel is increasing exponentially, it is inevitable—even if we did not want it to be the case, and we do—that there will have to be an expansion of air travel and services from regional airports. One of the great challenges facing this and any Government in the next 20 or 30 years is to reduce the 70 per cent. of air journeys that originate from the three London airports, and to spread the load more equally around the country—for environmental reasons as much as for any other. It is inevitable and desirable that greater development takes place in regional airports.
I concede that the policy may have centred too much on London and on carriers' interests. However, I think that that policy was beginning to change even before we were elected—the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) asked me to acknowledge that—and we intend to continue in that vein.

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My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central made a balanced speech. He was generous enough to concede that it was the Government's job to balance other interests, and the hon. Member for Ashford made the same point. We face the dilemma that I put to him in an intervention: do we concede freedom to countries that resolutely exclude or limit our carriers, or do we try to get something in return?
I should add that some foreign carriers are also fixated on London, and it does not follow that, were we unilaterally to grant the freedoms that some have called for, those carriers would necessarily all take advantage of services from regional airports. A number of airlines—my hon. Friend mentioned Biman, the Bangladeshi airline—have been offered freedoms from Manchester but have rather contemptuously declined them. I hope that, on reflection, they will realise that great value is to be gained from those freedoms.
Those are some of the problems that we must take into account. Several hon. Members have referred to environmental considerations. We should not have such a debate without recognising that neither regional nor national airports are entirely popular with some of our constituents, especially if they happen to live next door to them. One way of mitigating the great expansion of regional airports that will inevitably and desirably take place is to ensure that there are proper public transport links. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Mr. Best) referred to the rail link at Leeds, which is very welcome, and the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) talked of the lack of such a facility at Edinburgh. The Government are trying to encourage all regional airports to develop proper access by public transport, and thereby reduce pollution and disruption.
In the short time allotted to me, I shall do my best to address some of the other points made by hon. Members. In 1998, the Government decided to make an offer to all states with which we have bilateral aviation relations and where services to the UK regions were not already liberalised. The offer was to open up all UK airports, other than Heathrow and Gatwick, to services by foreign airlines, without restrictions on capacity or frequency. The only condition was that UK airlines should have the same rights to fly from those UK airports to whichever airports in the relevant foreign state were available—often just the national capital, rather than regional airports.
Of the 74 states that we contacted with that offer, 17 have so far agreed to it and 25 have responded negatively. We continue to remind the others of our offer, and take every opportunity to raise the matter when we have air services discussions with them. So far, by our calculations, two new long-haul services to Manchester, two to Stansted and one to Birmingham have commenced as a direct result of that regional policy.
Many states realise that demand for services from their territory to UK regional airports does not exist. They are therefore simply not interested in the offer. Others are instinctively hostile to liberalisation and are not ready to follow the lead that we have taken. Because of those factors, the take-up rate of our regional access offer has been relatively low.
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Some, including the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs, have urged us to make our offer on a unilateral basis. That point was made in the debate. They want us to offer to accept foreign airlines at UK regional airports without restriction, while UK airlines remain prevented from flying the same routes, or restricted to a certain frequency. The Government have been reluctant to do that. The granting of monopoly rights for a foreign carrier to serve a UK regional airport may, in itself, be an attraction to start services, but we do not believe that it is in the long-term interests of consumers to put foreign Governments in a position to keep UK carriers off specific routes and to leave development of a route entirely in the hands of a foreign carrier.
The Select Committee, Manchester airport and others have also argued that we should unilaterally concede fifth freedom rights from regional airports in the UK on the ground that such rights can help to swing a decision by a foreign airline in favour of commencing operations to a regional airport. Again, the Government have not been convinced that the merits of such a policy outweigh the drawbacks. Capacity increases, fifth freedom rights or more flexible tariff frameworks are frequently sought by UK carriers from foreign states, and it would weaken our ability to negotiate such rights for our own airlines if we unilaterally granted fifth freedom rights to others.
However, we have been prepared, on a case-by-case basis, to examine requests by foreign carriers for fifth freedom rights from UK regional airports. In each case, we ask the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an evaluation of the benefits and disbenefits of such services for UK airports, for the regions in which they are situated and for UK carriers.
Following such an analysis, we have recently approved an application by Olympic Airways for fifth freedom rights from Manchester to Boston and Toronto. Those services are due to start in April. Singapore Airlines operates fifth freedom services from Manchester to Bombay. In addition, Emirates Airlines has in the past made use of the fifth freedom rights that it enjoys from Manchester to a number of European points, but no longer does so. We have also indicated to Emirates that we would be willing to consider fifth freedom rights from Manchester to New York, but it has preferred to concentrate its efforts on obtaining such rights from London. Similarly, Singapore Airlines has been offered transatlantic fifth freedom rights from all UK regional airports but rejected the offer because fifth freedoms from Heathrow were not available. My hon. Friend asked about Pakistan. We are having further talks with Pakistan regarding its service, and I am told that those talks are going well.
Several others points have been raised. I would have liked to say something about the difficulties that we are experiencing in talks with the United States, but time does not permit. I shall be happy to follow that up with my hon. Friend in correspondence if he so desires.
I reiterate the point that I made at the outset. We accept that past policy may have been tilted too far in the direction of London, but that will not be the case in the future. We recognise the desirability of expanding regional air services.

Fishing Industry
11 am
Mr. Tim Loughton: I am very pleased to have secured this debate on the fishing industry after several months of putting in for it. It might not have been necessary if the House had had a full day's debate on the whole subject of the fishing industry on 13 December. In the few hours allotted to us at that stage, it was noticeable that no Conservative or Labour Back Bencher representing a coastal constituency was given the opportunity to express his or her views.
I want to examine at the fishing industry today on two levels: first, the complete failure of the common fisheries policy, its devastating impact on the British fishing industry and its total failure as a conservation measure; and secondly, and more important for me, the trickle-down effect of that failure on small fishermen, particularly those in my constituency of East Worthing and Shoreham, and its impact on non-pressure stocks such as sea bass, which is causing problems off the Sussex coast. Again, it might not have been necessary for me to raise these issues if the Minister, who I am glad is here today, had agreed to meet a delegation of fishermen from my constituency, but he has declined to do so on two occasions.
The common fisheries policy has failed, first, to treat British fishermen equitably. There is no level playing field, or whatever the marine equivalent of a level playing field is, in Europe. However, the industry is still important for the United Kingdom. According to the latest figures, it still has 7,800 vessels, catching 980,000-odd tonnes of fish, with a value of £620 million. It employs 18,600 people directly, and gives work to 3,000 fishmongers and a great many more people in supporting industries.
Recent common fisheries policy developments have been singularly unfair to the United Kingdom. The total allowable catch cuts proposed by the European Commission at the end of last year are substantial. The cost to the UK fishing industry is likely to be £88 million, out of a total industry of £622 million. That is about 14 per cent. of the catch in value terms. Inevitably, that will lead to more decommissioning of boats and job losses. Yet there never seems to be the same impact on other EU fishing fleets. Cuts by other member states have equalled those in the UK numerically, but not as a percentage of national fleets. Thus, some other member states, mainly Spain and Portugal, have cut their industries by a smaller proportion, yet received support grants for having been judged to have complied.
The UK gets a particularly poor deal from grants. The United Kingdom was the fifth largest recipient of FIFG grants between 1994 and 1997, receiving 173 million ecus, compared with Portugal receiving 248 million ecus, France 267 million ecus and Spain a massive 1,163 million ecus. It seems that still we have that problem, and the Minister is still proving unsuccessful in standing up to the Treasury. One of the reasons for the disparity is that the Treasury is unwilling to allow MAFF to apply for the multi-annual guidance programme grants awarded for decommissioning, because of the Fontainebleau agreement, which requires 71 per cent. of moneys granted to be removed from the
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national rebate. That has implications for the modernisation of the UK fleet, which is now much older than the equivalents in Spain and Portugal, for example, and becoming less efficient. Effectively, the United Kingdom has paid £100 million towards the upgrading of the Spanish fleet, while our own is being increasingly decommissioned.
In recent quota cuts, the Minister failed to stand up for Britain by invoking the Hague preference for North sea cod. That would have given the UK an additional 4,350 tonnes to catch. The Hague preference exists to give sensitive regions extra quota when TACs fall, but the Minister failed to play that card for Britain. The United Kingdom continues to get a poor deal from quota hopping, which always hits the headlines. Despite plenty of hot air from the Government, foreign-owned vessels fishing UK quotas still account for around 25 per cent. of the tonnage of the UK fleet. We increasingly see other ways being found around the restrictions, such as foreign vessels unloading their catches at UK ports straight on to freezer lorries destined for home port markets on the continent.
England also faces added competition because the Scottish Parliament now has its own Scottish Fisheries Minister, with powers to discriminate against English, Welsh and Northern Irish vessels operating in the Scottish zone. The Scottish fishermen have a Minister arguing solely for their interests, while England loses out. We have nobody to speak out against the excesses of Scottish vessels, which now come as far south as the south coast of England.
Another problem facing the UK industry is that of safety grants, another disgraceful example of the way in which the UK fishing industry is operating with one hand tied behind its back. MAFF's decision to axe safety grants was a disgrace. The interminable delay in reinstating them does no credit to the Government and speaks volumes about the place of fishermen's safety in the Minister's priorities.
The industry is now faced with the working time directive regulations, ignored by most European fishermen, under which the courts can decide whether or not the directive should be applied, despite the Minister's assurances. As with so many things, regulation weighs particularly heavily on the smaller operators, as the larger commercial operators can afford to take advantage of the increased regulatory burden to force uncompetitive practices on the smaller competition.
It is little wonder, therefore, that the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations recently called for the Minister's resignation. Its chief executive went on record recently as saying:
On practically every major front, the industry is being forced onto the back foot. It is intolerable that the Minister has asserted that the fishing industry is doing well under the present Government. Nothing could be further from the truth. The catalogue of failure, fudge and callous indifference clearly shows that the interests of the industry in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken a back seat."
The second failure of the common fisheries policy is on conservation, where it has failed dismally. Last November's announcement about cuts in the TAC, understandably described as massive, was surely an admission that the CFP is not working as a conservation measure. The cuts recommended were indeed massive:

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for cod 47 per cent. in the North sea and 69 per cent. in the Irish sea; for haddock 26 per cent. in the North sea and 40 per cent. in the Irish sea. Those were pretty desperate measures, as the cuts are usually capped at 40 per cent. for any one year. We are told that cod and haddock levels are at their lowest for 30 years, which is hardly a vindication of the CFP or a mark of its success.
The truth is that the CFP has no role as a conservation or environmental measure, because British fish stocks were particularly healthy prior to our joining the EEC. The whole approach to conservation in the CFP is completely wrong. Quotas do not reduce the amount of fish caught. Instead, boats trawl again and again to find the catch for which they have a quota to fill. They are more likely to catch non-quota stocks and then throw them back into the sea dead, including many juvenile specimens. It has been estimated that possibly 30 per cent. of fish stocks have been thrown back. A MAFF study conducted a few years ago near my constituency, off Brighton, showed that the survival rates of fish thrown back into the sea can be as low as 40 per cent. The coley example is a good one, because there is a small quota available for coley, which breed prolifically in the North sea. However, apparently annually some 80,000 tonnes have been dumped back into the sea to die and pollute the oceans.
Throwing dead fish back into the sea totally undermines any attempts at conservation of our fishing stocks. It is ironic, therefore, that, as from 1 January this year, the minimum landing sizes for 11 species of sea fish—including brill, turbot, dab, and black and red sea bream—were abolished, allowing the legal landing of postage stamp sized fish, which are particularly popular in foreign markets.
Fishing News, not surprisingly, says:
"Reducing or scrapping MLS sizes is an act of stupidity and no British fishermen wanted to see any reduction in MLS sizes. We have been calling for increased MLS sizes for so many years that we now see MAFF paying lip service to the EU."
The upshot of all this is the creation of a climate of environmental failure and a dog eat dog mentality among United Kingdom and European fishermen—or, perhaps, dogfish eat dogfish—between Scottish and English fishermen and, now, between larger commercial fishermen and smaller operators, often fishing off-beach, as is the case in Worthing. Alas, it is my fishermen in Worthing and Shoreham who are, as it were, the last dogfish on the menu and whose very existence is at stake. Already, only the last vestiges of a fishing fleet remain there.
Let me say something about the local situation. Sea bass in particular have caused great problems among my fishermen, who brought the matter to my attention last summer. At that time, for the second season running, the livelihoods of Worthing fishermen have been threatened by larger fishing boats which come along the coast—particularly from Newhaven, in East Sussex—and scoop up large quantities of fish using nets slung between a pair of trawlers.
Pair trawling is a real problem. Two trawlers operate typically 200 yds apart. Up to six pairs have been operating in the area during the season, and they have started the season early. They drag heavy steel wire lines
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in water as shallow as 20 ft. Heavy weights are attached to hold down the gear, which are in contact with the sea bed. Heavy wire sweeps herd fish into the nets with a funnel effect, and heavy chains and rubber bobbins scrape along the sea bed, overturning boulders, smashing rocks and uprooting kelp beds, which provide feeding grounds for bass and other fish and where small species such as crabs hide in the dark.
Often, after the pair of trawlers have been along, there are no fish for other fishermen. The fragile kelp beds, which have been deteriorating off Worthing for the last 15 years, are now virtually gone. It is said that they were deteriorating in any event, but dragging heavy gear along the sea bed cannot help the position.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for going out with the fishermen of Worthing and Shoreham, and maintaining contact with them. When I was the Minister in the Northern Ireland Office responsible for agriculture, we did a fair amount of research in Strangford lough on the effects of dredging. I suspect that the results we obtained were the same as those found in the near coastal waters of the south coast and elsewhere. The practice is very damaging, and I will support any recommendation that my hon. Friend makes to the Minister that it should happen way offshore, if it happens at all.
Mr. Loughton: My hon. Friend knows the position in Worthing as well as I do. I have seen photographs taken 10 or 15 years ago, and compared them with those taken by divers over the past few years. There is very little left—which is especially galling for Worthing, given that, arguably, its name is derived from the Saxon word for seaweed. Worthing has had problems with seaweed for many years: it has made a mess on the beach, and in summer it stinks. However, although the stink has gone, the fish will go as well because of the lack of seaweed.
Another problem with pair trawlers is that they have been coming closer and closer to shore. Some have come as close as 50 yds from the end of the pier, causing a danger to swimmers. As local fishermen will testify, after pair trawlers have hauled in their gear, vast amounts of small bream and whiting can often be seen floating dead or dying on the surface, feeding the seagulls. That does no good to anyone, apart from the seagulls.
I acknowledge that, as it stands, the practice is entirely legal, as long as it is restricted to boats of less than 14 m in length using a net mesh of 90 mm or more, and provided that the boats do not come within a quarter of a mile of the shoreline. Pair trawling is perfectly legitimate, and is not restricted under European Union legislation. I do not suggest that the fishermen operating out of Newhaven—whom I have also met—are flouting the regulations. I believe, however, that the practice is damaging the fish for everyone, and is weighing unduly on small fishermen who are restricted in terms of the distances that they can travel.
Pair trawling is an increasingly effective way of fishing. The amount of sea bass caught in that way has increased by 500 per cent. over the past two years. In 1997–98, 43.3 tonnes were landed; in 1998–99, the amount had increased to 216.2 tonnes. Because of that enormous increase, a number of full-time commercial boats are now fishing for bass. The number has increased substantially over the past five or six years.

