Cetaceans

HC Deb 01 April 2004 vol 419 cc497-530WH

[Relevant documents: Third Report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee 2003–04 HC88]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Ainger.]

2.30 pm

Ms Candy Atherton (Falmouth and Camborne) (Lab):

I am pleased to be debating cetacean by-catch, the subject of the report of the Select Committee on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The issue is urgent. Since the new year, more than 124 dead cetaceans have been recorded on the Cornish coast. It could be called a death tide. We are talking about the death of one of the most popular mammals.

A quick search ofHansard on the subject of cetacean by-catch is informative. For many years, the subject was barely mentioned, although my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) stands out as a persistent voice of concern, as he has on so many animal welfare issues.

First, I shall deal with the Select Committee's inquiry, which I was privileged to chair. I shall deal next with the recently announced European Union regulations; and then the Government's response to the report, which arrived only last night. The Committee was fortunate in that some leading experts gave evidence. They include people who represent fishing organisations and the sea fisheries committees, as well as conservationists such as Nick Tregenza from Cornwall, and representatives of wildlife trusts, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Brixham seawatch. We are grateful to all who gave evidence for their time and their expertise. I also record my thanks to the Select Committee Clerk, who worked so hard on the report.

The Committee welcomed the publication of the Government's strategy. We recognise that concerted action within the EU is necessary and that EU law restricts what the Government can do alone. However, we want the Government to do more. Had the Government and the EU followed our recommendations, a great deal more would have been achieved to protect small cetaceans; but the impact on fishing would have been relatively small, as the costs would have qualified for EU grants. Sadly, neither the Government nor the EU proposed anything like the protection that the Committee recommended.

I shall now outline the background to the Committee's recommendations. The UK is party to several agreements to protect the populations of small cetaceans from by-catch. One is the agreement on the conservation of small cetaceans of the Baltic and North seas—otherwise known as ASCOBANS, which sounds like something from Harry Potter. Others include the European convention habitat directive and the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. As the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pointed out in its response on UK small cetacean by-catch, marine mammals are particularly vulnerable to depletion from by-catch. By-catch is widely recognised as one of the most serious environmental problems resulting from modern commercial fishing. The treaties that I mentioned recognise that by-catch above 1.7 per cent. of the fish population would lead to population decline. ASCOBANS went further: acting in accordance with the precautionary principle, it set an objective to reduce by-catch to below 1 per cent. of the best available population estimate.

Estimating the population and the by-catch is difficult. Estimates suggest a population of about 150,000 harbour porpoises; between 300 and 500 bottle-nosed dolphins; and 75,000 common dolphins off the UK coast. Estimates of by-catch are complicated by a number of factors. Many carcases probably sink or decompose at sea without trace. The by-catch washed ashore could be the tip of the iceberg.

Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con):

Was the hon. Lady not concerned to read recent reports that a number of carcases that were washed up had holes in them, the presumption being that the carcases were holed in the hope that they would sink and not be included in the count?

Ms Atherton:

Yes; that is one of the grave allegations that have been made. The Government need to pay attention to the fact that many carcases are lost and decompose at sea.

Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab):

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the conservation issue, but does she agree that what has just been said shows that there is also an important animal welfare issue? "The Net Effect", the report by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society for Greenpeace, states that the injuries suffered by by-catch dolphins and porpoises typically include bruising, muscular tearing, broken beaks, torn and severed fins and flukes and cuts and abrasions on the skin.

Ms Atherton:

My hon. Friend is perfectly correct. For the Select Committee, one of the most distressing parts of taking evidence was seeing photographs and pictures that showed the impact on dolphins. The public do not see such things because they take place out at sea. Their only manifestation is when we see dolphins and porpoises washed up on the beaches. That is when the issue comes into the public domain. There is a strong animal welfare issue.

Over 10 days in 2002, more than 300 dolphins and porpoises were washed ashore on the French Atlantic coast. The majority showed signs of having been caught in fishing nets in the exact conditions that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) describes. Sadly, French public opinion has not been mobilised on this issue. We need to mobilise public opinion across the European Union, as it has been mobilised in this country.

The autopsies indicate by-catch as the cause of death in 30 per cent. of cases among harbour porpoises and two thirds of cases among common dolphins. In 2002, 655 cetacean strandings were reported and preliminary data for last year indicated more than 650 cetacean strandings. In the Celtic sea, by-catch of the harbour porpoise is a serious problem. The porpoise appears particularly susceptible to being caught in bottom-set gill nets set in coastal waters. Estimates suggest that the by-catch of the fishery for hake between 1992 and 1994 was 6.2 per cent. of the local population of harbour porpoises, although levels of by-catch have probably declined as the size of the hake fleet has declined.

In the North sea, the fisheries of other countries have had a bigger impact on harbour porpoises. Bottom-set gill nets laid by Danish vessels alone are estimated to have killed nearly 5,600 porpoises between 1987 and 2001. That is estimated to be 3.3 per cent. of the local population. The UK fleet was estimated to be responsible for the by-catch of approximately 1,000 animals in 1995. As the fleet reduced, that figure reduced to about 600 in 2000.

We receive few estimates of the numbers of common dolphins killed as a result of by-catch. However, in February 2002, the then fisheries Minister, who is now Minister for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), said that he believed that up to 50 dolphins a day were being killed in the pelagic trawl fishery for sea bass. The Wildlife Trust estimated the figure to be between 2 and 3.5 per cent. of the local population. In the UK, by-catch of common dolphins occurs predominantly off the south-west coast of England during the winter months. I have to tell the House that I now dread the start of winter, when the slaughter of dolphins begins.

There are various ways in which small cetacean by-catch might be reduced. They include the use of acoustic pingers on certain set-net fisheries, which are effective at warning small cetaceans away; the introduction of separator grids into pelagic fisheries, which allows small cetaceans to escape; closing a fishery if by-catch exceeds a certain percentage of the relevant population; and designating special areas of conservation under the habitats directive.

Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD):

When it comes to closing fisheries because a certain percentage of cetaceans have been caught, how would that be monitored? What percentage would be taken? Would the percentage reflect the cetaceans that were washed up on the shore, or would there be a calculation of how many cetaceans were dying, but not being washed up on the shore?

Ms Atherton:

That is a good question. At the moment, we do not know how many cetaceans are being caught or the size of the populations. I will make the case for closing certain fisheries, but I will come to that later. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will wait until I get further on in my speech.

Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab):

Will my hon. Friend confirm that, by taking us through the Select Committee recommendations she is, in a sense, outlining the options that were presented to DEFRA? In order to address the specific point about the stage at which we identify a proportion as unacceptable, it might be helpful for her to remind us that she was the one person on the Committee who said that we had already reached that point and that there was a compelling case for a six-month emergency ban.

Ms Atherton:

My hon. Friend is kind. I was particularly keen that the Committee should consider the matter. I wanted action, and as I shall say later, the Committee members wanted immediate action, but were persuaded to take the DEFRA response options. I am trying to describe the process by which we came to our conclusions. We wanted to give DEFRA those options, but I now feel—I hope that colleagues agree—that we need to move on, given what the EU Fisheries Council has concluded.

Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde) (Con):

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Ms Atherton:

I am delighted to give way to the Chairman of our Select Committee.

Mr. Jack:

Will the hon. Lady confirm that one of the many important recommendations in the report was the need for better research further to inform the work that she has ably described so far, which should be principally conducted by DEFRA?

Ms Atherton:

We were strongly of that view and the Chairman of the Committee is quite right. We were appalled at the lack of information. We felt that more needed to be done, and more is being done. I look forward to the data that the Minister might be able to give in his response. Now, if hon. Members would be kind enough to allow me, I had better make some progress.

I hope that hon. Members read our report, but I would like to talk a little about the areas considered and the particular methods that could be used. We welcomed DEFRA's proposals to make pingers compulsory, but we were concerned about the restrictions that it proposed on the limits. DEFRA said that pingers should be mandatory in the Celtic sea, but only on gill nets more than 6 nautical miles from the coast. Apart from the impracticality of enforcing that, there is good evidence from countries where more intensive observer monitoring of gill net fisheries has been carried out that inshore nets catch porpoises just as effectively as offshore nets. The Committee therefore recommended that pingers be made mandatory on all bottom-set gill nets in the Celtic sea as well as the North sea.

DEFRA has made no recommendations to introduce pingers in the English channel on the basis that the by-catch is negligible as there are very few porpoises. We accept the view of the conservation organisations that the decline of the cetacean populations to such low levels in the English channel is the precise reason why measures to limit gill-net fishing are required to allow them to recover. We therefore recommended the use of pingers on gill nets in the English channel. We were concerned that the Government had supplied insufficient information on how effective pinger operation would be measured and where inspection would take place. We urge the Government to provide answers to those questions as soon as possible. We also recommended that the Government give serious consideration to prohibiting completely bottom-set gill nets in those areas if pingers were proven to exclude harbour porpoises from key habitats to the detriment of those populations. The recently agreed EU directive makes pingers compulsory only on fishing vessels over 12 m using fixed gear in the North sea, the English channel and the Celtic sea. The date for implementing the mandatory use of pingers has been postponed from 2005 to 2007 depending on the fishing area and gear used. I believe that that is very worrying. I recommend that the Government accept the recommendations in the report in respect of UK-registered vessels.