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My fishermen in Worthing and Shoreham are very aggrieved that some of the best bass fishing grounds of Sussex are being systematically denuded. Since working with them, I have received letters of support from all over the country—from as far afield as Glamorgan, Somerset, Cornwall and Nottinghamshire. I have been out to see the pair trawlers, and I have been out with the conventional fishermen as well.
The response from the pair trawlermen is understandable, and in many respects I sympathise with them. They are caught by the common fisheries policy like everyone else. Because of the lack of pressure stocks and the decreasing quotas for cod, sole and plaice, they are having to look for alternative catches, and the position is worsening. They are having to look further afield for new species that are not covered by the quotas and the TACs. I was recently told that a colony of scallops had appeared in an area that the men do not usually fish; they scooped them up and moved on, leaving no scallops behind.
The problem in Worthing is that shoals of bass come close to the shore and are easy prey for the pair trawlers. Bass is rather a lucrative catch. The trawlers plough up and down all day long and then fill their nets. The Sussex fishery is typical of the eastern channel. A variety of species arrive season by season—for instance, Dover sole, turbot, brill, cod and mackerel. Now, as I have said, trawlers are coming down from as far away as Scotland to take advantage of the position, because of pressures in the North sea. The sea bass stocks, which are not covered by quotas, are inevitably coming under pressure, as evidenced by the catch limits per week being imposed on boats.
A fisherman from Somerset wrote to me about the problem of pair trawling. According to him:
"Pair trawling is not a sustainable method of fishing a relatively small sea or arguably any sea area, particularly for one of the less numerous species of fish albeit one with a culinary price on its head which has the unfortunate habit of forming very dense shoals when spawning and is therefore easy prey for these high tech vessels. Sea anglers and artisan fishermen as well as the knock on effect on the local tourist trade pay for the consequences of this overfishing."
The letter also mentions the MAFF report on offshore bass fishing, which was issued last year. It is the result of a pilot study, and is entitled "MO802". According to another letter:
"The Report which was conducted during the winter of 1998–99, clearly shows that this fishery has become a recruitment fishery which is relying on each new year class of fish as soon as they enter the adult stocks. The catches consist predominantly of small adults in their lst/2nd year of spawning. Very few fish were present in the widely sampled catches that exceeded ten years of age in a species that normally lives in excess of twenty five plus years and does not successfully spawn until aged six/seven years."
One of the most serious problems affecting the state of world fish stocks is the level of spawning stock biomass for each species. I am sure that you, as a scientist, appreciate that, Dr. Clark. Only mature fish can spawn, and thus contribute to the replenishment of stocks. World fisheries, however, are now increasingly targeting fish that are immature or only recently mature. Those fish have had little or no opportunity to spawn, and cannot contribute to the long-term health and survival of the stock. The plight of the sea bass is a prime example of the problem.
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We have to look only at MAFF's consultation document on the subject, which was produced last October, to highlight the problems. Again, I quote:
"When the adult bass return inshore in spring, following spawning, they supplement the summer fishery, but these fish are now perceived to be returning in much reduced numbers. As a consequence, effort on juvenile bass may be intensifying, thus undermining the current conservation package aimed at protecting these fish."
It goes on:
"the trends in the Fishery are worrying. They may indicate that the offshore stock is depleted and that the depletion is already affecting the Inshore Fishery."
That is serious. Pair trawlers are doing, and have the potential to do further, large-scale, long-term damage to the future of sea bass around our shores. In Ireland and the United States, pair fishing has been banned as not sustainable and harmful to quotations. The influence on south coast and south-west fisheries needs to be properly looked at before it is too late here as well.
What is the Minister doing about it? He has twice refused to meet a delegation of fishermen from my constituency, who are suffering from the problem, but who will not give up because their livelihoods are at stake. His actions are just encouraging pair fishermen. I went to see them last summer and tried to broker a gentleman's agreement, whereby they would respect certain lines of demarcation. Initially, they were keen to do that, but when word got round that the Minister was not taking the case seriously and refused to meet my fishermen, they got back to me and said, "If the Minister does not think that it is a problem, we will carry on and take as many fish out as we can." An unhelpful state of affairs has resulted.
The Minister keeps deferring to the Sussex sea fisheries committee, which operates out of Newhaven—from where those very boats come. It constantly denies that there is any such problem, which flies in the face of the evidence. It claims that pair fishermen are using gear that is designed to skip over the ground, rather than carve through it. That is patently not the case, as anyone who has seen photographs of the gear that they use will know.
The complacency on the boats coming too close to shore is worrying because swimmers were endangered last year. The chief fisheries officer of the Sussex sea fisheries committee is quoted in the paper as issuing the advice:
"anyone who swims near a trawler should know to avoid it."
That is hardly helpful advice in the circumstances. We still have a tourist trade and sandy beaches in Worthing and we do not want to discourage tourists in that way.
Worthing fishermen have few options. Some boats target cod in the summer, but they have now moved a long way offshore, on to wrecks in deep water, and are accessible only to a few larger boats. If the quota for cod is exhausted and a blanket ban put on in summer, what can those few boats do for the season? There is a problem. The common fisheries policy and fish stocks covered by quotas are one thing, but the effect on non-pressure stocks should not he overlooked. The livelihoods of many small and part-time fishermen in and around my constituency are seriously threatened. The whole tradition of fishing long associated with places such as Shoreham and Worthing could

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disappear. Clearly, we have a problem in Worthing and in the UK as a whole; it is no good pretending that everything is rosy.
It is not for me to say what the UK Government's policy should be, but, clearly, the CFP has failed and is failing large vessels, and its trickle-down effect means life or death for my fishermen. Carrying on the way we are will end in the wide-scale demise of the Europe-wide fishing industry, particularly the British fishing industry, which poses a serious threat to the long-term sustainability of fish stocks and the health of marine varieties that depend on them.
We need to regain greater control over our national fishing waters. The 2002 review of the CFP and the potential expiry of derogation is an opportunity to thrash out a proper long-term sustainable policy once and for all. I, for one, would favour the permanent extension of national and local management to 12 miles, empowering EU member states actively to manage the fisheries themselves, sensitive to local needs and circumstances and with sustainable social and environmental safeguards. That is the view that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds took. We can learn much from Norway—it manages its fishing industry without the necessity to dump dead fish and it uses complex and technological monitoring mechanisms and zonal management.
The CFP is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the EU. It is rigid, centrally applied and has no flexibility. When dealing with a natural resource such as fish stocks, a large degree of flexibility is needed both over time and between areas. The Commission has imposed the quota system from Scandinavia to Gibraltar with no diversity; hence it is failing in all areas. Instead of promoting flexibility, the Commission has introduced a permit system that will take effect from the end of 2002, whereby all vessels that fish outside the six or 12-mile limit will be part of an EU fleet under the Commission's control. That does not bode well for UK fishermen.
The last vestiges of the fishing industry in Worthing are in crisis. It is a microcosm of the desperate state of the UK fishing industry as a whole and it is getting worse. In the interests of the UK fishing industry and the sustainability of European fishing stocks as a whole, that decline must be urgently reversed. That cannot be achieved by a Government who constantly try to con people into believing that they have never had it so good.
We need a Minister to stand up for British fishermen and to take a lead in Europe with radical reform of the CFP, starting with the extension of the derogation to national Governments of control of the 12-mile limit, rather than taking the soft option of caving in every time. We need to hear his proposals for 2002 very quickly. We need a Minister who will stand up to the hoarding mentality of the Treasury, while grants to UK boats that desperately need modernisation and extra safety measures are effectively closed off.
We need a Minister who will have the good sense to acknowledge the plight of smaller fishermen such as those in my constituency, who will be prepared to listen to their views and their experiences at first hand and
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include them in the whole equation when discussing the fishing industry. I urge the Minister again to receive a delegation of Worthing fishermen, or to come down to Worthing to meet them.
11.27 am
Mrs. Joan Humble: I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on securing the debate. I was one of the many Members who were not fortunate enough to be called when we had our annual fisheries debate last year, so I welcome the opportunity to take part in today's debate. However, I shall not repeat the speech that I had prepared for that occasion because it concentrated on the proposals on quota cuts for this year and things have moved on. Instead, I would like to concentrate on the proposals that were recently agreed in Brussels to close part of the Irish sea fishery, which will have a serious effect on the fishing industry in Fleetwood.
As the Minister is aware, Fleetwood lost its distant water trawler fleet in the cod wars with Iceland in the 1970s, but successfully built a flourishing inshore fleet. Unfortunately, that fleet has gone down from about 70 vessels to 20, so there are serious concerns about its viability. We need not only measures to ensure that it continues in the short term, but measures to secure its long-term future.
The cuts in quota that have been agreed for this year because of the parlous state of fish stocks will make it difficult for Fleetwood fishermen to sustain their industry. Therefore, they were especially concerned when they learned of proposals to close part of the Irish sea fishing ground.
My local fish producers organisation well understands the need for conservation of fish stocks and spawning grounds. It also recognises that the Irish sea as a whole is suffering from over-capacity. Fleetwood has been trying very hard to ensure that it does have a sustainable fishing industry.
Fishermen are remarkably resourceful people and the fishermen of Fleetwood are certainly among their number. They have invested locally and they work closely with the local authority. The catchers have been working with the producers and auctioneers in the market, with everyone pulling together to ensure that the fishing industry remains. Fleetwood owes its birth to fishing. Even though not so many people are now employed in that industry, it is still part of their heritage and they want to keep it going. They are working hard to ensure that it does.
The producer organisation has proposed various conservation measures and is looking forward to the opportunities presented by the review of the common fisheries policy in the run-up to 2002 to ensure that this country, and indeed Europe, has a viable fishing industry. The fishermen would support a total ban on fishing in the Irish sea to protect spawning stock of cod and juveniles, but they are bewildered why beamers from Ireland, Holland and Belgium are to be allowed in to fish. Beam trawlers are large vessels and they are moving ever closer to the 12-mile limit. Fishermen from the Fleetwood inshore fleet tell me that beamers regularly come inside that limit and that they have reported the sightings to the Ministry of Agriculture,