Let me turn to the pelagic trawls, which are implicated in the deaths of so many common dolphins. A typical pelagic pair trawl involves a stretch net large enough to cover the Sydney opera house pulled between two boats. The largest could hold 10 jumbo jets. There is clear evidence that the sea bass pelagic trawl is the primary cause of death of common dolphins as a result of by-catch. Trials of separator grids have been encouraging and we commended DEFRA for funding those trials over several seasons of the sea bass fishery. However, if by-catch in the sea bass fishery is to be addressed effectively, action must be taken at European level. The United Kingdom Government are prevented by the common fisheries policy from imposing restrictions on other UK-registered vessels that are more stringent than any restrictions already imposed by the European Commission.

It is extraordinary that we do not know the size of the sea bass fleet of different countries. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations estimated that there are 60 French vessels working in 30 pairs, fewer than 10 Dutch vessels, which are large and do not work in pairs, and between two and six Scottish pair teams.

Mr. Sanders:

I understand that there are at least 12 Scottish vessels currently working out of Plymouth, so those figures are somewhat suspect.

Ms Atherton:

That is the point.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw):

Six pairs.

Ms Atherton:

Yes, six pairs. I am trying to make the point that there is no real knowledge of the numbers and the Committee found that extraordinary. We felt that there should be more information, which should come not just from the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations but should be known at EU level. How can we tackle the problem if we do not know the size of it?

Mr. Gray:

The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. If the position we are in today is a result of the common fisheries policy, surely it would be better if the UK were able to act independently. We could then take a lead and perhaps declare a complete ban on trawling in pairs, which might lead us to repatriate the common fisheries policy here. Surely the situation would be better than it is at the moment.

Ms Atherton:

I had a feeling that the Conservative party might rise to the bait. If we went down the route proposed by the Conservative party, there would be a free-for-all and all cetaceans would be in greater peril than if we acted collectively.

The prospective Conservative candidate in my constituency recently held a press conference. I was contacted by a television company which told me that the candidate was accusing me and was very cross because we were not calling for separator grids or pingers. He had not read the report, which was not a good way to start, and his comments ended up on the cutting room floor. It was interesting.

The Select Committee recommended that the Government should aim to reduce by-catch of the common dolphin in the pelagic trawl fishery for sea bass to within 1.7 per cent. by the end of two fishing seasons from now. The Committee and I have been criticised for that, but we took the view that the Department should be allowed to pursue its plans and to work at European level for the reasons that I have described. We urged the Government to work towards convincing other member states to adopt mandatory use of grids in the sea bass fishery if the current separator trials proved successful. We recommended that, if other member states did not agree to deploy separator grids or take other effective mitigating action to reduce the cetacean by-catch, the Government should make a formal request to the European Commission to impose emergency measures in the form of closure of the pelagic trawl fishery for sea bass.

There is some evidence of by-catch in pelagic trawl fisheries other than sea bass, but insufficient monitoring has been carried out, so it is impossible to know the full extent.

Matthew Taylor (Truro and St. Austell) (LD):

On separator grids, I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware that fishermen in my part of the country are saying that the grids are misplaced and not effective. The dolphins that escape through them show clear signs of severe damage. Photographs taken of the recent massing of porpoises off Cornwall show clear evidence of substantial damage to a large number of dolphins. They were not killed by the nets but were damaged by them, including, for example, a dolphin with its entire dorsal fin ripped off. Some people argue that the majority of dolphins show signs of damage. I hope that the hon. Lady will accept that the use of the grids is by no means proven to be effective in a fishery that risks destroying the bass stocks as well as the dolphins.

Ms Atherton:

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The fishermen to whom I have spoken are considering all sorts of measures to try to solve the problem. Many of them do not want a situation in which both the fish stocks and the dolphin stocks are depleted. I accept that more work has to be done.

We recommend that the Government place much greater emphasis on moving quickly to set up long-term observer monitoring programmes for other pelagic trawl fisheries that take place off south-west England in the winter months, such as those for mackerel, horse mackerel and tuna. The fact is that fishermen, dolphins and porpoises all hunt the same prey—fish—and that is why these tragedies occur.

I am concerned that the EU regulation does not ban certain practices or make any recommendation on the use of devices to mitigate cetacean by-catch in the pelagic trawl fishery, but instead only recommends that observers monitor the by-catch until the review of the regulation in 2008. I believe that the public will be astonished by that. Not even to agree that separator grids should be used is quite wrong and leads me to conclude that we shall have to explore different solutions.

There is widespread support among conservation organisations for the introduction of a mortality limit scheme set at a limit of 1 per cent. of the available population. Even so, we agreed with DEFRA that to be successful such a scheme would have to be agreed upon and implemented at the European level. A single member state could not unilaterally implement such a scheme because it would require the co-operation of all the member states involved in a particular fishery. We therefore recommend that the Government pursue discussions about the introduction of a mortality limit scheme at the European level, particularly for sea bass. Such a scheme could provide a long-term management solution for the fishery if agreement between all member states prosecuting the fishery could be achieved.

The UK has identified three candidate special areas of conservation—SACs—that could offer protection for the bottle-nosed dolphin. No SACs have been identified for the harbour porpoise because of the difficulty in identifying the areas that they inhabit. I understand that further work is under way; perhaps the Minister could confirm that. We consider that such SACs should be considered a matter of priority.

Part of the consideration of whether restrictions should be imposed on fisheries is the question of whether they would be legal. The nub of the issue is the interaction between the habitats directive and the CFP. Under the CFP, the restriction of fisheries for conservation reasons is a function that falls within the exclusive competence of the European Commission. Consequently, it is not at all clear whether the UK Government are legally able to impose restrictions on fishing activities in SACs. If the Commission concludes that member states are not able to impose such restrictions, other action must be taken at European level to ensure that the protection offered to marine species in SACs is meaningful. I understand that DEFRA has yet to receive a response from the Commission on the matter, despite the nine months that have elapsed since the UK raised the issue. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government have heard from the Commission yet? We urge them to pursue the matter.

As I mentioned earlier, the European Union Fisheries Council has only just reached agreement on EU action. In July 2003, the Commission adopted a draft regulation to curb small cetacean by-catch. It went through a process of scrutiny and negotiation in Council working groups that included civil servants from member states and the fisheries committee of the European Parliament and then the European Parliament itself. The Fisheries Council reached final political agreement on a new regulation only after arduous negotiations on 22 March. The regulation is meant to be a short-term first step towards addressing the by-catch problem. The Commission and the committee agreed that independent observers were vital, and the Commission proposed that member states set up as a matter of priority on-board observer schemes to monitor the incidental capture and killing of cetaceans in several high-risk fisheries where pelagic trawls or gill nets are used.

The draft regulation has been considerably watered down in its final form. As I have said, pingers will be mandatory only on vessels of more than 12 m using fixed-net gear in the three seas, and fisheries using pingers will not be subject to the on-board observer scheme. The date for implementing pingers has changed from 2005 to 2007. That wait-and-see approach will see thousands more porpoises and dolphins and possibly whole populations dying needlessly. It is disappointing to say the least that, in an area where concerted action is needed at EU level, the EU has singularly failed to deliver an effective solution.

There is undoubtedly a need for a comprehensive scheme to monitor by-catch, so that long-term measures can be designed to be as effective as possible. However, EU member states have been under the obligation imposed in article 12.4 of the habitats directive to monitor the incidental capture and killing of cetaceans for a long time, and they have failed to do so. Under current proposals, the cetacean population will continue to pay a high price for the inaction and failure of member states to meet their legal obligations.

Alan Simpson:

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Ms Atherton:

I am aware that I am going on longer than I intended, but I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend.

Alan Simpson:

I want my hon. Friend to focus on one point. She makes a very powerful case, but, without wishing in any way to detract from the importance of monitoring, given the evidence of the scale of by-catch casualties and carnage, is the question not about the enforcement of emergency measures? As a Government and Parliament, do we not need to face the question of what lead the Government can take in delivering the pressure and demands for emergency measures, rather than sitting back within the safe but marginal area of the research and monitoring regime?

Ms Atherton:

My hon. Friend is, once again, quite correct and, if he will allow me to complete my argument, which he has foreseen with great foresight, he will be pleased with my conclusion. It concurs with his own.

There is already abundant evidence that the trawl fishery and, particularly the sea bass fishery, is killing cetaceans at a level that the population cannot sustain, and in breach of the legally binding ASCOBANS agreement. The nub of the issue is contained in article 7 of the European regulation on the conservation of fisheries, which says: If there is a serious threat to the conservation of living aquatic resources or to the marine ecosystem resulting from fishing activities, which requires immediate action, the Commission, at the substantiated request of a Member State or on its own initiative, may decide on emergency measures which shall last not more than one year. The Government took similar action recently in relation to the coral reefs known as the Darwin mounds off Rockall. A decision can be made within 15 days and emergency measures have immediate effect.