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Fisheries and Food. I urge them to continue to report such incidents because, clearly, policing the 12-mile limit is at issue.
As the Minister is aware, trawlers in the beamer fleet take by-catches of cod. Boxes of codling are offered for sale to merchants in Fleetwood, so fishermen from those trawlers are coming ashore. My local fishermen tell me that some of the by-catch from those larger vessels is more than the total catch of the small inshore fleet—what is seen as a by-catch for larger vessels is their livelihood, which adds to their concern.
I read with interest an article in Fishing News on 4 February in which the Minister explained the background to some of the recent measures taken by the Council of Ministers. It is an excellent article and outlines the issues in detail. I noted, in particular, that the background to the debate was:
"to protect the immature cod which will spawn this year during February, March and April;
to maintain those fisheries that would not conflict with the spawning cod;
to impress on the Commission and the UK industry that the industry's involvement in the process was essential if a realistic plan was to be developed."
I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend said in the article. I want all that to happen. My fishermen and I agree that immature cod have to be protected and want their fishery to be maintained during the time that the cod are to be protected. They also want to work closely with the Commission and the Government to produce a realistic plan.
I hope that my hon. Friend will respond positively to this debate and let me know how these fishermen can become actively involved in the Irish sea cod recovery plan. Without fish, there will be no fishermen. That is why Fleetwood fishermen are realistic about the problem.
Representatives of the local producer organisation and Fish Forum are to attend a meeting in Belfast next Wednesday, when the matter will be discussed further. My hon. Friend the Minister is aware that interesting moves are afoot to study a regionally based plan for the Irish sea. That fishery concerns not merely men from Fleetwood but people from Northern Ireland and Eire, as well as other European countries. At last, they are talking to each other constructively and I want that constructive dialogue to be maintained.
In the meantime, Fleetwood fishermen would certainly welcome an opportunity for MAFF scientists to accompany them on one or two of their inshore vessels on short trips to those grounds to monitor fishing activity and take samples of the fish caught. They also want the opportunity to accompany MAFF survey vessels on their observations. I often find myself in the difficult position of, on the one hand, listening to and reading accounts from scientists of what is going on, and on the other, listening to fishermen who have fished those waters for 20 or 30 years, and I find that their accounts do not always marry up.
It is important that scientists and fishermen study carefully the data that scientists are collecting, as well as taking into account fishermen's knowledge based on their own enterprise. We need to ensure that quotas are properly allocated, based on the availability of the stock. If scientists and fishermen disagree, the industry will not work together as we would all welcome.
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My hon. Friend the Minister has agreed to meet with some of my fishermen. He has visited Fleetwood on two occasions, I think, and he impressed local fishermen with his profound knowledge of fish, the fishing industry and his commitment to their long-term sustainable future. Having met them, he knows that they are people who express their opinions forcefully. They will express their concerns to him at the meeting that we hope to have next week. They very much welcome the opportunity to meet him to discuss the issue. The Irish sea is the only fishing ground for Fleetwood's small inshore fleet. If it is closed, they will have nowhere else to go. They need to consider carefully how conservation will give them a long-term future, but also what measures can be taken now to ensure that they will be in a position to take advantage of that future when that is being discussed as part of the wider debate on the CAP.
Fishermen understand the need for conservation and for quotas. They understand that scientists have a role to play in advising on the state of the fish stocks. They want to take an active part in the process. My local producer organisation recently appointed new officers to lead it and it is determined that the voice of Fleetwood will be heard when the fishing industry is discussing its future, and that it will be a positive voice because they want the industry to succeed in Fleetwood and elsewhere.
11.38 am
Mr. Christopher Gill: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on obtaining this important debate and compliment him on the cogency and fluency with which he put his case.
I am pleased to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), the shadow fisheries Minister in their places. I have always found the Parliamentary Secretary to be unfailingly courteous in dealing with these matters. Within the constraints imposed upon him by his stewardship of a pernicious and unworkable regime, he has always been unfailingly helpful.
I have never understood how a person with the hon. Gentleman's strong views on animal welfare has been able to reconcile those views with support for the common fisheries policy, which positively encourages wanton destruction of precious marine life. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party condone the CAP, which, as we all know, results in more than half of all the fish that are caught being dumped back dead into the sea. That is all done, as we know, in the name of conservation.
What is even more extraordinary is that there has not been a squeak out of the animal welfare lobbyists on the subject. They are very busy opposing fox hunting and fur farming, but, when it comes to the utterly unnecessary and totally immoral destruction of millions of fish, there is not a peep. Every day of every week, thousands upon thousands of perfectly saleable fish are needlessly discarded, but the animal welfarists remain strangely—and suspiciously—silent. Here is an open-and-shut case of wanton destruction of animal life, but they have absolutely nothing to say. Hon. Members

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might like to ponder why that is. They might even conclude, as I do, that the motivation of those self-styled champions of animal rights is purely political.
As I am on the subject of political motivation, I should return to the Minister himself. The hon. Gentleman might resent being called a communist—
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley): It is not very new Labour.
Mr. Gill: There is, however, no escaping the fact that the Minister and his Government colleagues are supporting a collectivist policy. How else would one describe a regime that, from the centre, tells fishermen what they may catch, in which sea areas, in which quantities, and even—from last year—at which ports they may land them, and, in some cases, between which hours that landing may be made?
The Minister and the Labour party are totally committed to that policy. They are the ones who condone the evil regime. They are the ones who are responsible for what can only be described as an environmental outrage. They are the ones who have acquiesced in the scrapping of the minimum landing size on the 11 species that were mentioned, quite accurately, by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. They are the ones who, far from reducing the sand eel total allowable catch, are party to its being increased.
Mr. Morley indicated dissent.
Mr. Gill: Before the Minister intervenes, I should say that I recognise that there is now a closed area for sand eels. However, as he will know, that area has been created for the sake of the birds. In the modern idiom, the whole of the policy is for the birds. The policy is certainly not for the sake of fish or for the good of fishermen.
Mr. Morley: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gill: If the Minister will let me finish on this subject, I shall gladly give way.
I should like the Minister to listen to what a Scottish fisherman has to say on the subject. In a letter to Fishing News, published on 17 December, Mr. George Stephen, of St. Combs, in Scotland, had this to say:
"From midnight on 31 December I will be subject to constant satellite surveillance …
Why? What have I done to warrant this electronic tagging? I am not a paedophile, drug dealer, murderer, gun runner or released IRA terrorist, neither do I cruise Clapham Common, trade in porn or smuggle booze. Nor am I a burglar, mortgage swindler or an illegal immigrant.
My crime? I am a fisherman, a so-called 'enemy of the environment'! In 30 years at sea I have never caught a whale, destroyed a dolphin, killed a seal or dumped nuclear waste, but I have been forced by the EU to dump hundreds of tonnes of edible fish in the name of 'euro-conservation' CFP style."
Mr. Morley: The hon. Gentleman is making a speech in his usual robust style. However, I should like to
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clarify a couple of issues. First—and we have been through this before—the vast majority of fish that are dumped are dumped because of the nature of fishing itself and the fact that they are immature or non-target species. Nevertheless, that is not an excuse for the extent of dumping. It is a technical conservation issue that must be tackled, and we are doing that.
As for closed areas for sand eels, science on the impact of sand eel catches on birds was used to justify the closure. However, there is no doubt that the closure has had benefits for migrating salmon and other commercial food stock species. Moreover, it was the United Kingdom that argued for a limit on sand eel catches. Although I concede that that limit was far too high and that I should like to revisit the issue to obtain such reductions, we shall have to have science to back our arguments.
The impact on the sea beds is part of the science—
Dr. Michael Clark (in the Chair): Order. You are making an intervention, Mr. Morley, and I should be very grateful if you could keep it intervention length. You will have a chance to sum up later.
Mr. Morley: Thank you, Dr. Clark.
Mr. Gill: I shall be only too happy to respond to that intervention, Dr. Clark. One of my complaints about the common fisheries policy is that, for 25 years, we have known that there is a problem, and that, for 25 years, Ministers—people who have gone before the current Minister—have been saying that something needs to be done. The Minister and I have crossed swords on many occasions when I have explained to him that the prospect of reforming the common fisheries policy in any radical or meaningful way is impossible. He and I know that it requires unanimity; otherwise, or that, if the changes are proposed and are passed under qualified majority voting, at least one nation—I suspect the Spaniards—will take the European Union to court on the ground that there has been discrimination.
The Minister also did not tell the Chamber that the outcome of the Government's representations on sand eels to the Council of Ministers was that the sand eel total allowable catch was increased from 1 million tonnes to 1,020,000 tonnes. However, anyone with the least knowledge of fishing and fish stocks realises the importance of sand eels as a feedstock for fisheries.
The fact that the European Union has increased the sand eel TAC is mind-boggling. Currently, the sand eel catch is less than half of the approved catch limit. The estimate is that, in 1999, 430,000 tonnes of sand eels were caught. Moreover, the catch has been decreasing by about 100,000 tonnes for each of the past three years. Why on earth Ministers decided that they needed to increase the sand eel TAC is a matter that the Minister will perhaps deal with in his slightly longer intervention at the end of the debate.
I do not think that you were in the Chair, Mr. Jones, when I read extracts from a letter by Mr. George Stephen, of Aberdeenshire, but I do not think that I need to say more about that letter—the gentleman said it all. The common fisheries policy is devoid of any semblance of common sense and is entirely hostile to the environment that it purports to sustain. Indeed, the

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policy is hostile to that most precious of infinitely renewable resources—the fish themselves—that it purports to conserve. The policy is entirely bereft of any sense of morality.
The greatest scandal, however, is that the CFP continues to be supported by politicians—people such as hon. Members in the Chamber now. There can be no excuse for that situation. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Save Britain's Fish, there is no longer ignorance about the facts of the common fisheries policy—how it originated, how it works, and what it will inevitably lead to. We carry on down that path at our own peril. Furthermore, the guilt of destroying one of nature's most priceless assets will be on our shoulders.
I should like the Chamber to know exactly where the Conservative party now stands on these issues—[Interruption.] I shall make it abundantly clear, without a shadow of a doubt, and hope that I shall not embarrass my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire. On 15 December 1998, the previous shadow fisheries Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), said:
"We have to bring fisheries policy back under national control"—[Official Report, 15 December 1998; Vol. 322, c. 845.].
He echoed the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who stated as long ago as 1997:
"There are several areas where the EU is exercising powers which could be devolved to the member states. Another candidate for repatriation is fisheries policy … Fishing grounds out to 200 miles or the median line could be brought back under national control, with sensible bilateral agreements and recognition of the historic rights of other countries."
The last word must go the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who, in a letter to Mr. George Wiseman of Fraserburgh, dated 9 March 1999, stated:
"I do not believe the current CFP arrangements are working … Our aim has therefore been set out unequivocally … our approach will succeed in regaining national control of our own fishing waters."
That is unequivocal. That is where we stand, and where we shall fight. We shall stand up for a vital British interest. We shall fight to retain what remains of a once-proud industry, and we shall take back control of our own waters out to 200 miles or the median line.
I applaud that outbreak of common sense. I rejoice in the fact that my party now has a policy which is distinct from that of the Labour party and the other Opposition parties. I further rejoice that the Conservative party is now on the right side of the argument. I welcome this renunciation of collectivism.
I challenge the European integrationists and the proponents of the common fisheries policy—some of whom are present in the Chamber this morning—to explain what distinguishes this collectivist policy from communism. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) laughs, but he will have an opportunity to answer the question. I have posed it to many others, and they have all failed to answer. I shall be delighted to hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say.
One of the consequences of collectivisation is that what everybody owns, nobody owns. A regime that denies individual fishermen any sense of ownership is the absolute enemy of conservation. The Chamber will
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be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for his graphic description of how the common fisheries policy is failing the fishing industry, failing the nation and prejudicing the very existence of the fish themselves.
11.53 am
Mr. Andrew George: I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on an eloquent and thoughtful speech, and on securing the debate. He rightly pointed out that the annual fishing debate—the pre-eminent opportunity for us to review the state of the industry—was so severely curtailed that we had little debate at all. I ask the Government's business managers to ensure that next year's debate provides an adequate opportunity.
The substance of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham's speech was local, but it has resonance around the coast of the British Isles in relation to local, coastal and low-impact fisheries and their impact on other economies in the area, including tourism. The hon. Gentleman referred to the failure of the common fisheries policy, as did the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill). I do not think that any Member here would condone or support, as the hon. Member for Ludlow put it, the common fisheries policy in its present form. I and members of my party—and other hon. Members—have criticised the common fisheries policy for being an almost complete failure on almost every count. When I came into the House in May 1997, that was the situation I found, and we must deal with that situation.
The hon. Member for Ludlow claims that it is a collectivist policy, and that the Minister therefore must be a communist. If so, the previous Tory Government were, for 18 years, communists also.
Mr. Gill: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman should be allowed to get away with that. I said that the Minister would probably resent it if I called him a communist
Mr. George: I am sure that the hon. Member for Ludlow would resent that, too, but that is the inevitable conclusion that one must draw from the hon. Gentleman calling anyone responsible for trying to manage the common fisheries policy in government a communist or a collectivist. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham pointed out, there are serious issues to address, such as conservation and quota management.
I wish to refer to safety and to minimum landing sizes, and I agree with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham about the working time directive. He will find that the Liberal Democrats strongly opposed the introduction of the working time directive into the industry in its present form, but we failed to secure the support of Conservative Members when we tabled a motion in the House just over a year ago.
Mr. Loughton: I was a member of the European Standing Committee which debated the working time directive, and the Conservative members did vote against it.
Mr. George: I accept that, but the motion tabled in the annual debate in 1998 emphasised that the directive