The possible use of article 7 to protect cetaceans appears to have been ignored in the DEFRA response strategy, which refers only to the weaker powers for emergency closure of a fishery under article 8. The time has come for the Government to apply to the European Commission for the use of article 7 to close the sea bass fishery from the beginning of the next season in November. No dead dolphins next season would conclusively make the point.

Another conservation and fisherman-friendly policy would be to exempt those vessels in the sea bass fishery that use separated grids and other conservation-friendly methods. I ask the Government urgently to seek legal opinion about what is possible and to apply to the Commission for closure.

Further information on populations and by-catch levels should be forthcoming in the next year. As an interim measure, the European Commission has funded a voluntary observer scheme, putting their observers on the pelagic trawl. Unfortunately that missed most of this winter, when the problem is at its biggest. Observers on British boats are reporting that they are catching far too many dolphins, although numerical data have not been reported. The Greenpeace boat Esperanza has been patrolling the coast off Cornwall this winter and produced photographs of dolphins following the sea bass fishery. Another major survey of cetacean populations called SCANS II is planned for 2004.

Article 7 will allow up to 18 months' breathing space to find a longer-term solution based on the better data. Waiting till 2008 for the formal review of the EU regulation on by-catch with no guarantee of any mitigation methods to reduce by-catch in pelagic trawls is unsatisfactory.

Matthew Taylor:

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Ms Atherton:

I am sorry, but I am just finishing and I have been generous with hon. Members throughout.

The EU has the ability to act before 2008 under existing powers. More data will become available that will enable further informed decisions to be made. Our Committee wanted to see the slaughter end. We were prepared to give the Government and the EU space to put the various schemes into operation on a limited time span. I believe, however, that the watered-down plans from the EU mean that the Government have to take action to safeguard the dolphins and porpoises for the future. I urge the Government to act.

3.1 pm

Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD):

I congratulate the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) on her report and its conclusions. I will concentrate on one small aspect of it, which goes to the heart of the issue: the point at which action is taken. One per cent. of the population has been mentioned as the trigger for action, as it puts the sustainability of the population in question. One per cent. does not sound like much, but, to put it in human terms, if 1 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom dropped dead for some unknown reason, that would be 580,000 people, and we can be sure that, if we knew what the reason was, action would be taken immediately.

What we know about by-catch deaths of cetaceans is drawn from those that are washed up on the shore. It is suggested that 1 per cent. of the bottle-nosed dolphin population is 50, and nobody claims that 50 bottle-nosed dolphins have been washed up on our beaches in any one year. Even if we took into account the figures from north-west France as well as south-west England, we would reach nowhere near 1 per cent. However, we are close to the threshold for the common dolphin. Last year, more than 600 were found on the beaches of north-west France and of south-west England—close to the 750 figure that would be 1 per cent.

As the hon. Lady mentioned, and as I mentioned yesterday, the by-catch that we record on the shoreline is probably only a fraction of the actual by-catch. The fishermen know that the dolphin is a protected species, and they do not want to admit that they have caught them. There are examples of pelagic trawl operators cutting up the dolphins in order, they hope, that they would sink to the bottom of the sea and not be recorded. That is why it was obvious that one of the initiatives required was observers on boats. Of course that is a voluntary scheme and not all pelagic trawl operators want observers to see precisely what is going on. However, we are dangerously close to that 1 per cent. figure, and we might already have exceeded it.

Matthew Taylor:

Is not the key issue with bass pair trawling the fact that, as well as apparently killing large numbers of cetaceans—I certainly agree with my hon. Friend's argument that the problem is getting beyond the trigger level for a species that does not reproduce quickly—the technique is wiping out the bass fishery? It is not a sustainable fishery, irrespective of the problems with dolphins and porpoises. That is why it is so hard to understand why the Government are not taking the lead in pressing to put a stop to that form of bass fishery, especially given that few British boats are involved in it. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) was suggesting the closure of all bass fishery in her conclusion, or just that that technique be stopped. Given that the fishery is unsustainable, the Government should be pressing for closure irrespective of the trigger levels.

Mr. Sanders:

I agree with my hon. Friend. We should be asking for closure of that particular method of fishing, not of the entire fishery for bass. Perhaps the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne can make it clear that we are talking about the closure of pelagic pair trawling—

Ms Atherton:

Of course I want to make that clear.

Mr. Sanders:

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. In that case, we are at one on the issue. Observations and representations are coming from hand-line bass fishermen, who are as concerned as anyone else about by-catch levels and the sustainability of stocks of bass, for which they fish legitimately and without any by-catch.