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should not be imposed on the fishing industry in the proposed form. The fact is that we failed to secure the support of Conservative Members at that stage.
The hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) referred to the impact of the annual cut in quotas, and how substantial the cuts have been. All hon. Members have been struck by how severe the cuts have had to be this year. We have called on the Minister to say whether the Government have had further opportunity to consider the possibility of introducing multi-annual quotas. We cannot simply go on limping from one year to the next with the 11th-hour brinkmanship over the setting of quotas. We do not know two weeks before the commencement of the next fishing year what the quotas will be. There is some indication of quotas, but clearly that is not good enough.
I have enormous sympathy with the substantive point that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham raised about the damage done to the inshore fishery in the Worthing area, and I was interested in his comments about Worthing and seaweed. In my part of the country, seaweed was seen in the past as a great resource and the kelp industry was an important part of the local economy. Perhaps if there is a lot of seaweed, especially kelp, in the area, the hon. Gentleman should encourage some of his constituents to consider that as a potential economic development opportunity.
On the Cornish coast around my constituency, we have similar problems, although the problems created by pair trawlers beyond the 12-mile limit are a matter of great concern. The Minister knows my criticisms of the way in which the Government introduced the 15 tonnes per month rule at a very late stage, when we were previously looking at five tonnes per week. As far as the bass longliners in Cornwall are concerned, that has meant unwelcome continued fishing opportunities for pair trawlers, whereas the five tonne per week limit would have curtailed some of those fishing opportunities. Line-caught bass around the Cornish coast is an economically viable industry. Low-impact fisheries are economically viable and they should be encouraged, not damaged by pair trawlers, which, by the ratio of catch per person employed, do not have the same beneficial impact on the local economy. Therefore, I encourage the Minister to monitor the impact of the 15 tonnes per month limit and to consider withdrawing it to protect the bass stocks and encourage low-impact fishing around our coast.
The hon. Gentleman may also be interested to learn that I have disagreed with the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) about the damage done by certain types of fishing methods, such as scallop dredgers, in inshore areas. I have argued that they have damaged important fishing grounds, especially crab and lobster grounds, but the hon. Gentleman has strongly argued in favour of continued freedom for scallop dredgers. Attitudes to the issue depend on local circumstances and the concerns of the local fishing fleet.
I shall be interested in the Minister's response to the points raised by the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood on the closing down of part of the Irish sea. The industry has agreed with the broad thrust of local management agreements, and it will be interesting
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to see whether the way in which the closure will be achieved will be altered under the devolved regional management plan proposed for the area. The industry in Cornwall has long argued for seasonally closed areas and satellite surveillance, because responsible fishermen recognise that if they are to follow the rules, other fishermen must also, and they need effective policing to ensure that. Therefore, I can tell the hon. Member for Ludlow that many fishermen welcome the introduction of satellite surveillance to ensure that their conformity to the rules does not put them at a disadvantage.
I was also interested in the hon. Gentleman's clarification of Tory party policy on the common fisheries policy. It will be interesting to hear in a moment whether the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) concurs.
Mr. Gill: Our policy is better than yours.
Mr. George: The hon. Gentleman's policy is for the birds, because policies have to be achievable in the real world. The Liberal Democrats have long argued for a radical reform of the CFP, which involves decentralisation, along the lines proposed for the Irish sea, to regional management boards, which would include scientists and fishermen. That would give fishermen some say over fishing policy in their areas. With power comes responsibility, and the fishermen recognise that. If we could achieve that through reform of the CFP in future, it would be very welcome.
The Minister has reassured me that we are reasonably confident of maintaining the six and 12-mile limits and relative stability beyond 2002, but we need further reassurance that the Minister is fighting hard to achieve, as far as possible, a regional fishing policy along the lines proposed by the industry. I know that the Minister has shown some sympathy for the proposal.
I share the concerns of other hon. Members who have raised the issue of minimum landing sizes today. I appreciate that criticisms of discards made by the hon. Member for Ludlow and others have also been made vociferously by the industry, but it is now saying that discards are better than scrapping the minimum landing sizes altogether. I believe that the fishing industry in this country is responsible, and there is little or no market for juvenile and undersized fish in this country. Therefore the scrapping of minimum landing sizes will probably have little impact in the UK. However, the danger is that it will give a green light to irresponsible fishermen who may target juvenile fish because there is a market for them in other parts of Europe.
I look to the Minister for some reassurance that action will he taken, because a reformed CFP should contain more robust mechanisms to ensure that the rules are enforced evenly across Europe. The Minister will know that many British fishermen have little faith that their conformity with the rules is matched in other countries.
Fishing safety is an issue of great concern. I know that the Minister is not directly responsible for that, but the Deputy Prime Minister held out the prospect of reinstating the fishing safety grants for six months. Only a couple of weeks ago, after he had let the fishing industry down, he criticised fishermen for their irresponsible and cavalier attitude to fishing safety. That

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is not good enough, and it has not gone down well with the fishing industry that the Minister who claimed that he would be responsible for reintroducing fishing safety grants has taken that attitude. We have recently seen tragic loss of life in the fishing industry, and in my own constituency in 18 months we have lost 11 men to the sea. That is an issue of grave concern, because no other industry has such a record of tragedy and loss of life. I look to the Minister for some reassurance that the issue will be a top priority for the Ministry.
12.10 pm
Mr. Malcolm Moss: May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) on his success in securing this debate? May I also compliment him on making a competent and cogently argued case? It contained many points to which I will, I hope, give the Minister enough time to respond. We never seem to have enough time for our fishing debates. It has already been alluded to several times that our annual debate was very short and very few Back Benchers managed to contribute to it. One would encourage Back-Bench colleagues to put in for more fishing debates in this environment.
I support my hon. Friend's plea for action on the sea bass problem. I have had several letters from around our coast, but particularly the approaches in the channel, showing that this is now a very serious problem. My hon. Friend referred to last year's offshore bass fishery report, which confirmed that the bass targeted by the pair trawlers were shoaling bass which were about to spawn. Given that evidence, one wonders why little if no action has been taken since that report came out. It is also in direct conflict with Labour's charter for anglers. Under the heading of sea angling, Labour said that it would introduce a coastal planning policy that would recognise important areas of sports fishing and closed areas for spawning and preserving breeding stocks. We have not seen much of that policy; perhaps the Minister will tell us why the Government have been a bit dilatory in coming forward with it.
I want to give the Minister plenty of time to respond to the very important points that have been made this morning. However, I also want to give him the opportunity to answer the six-point indictment from the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations which recently called for the hon. Gentleman's resignation. This must be the first time that such a body has called for a Minister's resignation. [Interruption.] The Minister has had plenty of time to answer the main points that were put in Fishing News and in the federation's press release. Perhaps this morning he will begin to answer some of the key criticisms that have been made. First of those was his failure at the European Commission meeting to invoke the Hague preference for cod in the North sea. It is a critical aspect of fishing in that area. As my hon. Friend pointed out, it could have meant an additional 4,350 tonnes which, in pounds and pence, represents £6 million to the industry. That cod was clearly traded off for some other priority. It would be helpful to know why the Minister did not invoke the Hague preference and what other deals were done as a result.
The federation believes that the Commission's plan for Irish sea cod will fail to build on the industry's proposals to protect the spawning cod. It will also fail to
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secure vital haddock fishing during the main season. The federation points out that British vessels will have to be tied up or undertake expensive conversion to remain in business.
On fleet modernisation, the usual point is made that there is a continuing decline in the British fishing industry, and that nothing has come from the Government in the way of grant aid for decommissioning or scrap and build.
Safety has been debated both in the Chamber and on the Floor of the House, and promises were made. On 11 June 1999, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote to Barrie Deas of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations regarding the decision of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to close the national fishing vessel equipment scheme. The right hon. Gentleman said:
"We share that concern, which is why, speaking for Government as a whole, I have made clear that the fishing vessel safety equipment grants would continue."
He has not repeated that position, speaking for the Government as a whole, but he wrote on 2 November saying that the problem was that since he wrote on 11 June, there had been devolution. He continued:
"MAFF's previous regulations which covered this scheme are no longer valid. Nor can they simply be restored, either for the UK or England alone, because of what the regulations' text actually provides … In light of this, it makes sense to draw a line under the previous scheme, and to consider whether to introduce a grant scheme for this purpose in the future."
The key word in that is "whether", whereas in his earlier letter, the right hon. Gentleman had more or less confirmed that the scheme would be reintroduced.
Finally, the federation believes that the Government's enthusiasm for the working time directive has led to the interests and concerns of the fishing industry being brushed aside. If applied to the industry, the working time rules will mean that most vessels will be unable to operate in a viable way. I add to that list the fact that the Minister, who supports minimum landing sizes—or used to—failed totally to hold his corner at the meeting. As a result, the issue of minimum landing sizes—which the federation and most people looking at the industry believe to be a key ingredient of all conservation measures—has been swept aside for certain species.
I rest my case there. I have not spoken for very long, but the Minister has many questions to answer and I hope that, in the time available, he will do just that.
12.16 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley): There have been some very good contributions in this debate, and I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) for the way in which he made his case. I do not agree with all the points that he made, as I will explain in a moment, and I shall deal head on with the local issues that he raised.
It is true that the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations has called for my resignation. Calls for fisheries Ministers to resign are not unusual; it is an occupational hazard. I have been around the industry for a very long time, and if the hon. Gentleman would like to talk to those of his right hon. and hon. Friends

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who have held this post, he will find that a call for one's resignation, in the context of the history of the relationship between fisheries Ministers and the industry is pretty small beer, frankly. I recognise that there are genuine frustrations and concerns in the fishing industry. If it makes fishermen feel better to call for my resignation, I am not one to complain.
I have never said that the industry has never had it so good. Although some parts are clearly having a very difficult time, it would be wrong to think that all sectors are on their knees. However, I do not want to gloss over the problems that the industry faces, and I will deal with them.
As this debate was secured by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, I should like to deal with his points before dealing with the general issues. I accept the points that have been made about the time available for fisheries debates. That is a fair comment, although I think that it was helpful to have a three-hour debate on the Select Committee report on fisheries. That extra debate gave many hon. Members the chance to speak.
I accept the need to look after the inshore sector. I am very keen on the inshore sector—I have introduced a consultation document for inshore fishermen which deals with how they can protect their interests. I have increased the underpinning of certain stocks for the inshore sector. As for quota hoppers, one benefit of the new economic link regulations was that some of those vessels actually gave back all their quota—50 tonnes of sole—directly to the inshore sector to assist it. So I understand the sector's needs; I am keen to support it and want to do more.
I did not accept the hon. Gentleman's request to bring a delegation of local fishermen to see me, and I should like to explain why. Generally speaking, I am only too pleased to meet hon. Members and fishermen to discuss their problems. The hon. Gentleman would have been only too welcome if he had stopped me in the Lobby to discuss the matter in more detail. Indeed, some of his hon. Friends have no qualms about discussing fish with me whether I want to hear them or not. I offer him that courtesy; we are all constituency Members and I want to help all hon. Members to deal with constituency issues.
However, I did not feel it appropriate to meet the hon. Gentleman's delegation on the particular issue on which he requested the meeting. The matter is dealt with by the sea fish committees. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman's fishermen are concerned about pair trawling, which may damage kelp beds and disturb the inshore fleet and even sea angling. As soon as the hon. Gentleman wrote to me, I raised this serious matter with the Ministry's sea fisheries inspectorate and the Sussex sea fish committee. Both bodies assured me that pair teams working off Worthing respect the committee byelaw that puts a maximum length of 14m on vessels within the SFC district. The teams also used larger meshes than local single trawls did, which is also regulated by the byelaw. I am keen to see people using larger meshes than required because it is good for conservation.
I was further informed that there was no evidence that the pair trawlers were damaging what remained of the kelp beds. The hon. Gentleman referred to problems
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with the gear being used. The SFC is dealing with that and I would be reluctant to trespass on areas that are the responsibility of local sea fish committees. I favour devolution and regional management, and the sea fish committees are an important part of that. My responsibility as a Minister is simply to confirm that byelaws made by SFCs are made after due consultation. Operation of the byelaws is a matter for the committees, which represent a range of interests in their regions.
If I met a delegation that wanted to raise the type of complaint identified—quite legitimately —by the hon. Gentleman, I can guarantee that the hon. Member who represents the interests of the pair trawlers would also demand to see me. The pair trawlers have a very different tale to tell on this matter, and I should have to try to arbitrate in a local dispute that is the responsibility of the sea fish committee.
I was concerned to hear the hon. Gentleman say that pair trawlers are using the fact that this is a matter for the SFC as an excuse to do nothing. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is trying to reach an agreement, but that role lies with the SFC. In at least one part of the country, there has been an example of what happens when an SFC cannot achieve agreement locally. In that event, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has to take over by introducing temporary byelaws and taking a role in local regional management. I do not believe that we should do so. Inshore management should be a matter for the committees, involving local fishermen and other people.
That is why I felt it inappropriate to become involved in the dispute on which the hon. Gentleman wrote to me.
Mr. Moss: Will the Minister explain why agreement was given for a massive increase—500 per cent.—in the sea bass catch?
Mr. Morley: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is right in referring to an increase in the sea bass catch as there is no quota on sea bass, which is a non-pressure stock. We have, in fact, introduced measures to restrict the catch of sea bass.
I shall try quickly to cover the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) and the hon. Members for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) and for Ludlow (Mr. Gill). Funds have been made available for decommissioning, and funds remain available for a small decommissioning scheme, which we may have to introduce as part of our multi-annual guidance programme. By and large, we have achieved our MAGP target for the bulk of our fleet, so we do not have to decommission. I am glad about that. Although we have sometimes had to decommission, that does not resolve the problem, and unbalanced decommissioning can cause particular problems in ports around the country.
We had a detailed debate on fleet modernisation, and I do not think that it would do any good for the inshore fishermen represented by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham if the Government used public funds to modernise vessels so that they were more efficient and could increase their catches. In some cases, we would be giving people money to build vessels that they could not sustain on their normal catches. That does no one good, including fishermen.
Mr. Loughton: I entirely agree that that would do no one any good. Why, in that case, are we giving

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£100 million of United Kingdom taxpayers' money to Spanish fishermen to do exactly that? May I remind the Minister that the problem is generally one of pair trawling, and, as the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) said, that also affects other parts of the country. Will the Minister meet my fishermen on the subject of the damage that pair trawling is doing, even if he meets those represented by other hon. Members at the same time? That is the point I should like him to consider. Expansion in the industry is making it exceedingly efficient and effective, and that is having a detrimental knock-on effect on people such as my fishermen.
Mr. Morley: I want to help the hon. Gentleman. That was not the point that he put in his original letter. If he and his inshore fishermen wish to see me about an issue for which I have policy responsibility—pair trawling may be such an issue—I shall of course consider his request sympathetically, as I would for any hon. Member. He may wish to ponder on what request he wants to make.
Time is short, but I shall try to deal quickly with points made about the Hague preference. In the Fisheries Council of the European Union, I must negotiate in the best interests of our country. Our national interest relates not only to the North sea, but to the English channel, the waters off the south-west and the Irish sea. The future of the Hague preference is also an issue for consideration. We do not have an automatic right to impose the Hague preference, but can do so only with the Commission's support once it has gone through the Council of Ministers. Four member states objected in the most recent negotiation.
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We must focus on the benefits. We have managed to negotiate a quota of 34,360 tonnes of North sea cod for this year. As the actual catch in 1999 was 33,357 tonnes, we have managed to negotiate a quota larger than the amount caught last year. Yet all science suggests that cod stocks are in poorer shape this year than they were last year. I should tell the hon. Member for Ludlow that that has nothing to do with the common fisheries policy, but has more to do with cod breeding cycles and rising sea temperatures.
All countries that are not in the CFP also apply quotas. The CFP can of course be criticised—it is not perfect, and the Government have never said that it is. However, there must be an alternative to quota management. Every other country uses quota management, and Norway employs a discard policy that involves ships landing their discards, although the authorities in Norway have told me how difficult it is to enforce that policy.
I do not have time to go through all the points raised this morning. If hon. Members feel that I have not touched on particular burning issues, I ask them to write to me. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood raised several important points, and I shall take them seriously. She is bringing a delegation to see me, and I hope to discuss those points in more detail then.
In conclusion, important issues have been raised, and we must tackle them properly. I was not convinced by what the hon. Member for Ludlow said about Conservative policy. Recognising historical rights is tricky—
Mr. Barry Jones (in the Chair): Order. We must now move to the next debate.

Objective 2 Funding (Southend)
12.30 pm
Mr. David Amess: The hopes and aspirations of thousands of my constituents depend on the outcome of this debate—such is the responsibility that has been placed on the shoulders of the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells).
I shall state what I am trying to achieve at the outset of my remarks, because there is a chance that, as I continue, the purpose may be lost. On behalf of my constituents, I want to obtain a plain answer as to why their Member of Parliament was not given the courtesy of being told by the Government, at any stage, that Leigh and Chalkwell would be removed from objective 2 status. Later on, I shall give more details of the circumstances of my inquiry. However, my constituents need to know why their MP was treated so discourteously.
I hope that the Minister will be able to explain who—precisely which body or individuals—decided to take Chalkwell and Leigh out of that bid. Only six wards were removed; hey presto, that included the only two that were in my constituency. Someone must have been responsible for that decision. Was it the Government, the council or Members of the European Parliament?
Finally, I hope that the Minister will tell me whether anything can be done to change that original decision. If that is impossible, can something be done to help my constituents in Leigh and Chalkwell?
This is my maiden speech in Westminster Hall—this dreadful poor relation to the Chamber. I thoroughly disapprove of this arena, but I have been trying to secure a debate on the Floor of the House for such a long time that I decided to accept its being held in Westminster Hall. However, I do not aspire to some consensual, European style of diluted government.
I want to share with the Minister the background to the bid. It was never my idea to get involved in any bid for objective 2 status. The local authority is controlled by 12 Liberal and 8 Labour councillors, against 19 Conservative councillors. Through its officers, the council asked me to support its bid for objective 2 status. I did so enthusiastically.
Given that the UK is such a huge contributor to the EU budget, although I voted "no" in the referendum on Europe in the 1970s, I was only too delighted to try to secure some of that money to help my constituents. My goodness, they need help.
In the larger world, there is an impression that Southend, West is a well-heeled community. When the Guinness family represented the area—as they did for 100 years—that may have been so, but it certainly is no longer true. I live in the heart of the community and I know only too well the challenges faced by my constituents. That is why I secured an Adjournment debate in the Chamber on 30 April last year. The then Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, now the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), replied to the debate and we had a useful exchange of views.
After the debate, he suggested that I arranged for a group to meet him to set out in greater details the reasons why Southend was entitled to objective 2 status.
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That meeting took place on 28 June at the Department of Trade and Industry and was most agreeable. At the end, I looked the then Under-Secretary straight in the eye and said, "If we are successful, I will thank you; if we are unsuccessful, I will blame your boss."
There was some delay before an announcement was made. I have had a great deal of correspondence on the matter. The deadline kept being pushed back; I do not know whether that was because our officials could not agree with European officials. There was some difficulty in drawing up the map for objective 2 funding.
The subject is complicated and technical. I have yet to meet anyone who has a real grasp of all the details—we are only human beings. However, I deduce from the map that there was much double-speak before it was finalised—I shall explain that in due course. After much correspondence, we heard the wonderful announcement that Southend was to be promoted. I have the document in front of me; it was published in October 1999. It gives the names of the successful areas, with the joyous news that Southend was to be proposed as qualifying for objective 2 status—two of the wards were in my constituency, and we were delighted that Leigh and Chalkwell were to qualify for that status.
I am sure that the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs understands that the local community worked extremely hard to draw up various proposals as to how to spend £15 million over 10 years. I pay tribute to Daryl Godbald, who leads the local fishermen, and to Steven Dell, who leads the local cocklers. They drew up a wish list of different proposals.
For instance, we have been hoping for some time that Leigh creek would be dredged—for various reasons. It would enable fishermen and yachtsmen to keep their craft afloat, with access to a lock. It would attract considerable income and employment to the town from permanent moorings and visiting UK and continental craft. It would be an ideal stopping-off point for continental yachtsmen visiting London.
Other large schemes were proposed; for example, cockle sheds at Leigh straight wharf, with improved road access. We planned to extend Bell wharf by 100 m—the list went on and on. The bottom line is that those proposals would have transformed our area.
Sometimes a false impression is given of Southend. Anyone who knows Southend knows that the fishing and cockling community is extremely important. Many families in the town have been involved with that industry for many years. The community gave magnificent support to this country at Dunkirk.
It is sad to see what has happened to that community over several years. I have had several discussions with the former Under-Secretary for Trade and Industry, who has done his best to help. The proposals to which I referred would have transformed the area; there can be no doubt of that.
There are arguments to be made about the facts and figures that were considered during the bidding process—the amounts may seem small to some people, but they are important to my constituents. However, to underpin our qualification under the fisheries strand, it should be borne in mind that 10 years ago there were seven boats in Leigh; at present, only three work full time. There were five boats in Chalkwell; currently only one works full time. By and large, the area is supported

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only by the cockling industry. For instance, the firm of Gilson's used to employ 23 people, but that number is now down to eight. I therefore found it extraordinary when I received a letter from a Minister telling me that we did not qualify under the fisheries strand because there had not been a reduction in jobs.
So seriously did I take the local authority's call to support the bid that I not only had meetings with Ministers but went to Brussels. I met two of our European Members of Parliament, Mr. Robert Sturdy and Mr. Geoffrey Van Orden, and the lady responsible for working up the east of England bid. We made sure that Europe was made well aware of the position.
I now come to what has incensed me most. On 26 November last year, I was at the switch-on of the Leigh lights with the chairman of Leigh town council. He asked me whether I had seen the local newspapers and I said that I had not. A huge group of people attended that day, but the chairman of the council told me that, if I read the local newspapers, I would see that Leigh and Chalkwell were no longer going to obtain objective 2 status. I could not believe it. Such is the style of politics these days that elected representatives count for nothing. The media are much more important and they get news three weeks before elected representatives. It is an absolute disgrace that a democratically elected Member of Parliament should find out from local newspapers what is going to happen to a project that would have meant a great deal for his constituents.
I can do no better than to quote the letter written to me by the clerk of the council:
"The Town Council was very seriously concerned to hear last Friday (26th November) that Leigh and Chalkwell Wards may be excluded from support through Objective Two, and replaced by two other Wards. This means that the two Wards originally planned for this support which are in the Town Council's area"
will not receive any support whatever. He adds:
"Leigh is the registered Port for the area, and the centre of the fishing and cockling industry … These two activities have been severely hit over recent years by a variety of problems and directives, which limit the times at which they can operate and also the levels of catches they can make … There are also problems in relation to Leigh Creek".
The letter describes the consequences of that and continues:
"In addition to these industries, the whole of the foreshore needs attention … Attention to a part of this area only would lead to a marginalisation of the West of the town; unemployment in Chalkwell is currently 6.4 per cent., against an average for Southend of 5.8 per cent. and for Essex of 3.7 per cent."
I blew a gasket when I learned the news. I was elected to the House on the same day as the Prime Minister. In the years I have been a Member of the House, I have not thought that party allegiances determined whether letters were replied to. Ever since we have had a Labour Prime Minister I have never received a single letter back when I have written to him personally. Someone in his office has presumably told his staff, "If you get anything from a Conservative Member of Parliament, bung it on to the Minister." That is a disgrace. Unless we are called in the House—and that is a lottery—how can we make our points? How on earth can we speak on behalf of our constituents? What is the point of being a Member of Parliament any more? Let us not bother with elections; let the media and the civil servants run the show.
Since I received the news on 26 November 1999, I have done everything to raise the matter in the House, so here I am in the new Westminster Hall to do just that.
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I shall not make personal remarks against the Minister, but it seems that I have not even got the right Minister to answer the debate. He and I have had no contact on this issue. All the letters are from different people. What does that say to my constituents? Does it say, "You've got a Conservative Member of Parliament and they are a lot of old rubbish. They are down to 164 and we have are not going to have an Opposition. It is only Labour Members and Labour areas that count"? If that is the game, I am not putting up with it. The sooner the general public become wise to it, the better. Such an attitude would be a disgrace. However, I am sure that the Minister will be able to reassure me that that is not what happens.
The town council wrote directly to the Minister for Trade to raise several points. It wanted to know why the decision had been made, on what basis it had been taken and what he was going to do about it. I have seen the exchange of correspondence and the Minister for Trade has written most courteously to the town council. However, I do not agree with the contents of his reply. We seem to be at an impasse. We are told that when the UK case was put to Europe, it did not quite fit and that changes had to be made. Throughout the United Kingdom, six wards were taken off the list and it was my bad luck that two of them happened to be in my constituency. It would be interesting to know whether any other Member's constituency lost help as a result of the ward changes. I bet my bottom dollar that I am the only Member of Parliament in that position.
We were then told that we qualified under the urban strand. I have examined the criteria for that, and what has gone on is barking mad. I am delighted that the other constituency has qualified for the money; I do not want to take money from it. However, it is extraordinary that one of the wards included in the urban strand is regarded as the most affluent in the whole of Southend.
I have not even mentioned Westborough ward in my constituency. It is the most challenging area, with the highest crime rate in the whole of Essex. It faces huge pressures from asylum seekers; it has the largest primary school in Essex; and it has high unemployment. However, Westborough ward does not even get a look-in. I am expected to accept that we do not qualify under the fisheries strand, but that we qualify under the urban strand. However, when I consider one element that has been included in the urban strand, there is no way that at least one of the wards in Southend, West should not have been included. That is an absolute disgrace.
I pay tribute to the councillors who have continued to make the case for Leigh and Chalkwell. They are Councillor Mike Dolby, the chairman of Leigh-on-Sea town council, Councillor John Lamb, a Leigh councillor, and Mr. Richard Brown, Mr. Charles Latham and Mrs. Leslie Salter, who are all in the Chalkwell ward and continue to raise this matter with me. However, it is desperately disappointing that, despite the fact that we have tried diligently to engage the Government in dialogue, we have not got anywhere. I know that officials talk to each other, so how was it that UK and European officials did not talk on the telephone or exchange letters to agree things in the first place? It is extraordinary that they did not.