I conclude that the trigger point is the crucial part of the argument. The Government need to address that. I know that part of their response will be that we need more verifiable evidence. The evidence that has washed up on our shoreline has been subjected to post-mortems at Regent's Park zoo, in which the cause of death of those creatures has been found irrefutably to be by-catch. Those numbers are well in excess of 1 per cent. of the population if the lower estimates are accepted—the figures that I gave earlier were at the higher end of the range—and therefore endorse what the hon. Lady says, and what I said in the Chamber yesterday: we need to ban this method of bass fishing without delay.

3.8 pm

Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton) (Lab/Co-op):

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) and the other members of the Select Committee on their work. I further congratulate my hon. Friend on her clear and powerful opening presentation.

It is probably no coincidence that half of the Members present come from the south-west peninsula, although not all of them have a shoreline in their constituency. We have a great appreciation of the benefits of having such a wonderful marine coastline in the south-west, and I think that we all share not only concern but enthusiasm for the marine wildlife in which we are so rich.

I have the good fortune to have in my constituency the national marine aquarium, which many people may not have heard of before last weekend's event, when HMS Scylla—the last Leander-class frigate to be built in Plymouth—was placed as an artificial reef in Whitsand bay. Following that project by the aquarium, many more people in the UK and further abroad will now have heard of that centre of excellence, and will know of our aspirations that Plymouth should become a sport diving centre of excellence and tourism for the south-west.

I confess that I missed the boat: having played a major part in bringing the project to a conclusion, I found myself at Mayflower steps in Plymouth at a quarter to 2, but the boat had left at half-past 1. I have not investigated how that came to be, but I was able to phone for assistance and a fast rigid inflatable was sent for me. Juan Romero, who was driving it, said to me, "I hope you don't mind speed." I did not tell him that although I represent a marine constituency, I have occasionally been known to be seasick on a pontoon, never mind on a boat. Nevertheless, we sped from the Mayflower steps to Whitsand bay in about five minutes. Anyone who knows the area will realise that we were going at a considerable speed.

We made it in time to join the waiting party and then had to wait an hour for the right conditions to sink the boat. On the way—this is relevant, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I am pleased to say that dolphins were spied in Plymouth sound.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

Order. I can tell the hon. Lady that even the Chair is attracted by a good story.

Linda Gilroy:

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Not only are dolphins highly regarded and one of our favourite forms of marine wildlife; they are considered to be harbingers of good luck. We hope that that sighting brings good luck to the project.

The UK has many aquariums, but the national marine aquarium is the first to come into being solely for the purpose of education, conservation and research. Research is an important aspect. The centre has had more than 1.5 million visitors, but it has also become firmly established as a source of reliable and accurate information. It is also a regular source for newspaper, magazine and television projects, including the well-known BBC "Blue Planet" series, which deals with everything from seahorses—my favourite—to whales. The cause of dolphin and porpoise strandings is of great interest to the aquarium.

As has been said, it is more than 10 years since reports of dolphin strandings became an all-too-frequent and extremely unwelcome feature of local and regional news reports. That increase seems to have become associated with the increase in fishing for sea bass. Various trials and proposals have been suggested to mitigate that tragic and unintended cull. The Select Committee investigated it in considerable detail and proposed limiting the by-catch to 1.7 per cent. of the estimated population, but it spoke also of the difficulty of working out what the population might be. Technical proposals, observer monitoring and closing the fisheries have all been suggested.

Criticism has already been made of the trials that DEFRA has put in hand, but I pay tribute to the Department because it has taken a lead in recognising the serious nature of the problem and the reality of the approach and attitude of other European Union member states. We shall doubtless hear from the Minister what has been achieved at the European level, what constraints were imposed on making agreements and what is the potential for moving on.

Hon. Members have already indicated the great interest of many fishermen in the subject. They are often seen as the bogeymen, but many of them take a keen interest in the conservation issues that affect marine habitats, despite the fact that fisheries are under great stress and in decline in many ways.

I was very interested to read on page 42 of the evidence to the Select Committee that Mr. Barrie Deas acknowledged the very serious problem of dolphins. He says: Our view is that every attempt should be made to quickly establish whether acoustic deterrent devices and/or escape windows are effective in reducing dolphin bycatch. In the absence of rapid progress we would not oppose a more restrictive approach, up to and including a prohibition of this fishing method"— the pair trawling method— for bass.

In passing, I point out that the conclusion of the memorandum presented to the Committee raised the interesting concept, which I have not come across before in reference to fishing, of a possible role for fishermen as stewards of the marine environment parallel to that emerging for farmers as stewards of the countryside. That was not one of the Committee's recommendations, but will the Minister, in his concluding remarks, say whether DEFRA is considering such a role? I would greatly welcome its doing so, as the proposal is very interesting. That is certainly borne out by the symbiotic and constructive relationship between many fishermen and the researchers at the national marine aquarium in Plymouth, which carries out marine conservation activities.