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Why were we told that we would have objective 2 status when I read in the local newspapers that we could not? The whole thing stinks. It is an absolute disgrace that my constituents have lost out.
I am delighted that the Government have secured objective 2 status for Southend and supported the local authority's bid for that status. I pay tribute to the Southend council officials who spent about two years drawing up those proposals. However, it is a shabby outcome for my constituents. Southend, West is a tiny constituency of seven wards, and if two of them had benefited from the decision, that would have been marvellous.
I know that when the Minister responds he can do only as he has been advised, and he will say that Southend is getting the money, so my constituency will benefit. I invite anyone to come to Southend. They will find that people in Leigh and Chalkwell do not feel an affinity with people in other parts of the town. They seem to live in individual communities, and the fishing community will not feel any benefit from what is going on in another part of town.
I represent a tight-knit community who were overjoyed that they were to get help via objective 2 status. I know that the Minister will not have time to respond in detail to the points that I have made, but will he and his officials reflect carefully on my remarks? The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, was able, in the Christmas Adjournment debate, to give me some hope, although I think that the facts were not as he had understood them. If the Under-Secretary is unable to say anything positive today, I hope that he will at least reflect on the matter, whether to see there is any way in which he could possibly help us in future. I ask only for fair treatment for Southend, West, and we have not received it so far.
12.52 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Dr. Kim Howells): I thank the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) for raising this important issue. There is a great misconception throughout the islands that if a town is situated in the south-east of England, it must be wealthy. I know that Southend is not wealthy and that it shares many of the problems of coastal towns, especially those in Kent.
To put forward a forceful case, the hon. Gentleman should have been much better informed than he was about the ways in which structural fund decisions are made. I shall not try to defend those methods. An MP should be consulted about any changes that are to be made. During the negotiations for reallocations, some Members made representations and were part of the process, but I know that it is very easy to miss those stages, and the hon. Gentleman has told us how he fell into that trap. There is nothing worse than finding out about an important decision affecting one's constituency by reading it in the press.
I want to concentrate on the basis of the change. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that there are several criteria, or strands, that determine whether a particular part of a city or region can qualify for structural funding under the objective 2 changes. Those
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strands are industrial, urban, rural and fisheries. If the hon. Gentleman does not have the information on what each of those four criteria comprises, I will gladly send it to him.
When the wards were first considered, they were included in the fisheries strand because, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, there have been big changes to the pattern of the supply of sea products along the Thames estuary and elsewhere. The fisheries strand areas have been identified as ports showing a decline in fisheries jobs between 1992 and 1997, or between 1995 and 1997, whichever is available. However, the Commission also required a minimum programming area of 50,000 population for urban and fisheries areas and 100,000 population for industrial and rural areas, so we have had to build up programming areas.
If the hon. Gentleman will set aside for a moment the problems that he has had in communicating with Ministers—he made a fair point when he said that we have never before communicated about this subject—I will try to explain the criteria by which structural funding decisions are made. The programming area criteria meant that we had to include some non-qualifying wards and exclude some isolated qualifying wards, which is an unavoidable consequence of the rules.
While the hon. Gentleman was speaking, I asked my officials about the loss of jobs in his area. EU regulation 1260/1999, which governs the structural fund, says in article 4, paragraph 8:
"The areas dependent on fisheries … shall mean coastal areas in which the number of jobs in the fisheries industry as a percentage of total employment is significant and which are facing structural socio-economic problems relating to the restructuring of the fisheries sector which result in a significant reduction in the number of jobs in that sector."
The hon. Gentleman has admitted that the number of boats involved is very small. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), who is also present, has witnessed a decline in his constituency in the numbers of people who earning their living, not necessarily from deep sea fishing, but from working the waters of the Severn estuary. There is no question but that there have been great changes in fishing. The European Commission did not accept that the loss of fisheries jobs between 1992 and 1997 or between 1995 and 1997 in the wards mentioned by the hon. Member for Southend, West was sufficiently significant, and that is indisputable.
As the hon. Gentleman said, there was then an effort to include those two isolated wards in the urban strand, and link them with the most problematic wards with the greatest unemployment and social deprivation. The Commission would not accept the inclusion of those "islands", even though they are very deprived. As the hon. Gentleman and others know, there are many such cases throughout the country; for example, a troubled council estate may lie on the edge of a town that has a population of fewer than 50,000 but has severe problems.
It must be exceptionally irksome for the hon. Gentleman to see his constituency deprived of a couple of wards and that money shifted to other wards not far away. I imagine that that would generate a great deal of anger and debate.

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For the first time, Southend will benefit from objective 2 funding. It is the only place in Essex that will receive that extra money. I trust that, despite his disappointment about his own wards, the hon. Gentleman will devote his remarkable energy and forthrightness to ensuring that the jobs that are created in Southend, East will benefit his own constituents in the deprived wards of Southend, West.
I can offer no other explanation. It is always problematic when someone else sets criteria about how money can be distributed. The hon. Gentleman has clearly expressed his disappointment with that process. If we are to ensure that the fine-tuning of objective status allocations is not to happen in future, I hope that the Government and the European Union and the Commission will look carefully—
Mr. Barry Jones (in the Chair): Order.

Pensioners (Minimum Income Guarantee)
1 pm
Mr. Paul Flynn: Today is an auspicious day, because it is the day when I am fully qualified to join the Southwark pensioners action group. I already qualified as a resident of Southwark, but from today onwards, I qualify as a pensioner. It will be a great boost to me to belong to an organisation of which I will be, at least briefly, the youngest member.
The story that we have to tell is a grim one. In spite of all our hopes through the long years of opposition, pensioners as a group have not had a fair deal from the Government. While we were in opposition, we said many times that when Labour came to office, we would concentrate on the poorest pensioners. The credibility of our policies rests on that.
Let me quote what the then Secretary of State for Social Security said after we had been in office for just over a year. She stated in July 1998:
"There are some pensioners who are even poorer than those on income support. They are some of the very poorest people in Britain. They are the pensioners who are entitled to income support, but are not getting it; those who are slipping through the safety net altogether—the forgotten pensioners. This is not a marginal issue involving just a few slipping through the net. We estimate there are as many as I million of these forgotten pensioners. They are mostly very elderly, and nearly all women."
The Secretary of State went on to say:
"Now we are taking action to bring the guaranteed minimum income to them, too."
She promised that, starting from the following April—April 1999—
"we will be introducing, for the first time, a new national programme of personal advisers for pensioners… Through new technology, we will for the first time use the information that pensioners have already given us throughout their lives…
The pensioner will then be contacted by the personal adviser, who, over the telephone or through a visit, will assess their entitlement, and then fill in the forms for them. All that pensioners will have to do is sign, and their extra money will come through the following week."—[Official Report, 17 July 1998; Vol. 316, c. 704.]
A sophisticated system was supposed to be in place to provide that, but, almost two years later, nothing has happened. The minimum income guarantee is crucial, because it is the Government's alibi for not restoring the link—about which we spoke for many years in opposition—between basic pensions and earnings. With that link, the basic pension would not be £67 from April this year, but £95.
The Government show no inclination to restore the link. Indeed, they have argued that the poorest pensioners would lose by it, but the reverse is true. Pensioners who are not getting income support would have benefited pound for pound from the restoration of that link.
What has happened since 1998? The minimum income guarantee has been introduced, but it amounts to very little. It may just be window-dressing—a change of name. We see that throughout the history of social security since the war. The minimum income guarantee is the old basic state pension, plus income support. That has existed for a long time.
It is disgraceful that those who contributed to their pensions throughout their lives are getting pensions below the level that the Government say is the minimum on which they should live.

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We are told that the number involved is now about 700,000. That is the new figure given this week—700,000 who, according to the Government's figures, are losing £18 a week. That is a huge sum. We have pursued the issue through many avenues, to ensure that it is taken up. The next general election is rapidly approaching and we have failed to honour our promises.
Is there money available? Yes, there is ample money in the national insurance fund. There are surpluses described by the Government Actuary as "unneeded surpluses", and that is over and above the £6 billion that is regarded as a working surplus.
Until about a fortnight ago, the surplus was described as £5.9 billion, but, according to the most recent calculations, it is £9 billion over that level and will be increased further if, contrary to what the Minister said in the House on Monday, the Government go ahead and introduce the cut in SERPS that they promised. There is no doubt that the money is available for the changes. Even if the link to earnings were restored for a period of five years, the money is there.
On Monday, the Minister said, referring to take-up:
"There is an issue about who is being missed out—hence the research. We cannot be certain about the figures. There is a broad spread of figures; they come from the general household survey."
A new figure was given by the Minister. He said:
"Following the Benefits Agency work, we estimate that the figure is a little over 2 million."
He continued:
"Those people will be targeted in three tranches anyway. There will be television and press advertising. We will make an early announcement about the way in which we intend to go forward; we certainly will make the announcement before the end of this month. There will then be a large Government-sponsored take-up campaign, with a telephone national line and television advertising.
The work has been done, in the sense that we have seen the scripts and literature, with 'minimum guarantee' on leaflets and drafts. At present there are no posters or leaflets with minimum income guarantee on them. There are no documents, but there will be: we have seen the proofs. To that extent, we are on the verge of being able to launch that campaign. It is important that we get the money to the people who deserve it."—[Official Report, 7 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 77–78.]
That statement is disappointing, and there are points in it that we must take up. After two and a half years in office, the Government are planning an advertising campaign, of the same type, presumably, as Governments have run several times over the past 50 years. None has had a lasting effect, for various reasons.
There is no mention of the data-matching or the personal advisers that we were promised two years ago. Unless advisers are available, the scheme will create a little flurry of publicity and then be forgotten. It will not reach the persistent cases who are not claiming the income support to which they are entitled.
Will my hon. Friend tell me in his reply whether the data-matching and the personal advisers have been dropped? With regard to the number of pensioners involved, what on earth does
"a little over 2 million"
mean? We previously heard the figure of 700,000. Has it suddenly risen to 2 million? That is alarming, if it is the case. How did it happen? If the Minister was referring to
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all the people who are currently getting income support, the figure should be higher than that. We need clarification.
The fact that there are no posters or leaflets with "minimum guarantee" on them means that nothing has been done so far to encourage claims, two and a half years into a Labour Government. The number of non-claimants is almost certainly the same now as it was a year ago, despite the introduction of the so-called guarantee.
If the missing pensioners are to be targeted in three tranches, it will take many months before the final tranche is reached. In the meantime, the pensioners who should have been getting extra money from July 1998 have missed out on £1,000, on average. On the basis of all previous law on social security, according to which payment is made on the date of entitlement, attempts will be made to persuade the Government that all the pensioners who miss out—not through their fault, but because of the Government's inaction—should receive the back-pay to which they are entitled. Otherwise that money will go straight back into Treasury funds. That is elementary.
One of the most disappointing aspects of our Government is that they talk about giving money to the people who "deserve" it. That gives the game away. The winter fuel allowance was announced as if it was a gift from the Government. There was even a stunt in which a large cheque was offered, to show that this generous Government were giving money to pensioners. Pensioners do not get money because they are deserving; the Government need to be reminded that pensioners have paid out money throughout their working lives of 40 or 50 years. Their contributions are made in accordance with the rate of inflation. The money is not a gift or a handout, but an entitlement. When the Government speak as though it were a gift, they incur pensioners' anger—and rightly so.
We appreciate that many pensioners do not take pensions because they are disabled or intimidated by the forms. However, the main reason for not taking them up is that some people never lost a day's work and never claimed supplementary benefits, national assistance or income support, and it is a matter of pride to them that they never accepted a state handout; they do not intend to begin now. That is profoundly important. If the money is added to the basic pension, it becomes an entitlement. If it is left as a so-called minimum income guarantee, it becomes a handout, and many people of my generation find claiming it a demeaning experience.
London Labour party members received an extraordinary document from the Prime Minister's office, which states:
"For pensioners … we have introduced a £100 winter fuel allowance"—
that is fine—
"free TV licences for the over 75s and restored free eye tests for the over 60s. Together with the Guaranteed Minimum Pension"—
whatever that is—
"these measures mean that the poorest pensioners will soon get almost £20 a week more than when we came to office."
A letter from the Minister comes to a different conclusion. He cites those changes, but concludes that, as a result of Government measures, pensioner