The Select Committee report made two broad points that were very much reflected in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne. The first is that we need to recognise the urgency of the situation and the fears of those who believe that it may be too late to consider any more sophisticated proposals if we do not act soon. I tend to agree. I believe that calls for the closure of the winter pair trawling fishery are merited and should be seriously considered, although I appreciate that that might cause problems, which the Minister will doubtless outline to us. We should not delude ourselves that we will be immune from the moving goalpost syndrome that we all come across when trying to tackle problems. If we try to solve the problem by doing one or more things, the problem tends to move on in the interim.

I urge a word of caution in our consideration of these matters. This morning, I spoke to Mr. Kelvin Boot of the national marine aquarium—I see that the Minister is nodding, so he is aware of Mr. Boot's contribution to these matters and the affairs of the aquarium. Mr. Boot told me that the boats and the porpoises, and the shoals that they follow, have moved inshore this year, which shows that the situation is not static, particularly in relation to fisheries. That is true of all problems that we tackle in various spheres of government.

I want to comment in passing on the role of the European Union, which the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne. Among other things, the national marine aquarium is involved in the Biscay dolphin research programme, which it supports. The programme has shown that the common dolphin, which breeds in the bay of Biscay in the summer, moves to the western approaches off Devon and Cornwall in the winter. During the summer those animals are threatened by the tuna nets in the bay of Biscay, but are later exposed to the dangers off our coast about which we have heard so much today. We have been talking about both animal welfare and conservation issues. Dolphins are predators and as such prey on weak and sickly fish, which helps to maintain the health of the fish stocks. All that illustrates that fish do not recognise national boundaries, so we must come to an agreement when dealing with such matters.

Mr. Gray:

I agree that it is essential that such matters should be agreed internationally, not only in the European Union, but across the globe. It is no good our saving porpoises and dolphins in Britain—it must be done everywhere. The question is by what means we should do so. It appears that the EU has been remarkably ineffectual in achieving those goals, which is why I call on the Government to take unilateral action.

Linda Gilroy:

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. We shall probably have to agree to differ on how to address the problem. We may agree on what the common problem is, but the EU framework, difficult and frail as it might be, is better than trying to negotiate such matters separately and from outside such a framework.

Mr. Bradshaw:

Does my hon. Friend agree that were the United Kingdom to be outside the CFP, we would have absolutely no leverage on other EU countries with which to do anything about the problem at all?

Linda Gilroy:

I certainly agree. My hon. Friend has put the matter much more clearly and robustly than I just did. No doubt he will make such a robust case in his concluding remarks.

We must take urgent action to tackle today's problems, based on only the best available knowledge. In several years, however, we may wonder why something that at first appeared effective has not solved the problem. It is therefore vital that, while taking action within the bounds of our present knowledge, we should take further steps to research and understand how things work, why the fisheries move inshore, as it has been suggested they do, and what the consequences of that might be for the by-catch problem. Will it create greater dangers to porpoises and the bottlenose dolphins, which tend to come inshore, rather than seeking the deeper waters that the common dolphin inhabits? However, we cannot wait on that research before doing something because by then it may be too late to take effective action.

I conclude by again congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne on the Committee's work. I hear her passionate plea for article 7 emergency action. She made a powerful argument for seriously considering winter closure of the pair trawl sea bass fishery. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister, who I know has a good command of European matters and negotiations, as well as a strong commitment to animal welfare and marine issues.

3.24 pm

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op):

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton), who chaired the Sub-Committee and took us through the report. Until I sat in on the Committee, I was largely ignorant of the cetacean crisis. It was entirely down to her inspirational leadership that we really got behind the issue and it was forced on to the agenda. Some of us would have liked to discuss other items, but she was absolutely committed to ensuring that it got the correct priority. We are grateful to her for that.

I am from the south-west, although that will surprise some people—[Laughter.] The Minister always thinks that am I bit dubious—in more ways than one. I make no apology—despite my accent—for saying that I come from the south-west. I have a coastline in my area, and dolphins and porpoises occasionally come up, if nothing else, to see the strange people on the Severn bore—perhaps I should add that I am not the Severn bore. However, those creatures occasionally come up to see the strange things that human beings do.

If I had a criticism of the DEFRA Committee, or the MAFF Committee as it was, it is that its members get somewhat used to death and occasionally have to deal with carnage. In this case, however, I have been really taken aback—it is almost a case of wilful murder. Some of our nearest relatives are being slaughtered for apparently purely economic reasons, and we do not really understand the repercussions. There is always a danger that we, as politicians, will go over the top in trying to get cheap publicity, but in this case we have a responsibility not only to our generation, which, I hope, is increasingly interested in the environment, but to future generations. Unless we take action now—this has been the common theme in all the speeches so far—things will get much worse; indeed, this is a catastrophe in the making.