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households will be better off by £300 a year, and those over 75, who tend to be the poorest, will be better off by up to £500.
Why has the Prime Minister written to hundreds of people in London and multiplied the figure by two? The Minister's figure is fairly optimistic, but perhaps he can contact the Prime Minister and ensure that he sends a correction to all the people who received the letter to London Labour party members. What is a guaranteed minimum pension? It is another example of the new language. It is neither a pension nor guaranteed; it is the basic pension that pensioners have earned through their contributions, plus a little income support.
I want to give the Minister plenty of time to reply to the debate, but the Prime Minister's letter referred to other Government measures. For example, it states:
"the poorest pensioners will get almost £20 a week more than when we came to office."
If the arithmetic is wrong, perhaps we should be told.
Like other Labour Members, you and I, Mr. Jones, fought the election on a promise in our manifesto to ensure that all pensioners would share fairly in the nation's growing prosperity. Early-day motion 1 and early-day motion 2 have been tabled on the minimum income guarantee. They are regularly signed by 100 Members of Parliament. We have achieved good things for many pensioners, and we have been fairer—I shall not say more generous—than previous Governments. However, the confidence trick continues to be played on pensioners. Many Labour Members feel unhappy and have bravely spoken against the leadership and the policy line. Their views are based on genuine unhappiness in the pensioner community.
It is a shame that pensioners do not take a leaf out of the book of the often well-heeled, rich groups, which persistently and enthusiastically lobby Parliament. The pensioners' lobby is much too polite; pensioners do not often block streets or take action. They do not get the Government's attention.
A deep and continuing injustice is perpetrated against those who built this country; many of them built the party to which you and I belong, Mr. Jones. They are being cheated by a Government who promised them a great deal. The Government should examine events in Britain in the past 12 months, which hold a terrible, unacknowledged lesson for us. A man who was told that he was not fit to be a Labour party candidate not only won an election, but got the biggest majority of any candidate in Scotland. In Wales, people in Llanelli, Islwyn and, of all places, the Rhondda, deserted the party. The same may happen in London. Many of them are elderly. They feel, "We won the election, but we lost our party." The Labour party is losing people who voted Labour before new Labour was invented.
The Government must restore pensioners' confidence and faith. They are our core supporters; they created our Labour party many years ago. We currently put up attractive sums of money—£100—which appears to be a great deal more than £2 a week. That is reminiscent of the tricks played by rotten employers who cheat their workers in their pay packets every week but give them a turkey at Christmas. The Government present skilful propaganda, half-truths and figures that are exaggerated or misrepresented, but, as a Government
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and as a party, we do not deliver for the mass of pensioners. As for the poorest pensioners, on whom we promised to concentrate, we are cheating them.
1.18 am
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Mr. Jeff Rooker): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on his 65th birthday today. He is a model Member of Parliament. However, I seriously question some of the language that he used. The Government are not playing any tricks on pensioners. We must be careful not only about the language but about the figures we use.
My hon. Friend has questioned one or two figures. Before I reach the thrust of my remarks, I shall answer his questions about figures. There is no contradiction between the letters that he has received from me and the letter from the Prime Minister. I am happy to provide detailed figures, although I cannot give them at length because there is not time to do so.
I cited the figure of £500, which relates to single pensioners over 80 between April 1998 and April 2000. This includes the winter fuel payment of £ 100 a year, for which my hon. Friend almost said thank you, and the reduction in VAT on fuel, from 8 to 5 per cent. That is only £16 a year, but that money still counts. The minimum income guarantee increase over the Rossi price index represents £293, and the free television licence, which comes into effect later this year, takes the figure to £510. The figure that he gave—I do not have the letter from the Prime Minister in front of me, but I understand that he was quoting—refers to 1997–2000 and older pensioner couples aged over 80. I have taken advice, and I know that the figure must come from there. The comparable figure for 1998–2000 is almost £13. We are not playing around. We consider couples and singles and use different years, whether 1998–2000 or 1997–2000, so figures are bound to change.
Mr. Flynn: Do I understand correctly? Is the Minister saying that £13 a week is almost £20 a week?
Mr. Rooker: No. I am saying that £13 a week applies to 1998–2000 and £20 a week must apply to 1997–2000. One figure applies to two years and the other to three. There is a difference, so the figures are bound to be different. The Government came to power in 1997 and the Prime Minister's figure refers to when we took office. I was referring to 1998–2000, in respect of which the figures are £672 for a couple—almost £13 a week—and £500 for a single person. We are considering couples and singles over two years or three; one has to look at a common figure. All the quoted figures are correct, but they apply to different groups over a different time scale.
My hon. Friend quoted at length what I said on Monday evening In respect of the forthcoming take-up campaign, I want to make it absolutely clear to him on the record that I did not say that 2 million people are missing out. I repeated our broad estimate of between 530,000 and 870,000—the average figure is 700,000—but we do not know their addresses. If we did, we would contact them. The figures come from a statistical extrapolation from the general household survey. To make the take-up campaign meaningful and to reach those people—on the assumption that they exist—we

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have looked at the information that the Government have within the Benefits Agency and used data matching and data sharing. From this, we have identified about 2.1 million pensioners who look most likely not to take up their entitlement. We plan to contact them personally in three tranches—by post, at specific addresses—so that we can cope with the feedback and the telephone line can cope with the inquiries that we shall receive. We have estimated the use to which the line will be put.
We will not send out a 40-page leaflet—lengthy forms are a big put-off in respect of MIG or income support—but will use a filter system to identify the most likely to be eligible and put them into the system to see whether they are eligible and whether they have been missed out because they have not claimed. Some may wilfully refuse to claim, but it is many years since I met a constituent who knew that they were eligible but wilfully refused to claim. Since I became a Social Security Minister, and following MIG's introduction, I have not dealt with a constituent without savings who survives on the basic state pension of £66.75, and neither have the two Age Concern branches in my constituency, which are very active. I am not saying that such people do not exist, but they may not fit the stereotype—a single pensioner living alone in a damp flat with a two-bar electric fire who refuses to claim because of pride or because he has been told that the minimum income guarantee is a state handout—language I did not use. The people whom we will find through the take-up campaign will not fit that stereotype. However, that is not the issue.
The money is there to be claimed, but we will never be able to backdate it simply because it is means-tested. Money is paid only from the day on which people make a claim, and my hon. Friend has to take that on board, but we must overcome the barriers to making a claim. I know from experience that people do not want to go to the social or the DSS. They do not want to be equated with the kind of people whom they perceive as using the social unfairly and affecting the unemployed, the disabled, people of working age on income support, and lone parents. Pensioners do not want to be associated with the DSS. I do not agree with that attitude, but I understand it. However, it is not necessary to go to a DSS or Benefits Agency office to claim the minimum income guarantee. That can be done through a home visit, by post or, in many parts of the country, over the phone. The information can be taken and the application completed at the other end and sent to pensioners to sign—that is all they would have to do.
The take-up campaign will not be in full swing on the day it is announced, which, as I said on Monday, will be before the end of the month; but it will be stepped up over the spring. We will then be able to use an electronic claim form, which will do wonders as people will not have to see all the questions that they do not have to answer. I freely admit that lengthy forms are a big put-off, although I am told that form design is reviewed every six months. For heaven's sake, there has not been much improvement in the past few years, let alone the past few months. There has been no literature or posters
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carrying the words "minimum income guarantee" in post offices or anywhere else visited by pensioners. That has been a big mistake. It does not matter whether anybody argues that MIG is income support dressed up as something else because it is different. MIG has been related to earnings in the way that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said it would be and we have to market it as MIG. That is what we will do.
As I said on Monday, we have seen the leaflet proofs. They refer to MIG and are simple, clear and easy to understand. They will be used as a filter to see whether people might be eligible before we get them into the main system. Obviously we have to check their means and know about their assets. There is no doubt about that. I say to my hon. Friend, with due humility, that this will not be like other Government take-up campaigns, which he so easily dismissed and which I accept have not always been successful: this one will be carried out on a different scale.
Much to my annoyance and distress, when I arrived at the DSS last summer, I discovered that we could not launch the campaign before Christmas. We could have made a start or introduced it this month, but it would not have worked. The planning has taken a considerable time; the cost will not be zero; and we have had to organise the resources to run it properly, which is what we intend to do. The Government have a moral obligation to see that everyone who is entitled to the benefits that Parliament has said are available—based on need and as of right—receives those benefits. They must not miss out because of ignorance.
People may choose not to claim, even if we remove all the hurdles that are present and perceived to be present one by one as we assess them. But let us be realistic: millions of pensioners claim means-tested council tax benefit; millions of pensioners claim means-tested housing benefit; and 1.5 million pensioners claim means-tested income support—MIG now. Forget the research, forget the statistics; because of my constituency experience, I do not accept that there is a massive stigma in claiming. Millions of people consider those benefits—which are based on their needs—to be a right, not a handout. We are getting that money to them, either from central Government or, if it is represented by housing benefit, via the local authorities.
Mr. Flynn: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Rooker: No, I do not have time; there is only a minute left.
My hon. Friend said in his first sentence that pensioners have not had a fair deal from the Government. Even though it is his birthday, I say to him that that is simply not true—I rebut it. The party to which he and I belong will lose seats if its own Members peddle an untruth, wherever it is peddled. It is not fair to say that there has been trickery in the Government's dealing. There has been no trickery and our record on providing for pensioners, based on their income and their needs, stands comparison with that of any previous Government.

Second Home Ownership
1.29 pm
Mr. Andrew George: I am pleased to initiate this important debate. Since the House resumed in October, I have been requesting a debate on second homes. The Minister for the Environment made a statement on this matter to a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference. No doubt, when he replies to the debate, the Under-Secretary will address himself to that statement and the Prime Minister's response to it.
I welcome the new hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas). "Agas dynargh", as we say in Cornwall. Perhaps there is a translation of that into Welsh—we may find that out later.
It is my experience that it is impossible to raise the issue of second homes without the debate becoming deeply emotional. I want to emphasise that, in calling for this short debate, I am not, unlike some others, engaging in the politics of envy, seeking to wreak revenge or fanning the flames of an absurd class war across rural Britain. That is not my purpose. I simply want to probe Government thinking on this important aspect of policy and to make it clear that we are talking about second residences that are entitled to a 50 per cent. discount in council tax, not about holiday homes on which business rates are payable.
I emphasise that my reasons for raising this issue are not personal. There are many second homes in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly, and we are pleased for their owners to come to our communities. Many of them are close friends of mine, so I do not intend my remarks to be personal. Those people are a bonus for the community. Although they cannot be there supporting local services all year round, they make a limited contribution and take pleasure in investing in the local economy. Of course, for some people personal wealth and privilege go hand in hand with arrogance, pomposity and a patronising attitude, but such people constitute a small minority and do much to undermine the good name of the majority, whom I have found to be pleasant and sensitive to local people and to have a genuine interest in the local community.
I seek the Minister's recognition of the social and economic costs of high second home ownership in areas of high unmet local housing need where local services—shops, schools and businesses—become unviable. I am not suggesting that second home owners should be inappropriately penalised, merely that they should not be subsidised as they are at present.
Before concentrating on policy points in detail, it is worth dealing with some of the myths that still surround the often highly charged debates on this subject. Those who defend the purchasers of second homes often maintain that local people, by selling their properties at extortionate prices, have cruelly and cynically exploited unwary and innocent second home purchasers, whose sole interest was to protect vernacular architecture and the fabric of rural areas. That has been the serious contention of people defending such sales, but it ignores the reality of how the housing market works. If a local person sells his house, he must buy another, equivalent house, so he must sell at the market rate. Local people have not sold their birthright. Where will they live? That contention is clearly not valid.
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The other contention is that it is not possible to apply policy in this area because it is impossible to define a second home. Those who follow this debate found it remarkable that, when it became possible to obtain a 50 per cent. discount on council tax on second homes, amazingly and miraculously thousands of people were, overnight, suddenly able to define their properties as second homes. We all noted that with great interest.
I accept that in some areas—the north and the islands of Scotland and other places—there is little or no unmet housing need, and second home ownership protects properties from falling down. Such injection of capital in those rural areas may be valuable.
Mr. David Drew: The hon. Gentleman is making a good case. The problem with second home owners taking on a run-down property is that they often knock two cottages into one. They take those properties out of the housing market for ever and a day for people who may, with some support, be able to buy back into the market. Does he agree with that?
Mr. George: I welcome that intervention. The hon. Gentleman is assiduous in this regard. Yes, any property loss—whether it be two properties knocked into one or any property in a rural community where there is a high unmet local housing need for affordable housing—adds to and fuels the house prices in that area, so that they are above that which the local community can afford. That is the issue that we are dealing with.
Cornwall, with a population of 500,000, has about 200,000 properties. A survey in which I have been involved professionally in the past and information from other sources suggest that there are about 20,000 people with an unmet housing need, half of whom—the figure varies from time to time—are on local authority waiting lists. Therefore, the figure is about 10,000, sometimes more and sometimes less. There are about 20,000 second and holiday homes, including those in the business sector, half of which are second residences for the purpose of recreation. It is interesting to relate that housing need to the number of properties that are taken out of local availability in Cornwall.
Such homes are concentrated in some areas more than others. They are in largely coastal areas, estuaries and other areas where there is a lot of sailing, such as Roseland and St. Minver. I am pleased to see that my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) is present. Certain identifiable locations contain higher numbers of second homes and are concomitant with higher house prices. In many communities—some in my constituency—30 or 40 per cent. of the housing stock is under second home ownership.
The new earnings survey produced annually by the Government shows that Cornwall has been pretty well on the bottom since records began. It has the lowest earnings and the lowest gross domestic product of any comparable area. We have one of the biggest mismatches of house prices and earnings anywhere in the country, and that is of great concern.
Mr. Paul Tyler: Does my hon. Friend agree that the most significant aspect of this matter is that it is an accumulation of many local

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problems. The last thing we want is for someone from Whitehall to lay down a strategy for dealing with this situation. We want local communities to have the freedom to say when enough is enough—whether in the Lake district, the west of Wales or our own end of Cornwall. Those who know best about saturation and the economic and social problems are the local people.
Mr. George: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It helps me to make a point that I shall refer to later. There is no doubt that the implementation of new policy in this area would have to be applied variably across the country. Local authorities should be able to interpret the policy as it applies to their own areas, and use their power flexibly in one area as opposed to another.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: I first congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing time for this very important debate and thank him for allowing me to intervene very briefly. He may know that two years ago I introduced a ten-minute Bill to deal with this problem. My suggestion then was that local authorities could use the classes order: if a property was a part-time property, it would have to have planning permission, in which case there would be the flexibility in each local area to deal with the problem.
Mr. George: Once again, I am grateful for a very helpful and positive intervention. What the hon. Gentleman says falls entirely within Liberal Democrat party policy. It has been our policy for a very long time. I entirely support and endorse the purpose of the hon. Gentleman's ten-minute Bill.
In addition to covering mainland west Cornwall, my constituency includes the Isles of Scilly where the problems are much more highly focused. The Isles of Scilly consists of five inhabited islands and many uninhabited islands, with about 2,000 people and 1,200 properties. About 30 per cent. of those properties are second homes. As in Cornwall, there are very low wages on the Isles of Scilly, but it also has even higher house prices. The smallest house on the islands costs £200,000, and it costs £160,000 to buy a council house there. On the off islands, one might obtain an assignable lease for a small property starting at about £300,000. Clearly, anyone on local wages cannot even look at that kind of property. They have to go to the rented sector, where they can find it. Low-earning islanders do not have the option of commuting to work from a low house price area somewhere on the mainland. That is physically not possible.
There are four areas of policy concern. I shall deal with the first two briefly, because they do not form part of the Minister's brief. The first is capital gains tax, under which cohabiting couples can avoid paying the tax if they register their two homes under different names. Secondly, a matter that concerns many hon. Members is the fact that during national elections second home owners can choose where they can most effectively vote. If one home is in a safe seat and another in a marginal, where, if they are politically aware, will they most effectively place their vote? They can have a
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disproportionate influence on the way in which elections are decided, and, as there are thousands of second home owners, it is a matter of concern.
I hope that the Minister will respond on the third matter, which concerns the 50 per cent. rebate on council tax referred to earlier. Even the much hated and socially divisive poll tax did not dare do that; people simply paid the poll tax twice. Then, in the haste to introduce the council tax, the clause giving the 50 per cent. discount was introduced. It was justified by the previous Government on the basis that second home owners did not use the more expensive personal services, such as education and social services. But the council tax is a tax on property, at a rate which varies according to the value of the house. It does not depend on which services the council tax payer uses. Many local people who do not use the most expensive service, which is education, are not entitled to a discount or a rebate.
The Government response so far has been disappointing. I have been pushing Ministers. The Under-Secretary wrote to me on 15 November saying:
"council tax is generally working well as a local tax and … there are no fundamental problems which require our urgent attention."
Similarly, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury wrote to the secretary of the south-west branch of the Local Government Association on 29 September 1999, saying that the Government's review
"concluded that the council tax had no fundamental problems"
and was widely accepted as working well.
With regard to proposed amendments, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said in the same letter, in reply to proposals that the discount should be removed:
"As far as the effect on local revenue is concerned, you will know that the proportion of local authority second homes attracting the 50% relief is reflected in the calculation of Revenue Support Grant."
In other words, there are no financial benefits for local authorities if they wish to vary the contribution that they are seeking from second home owners. However, even if that were true in all circumstances—this assumes that all local authorities stick to their standard spending assessments—what about the interests of the taxpayer at the end of the day? If a local council taxpayer does not subsidise the second home owner, the effect, to judge by that reply from the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, is that the national taxpayer does. Therefore, the Government should take a second look at this matter.
There have been proposals from my Liberal Democrat colleagues, from Liberal Democrat councils and others that local authorities should, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall suggested, be given the powers to vary the rate of council tax in the affected areas. Perhaps that additional income should be ring-fenced to be directed towards affordable homes for local people, or to contribute towards local services that would otherwise not receive the same kind of support because of the existence of second homes in those areas.
The Government need to review that matter again. The rather complacent response that I have received from Ministers so far with regard to their review, saying that the council tax system is working very well in this area of second home ownership, is not accepted on the ground by local authorities that have to work the system.

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The fourth matter is one of planning control. Proposals for change in the use class order have been made. On 1 October, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions proposed the banning of second homes in certain areas. Either way, there would need to be a definition and some kind of use class order—some kind of regulation—to implement such a proposal.
I draw attention to something that the Minister will see in his own records, as I told him before the debate. The Isles of Scilly has pointed out that section 319 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows the Secretary of State to make orders modifying the Act's application to the Isles of Scilly. The Town and Country Planning (Isles of Scilly) Order 1992 is an example of that—it relates to local authority housing.
Without introducing primary legislation, the Minister could introduce an order giving the Isles of Scilly the power to have a use class order for second homes, use that as an initial experiment and then relate it to other areas. I hope that the Minister will take that on board. The councillors from the Isles of Scilly who have requested a response have not so far received a satisfactory answer.
I shall conclude now because I want the Minister to have ample time to respond to the points raised. I am interested primarily in equity and social inclusion, not in penalising second home owners. I am interested in probing the Government's thinking on this matter. I hope that the Minister will accept that my questions and comments are intended to be constructive. Judging from other comments made by the Government, I believe that this is a matter of concern for some members of the Government. I am asking for simple recognition of the fact that one person's apparent freedom may have both social and economic costs which are worthy of consideration, and that these costs should be reflected in policy, and not overlooked. I look forward to the Minister's reply.
1.49 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Chris Mullin): The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) has raised an important issue and has presented his case very reasonably and forcefully. I shall do my best in the 11 minutes he has left to me to address the points that he raised, although we may have to follow one or two of them up by correspondence.
Although the quality of life is in many respects higher in the countryside than in the city, shortages of affordable housing in some areas are a matter of real concern. I lived in the west country 30 years ago, and even then the issue of second homes was a serious problem in some of the more scenic areas. In many rural areas, particularly those like the south-west, demand for housing is high, both from local people and from those who want to retire to pleasant surroundings or buy a second home. As the hon. Gentleman says, people on low incomes are easily squeezed out.
On a national level, the number of rural second homes is relatively small, amounting to less than 1 per cent. of housing stock. According to the hon. Gentleman, the proportion in popular tourist areas is as high as 30 or 40 per cent. I was informed that it was 20 per cent., but the hon. Gentleman probably has more detailed knowledge of the position.
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As we are heard today, such concentrations of second homes are of real concern to communities that are rightly keen to ensure that there is enough affordable housing locally. The Government recognise the important contribution that housing makes to balanced, sustainable rural communities and the need for affordable housing, especially for those on low wages and for young people.
The area represented by the hon. Gentleman is very beautiful, but it is also an area of contrasts. The available employment is predominantly seasonal and low paid, and unemployment, especially in winter, is well above the United Kingdom average. When I was a reporter on the Sunday Independent in the west country, I was sent to St. Ives to write a feature on high unemployment outside the summer season, and I know that such unemployment makes it difficult for many local people to afford housing.
Local authorities, however, can and already do act to alleviate the problem. Penwith district council is currently advising owners of empty properties on how to return them to use. The council is now a member of the West Cornwall partnership with Carrick and Kerrier authorities, which are commissioning housing association projects jointly with the Housing Corporation. That should create some more affordable housing. Penwith has received a 50 per cent. increase in its total allocation from the housing investment programme for the current financial year, and I understand that it proposes to increase its financial support for registered social landlords during the year.
Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly will receive up to £314 million from European structural funds over the next seven years to increase economic prosperity. Although the funds are not targeted directly at housing, they have the potential to support housing initiatives indirectly. I acknowledge that the Government also have a part to play. We have introduced a number of initiatives to help people to buy their own homes through low-cost home ownership schemes; we have also taken steps to improve the quality and increase the supply of affordable rented housing.
The Government have a good record on social housing. We have increased investment significantly: local authorities will receive an additional £4.4 billion for housing during the life of the current Parliament, which will enable many of them to begin to tackle the backlog of renovation. They can use some of the money to provide new social housing in order to meet local priorities. Of the extra resources, roughly £20 million will go to Cornwall, representing an increase of about two thirds.
Local authority housing expenditure programmes will be based on the priorities identified in their housing strategies, which should be based on robust assessments of local need and must take proper account of the needs of rural communities. It is vital for authorities to consult local interests such as parish councils in developing rural housing strategies. The Housing Corporation and the Countryside Agency are jointly funding a project to develop a good practice guide for local authority rural strategies.
The Housing Corporation continues to have a significant role in the delivery of new housing. It will deliver about 40,000 new social lettings in England

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during the present year, some in Cornwall. To ensure that sufficient priority is given to the needs of small communities, we have set a rural housing target each year. The current target is that 3.4 per cent. of new homes provided by the Housing Corporation should be in villages with populations of fewer than 3,000. Since 1989, when the programme began, it has provided an additional 16,000 homes in rural areas. The Housing Corporation has also established a rural housing advisory group, which is examining current approaches to establish whether they can be improved.
The planning system also has a part to play. Where there is evidence of a need for affordable housing, both low-cost market and subsidised, local planning authorities can require an element of such housing to be included as part of a wider residential development on suitable sites. The rural exceptions policy enables local planning authorities in rural areas to grant planning permission for land that would not otherwise be released for housing. A condition is that "exceptions housing" must be occupied only by people on low incomes.
Both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) suggested that the spread of second homes could be controlled by the creation of a separate category of land use in the use classes order. I have been given a lengthy explanation of why that might not be possible for legal reasons, but time does not permit me to read it all out. I shall merely say that I should be glad to follow up the point in correspondence.
The hon. Member for St. Ives said that my Department had received a formal request from the Isles of Scilly for the Secretary of State to introduce secondary legislation requiring planning permission for housing that is to be used other than as a main residence. The wider issue of second homes has been raised by many people during consultation on the rural White Paper, and the concerns of the Isles of Scilly are likely to be considered in that context.
The hon. Gentleman made a forceful case for changes in council tax. He pointed out that second home owners had no difficulty in defining themselves once it was known that doing so would bring some financial advantage. There may well be a case for doing away with the discount for second home owners, but that might
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not solve the problem that the hon. Gentleman seeks to solve. Given that second home owners are by definition more prosperous than others, most can easily afford to pay the difference. I accept that that does not deal with the question of whether it should be done, but it is relevant to the problem that the hon. Gentleman has raised.
The hon. Gentleman said that he had received a rather complacent response from the Government, and, indeed, I have here a rather complacent response, which I will not read out. I merely say that the issue was reviewed about a year ago, and at the time there were no sufficiently cogent reasons for a change. I am, however, willing to follow up the point in my Department. Perhaps we can discuss it later.
I entirely accept the point raised by the hon. Gentleman. I am well aware that it is a serious issue in communities such as his. I regret to say that there are probably no easy answers: some problems can be solved, but others are more complicated. I hope that I have at least demonstrated, and that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, that action is being taken to address the problem of low-cost housing in his constituency and others, but I recognise that more needs to be done.
Mr. Andrew George: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Mullin: I think that you are about to stop me, Mr. Jones, but the hon. Gentleman can try his luck.
Mr. George: May I return to this issue of the Isles of Scilly? The Minister says that the Government are reviewing the possibility of introducing secondary legislation. Are they considering a planning rather than a council tax regulation, and will they write to the council shortly?
Mr. Mullin: We shall be responding to the council, and, as I have said, the issue is likely to be reviewed in relation to the rural White Paper, which will have to address the whole issue. We have no plans to do what the Isles of Scilly wants in the immediate future, but I realise that the problem there is serious—perhaps more serious than the problem in any other part of the country.
It being Two o'clock, the motion for the adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.