There is a nice notion that we can set a target and say that 1.75 per cent., going down to 1 per cent., of the so-called population is expendable in terms of by-catch, but we do not know what the population is. New Labour might be good at setting targets, but we need a rough estimate of the overall size of the problem. Here we are setting targets, hoping that we can roughly gauge what is out there in the ocean, but it is as though we were simply holding our finger up in the wind. That is the most inappropriate use of targeting that I can think of.

I am increasingly interested in the marine environment. It was very useful that, at the same time as the DEFRA Sub-Committee was considering cetacean by-catch, the main Committee was considering the marine environment. That was not deliberate—we are not that well organised, although things sometimes happen when we stumble on an issue.

At the oceanography centre in Southampton, we were told in a very straight-faced manner that if people carried on the way they were going, they would probably wipe out half the species in the ocean over the next couple of decades, even though they did not know about them. Is it not staggering that there are so many things in our oceans that we are wiping out in total ignorance of their existence?

Ms Atherton:

Does my hon. Friend agree that because that mostly goes on underwater, we do not see the devastation that we, as human beings, are inflicting on the oceans and the sea bed, and that there would rightly be an outcry if such things happened on land?

Mr. Drew:

I agree entirely, although my hon. Friend has stolen part of my thunder. I was going on to say that if this was about seals being clubbed to death in Newfoundland, or the Japanese or the Norwegians catching whales, non-governmental organisations galore would be out there in their boats. I am not saying that this has not all of a sudden become a "sexy" issue to get behind, but it is the fifty-fifth minute of the eleventh hour, and we had better get on with it.

Mr. Bradshaw:

Both my hon. Friends have raised the problem of public consciousness of the degradation of the marine environment. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) agree that the recent Hollywood film "Finding Nemo" has probably contributed more to increasing that consciousness than any politician's speech or almost anything else that has happened in the last few decades?

Mr. Drew:

I am sure that that is absolutely right. I have not seen the DVD yet, but I am sure that I will enjoy it even more over Easter. While I am throwing out plaudits, it would be remiss of me not to congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) on his ten-minute Bill yesterday, which was most appropriate. I know that ten-minute Bills do not go anywhere, but now is a useful time for the Government to get behind the measures contained in it.

I do not want to be melodramatic, but this is an important issue on which the sands of time are running out. Who should be doing something about this? I do not want to get into knockabout stuff such as arguing that the EU is not a very effective organisation and blaming it for this. The EU is more on the side of the angels than the devils here. However, we cannot be complacent.

Apart from the immediate continental shelf, there is always a battle over who owns what and who will monitor how the seas and oceans are used. That inevitably causes a problem. We have to look carefully at the United Nations law of the sea because it is not just a European issue: it is acute in Europe, and we are beginning to try to address it, but there are nations outside the EU that are doing just as much damage. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will say something about the international context, too.

I am also interested in the role that science should be playing. It was good to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) said about the centre in Plymouth—the Select Committee visited the oceanography centre—but until comparatively recently this area was not seen as the blue riband of scientific research. It may be getting better, but it needs to be given impetus. Until we know a bit more, we do not know what damage we are doing. It would appear that as we learn a bit more we find that we are doing a lot more damage than we thought.

Let us not fool ourselves. It is down to modern fishing techniques. If my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) were here, he would immediately launch into a full-scale attack on industrial fishing. He is the great protector of fishermen, although I sometimes think about kettles and pots. He is right, nevertheless. In the same way as intensive farming has begun to change our landscape for the worse in some respects, industrial fishing has done irreparable harm to our oceans. The simple fact is that it should not be allowed to happen. It should not be allowed to happen without control, because we know what the consequences are.

I hope that we can launch a full-scale attack on industrial fishing. It is not acceptable. We see what the side effects are. Issues raised include the size of the nets, the way in which trawlers work in tandem and the whole basis of the comprehensive destruction of the sea bed. That is something that we must do a lot about, because we are effectively culling whole species and not really worrying too much about it.

There is the issue of who pays for some of the things that have been highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne. There are no easy answers. Effectively, there are only three sources: fishermen, as part of the commercial exploitation involved in trying to catch stock; the Government; and the general public, who might get interested in the issue and pay NGOs to perform monitoring roles. We could be looking at slogans such as, "Buy a pinger today, and save a dolphin tomorrow." They are all fairly naff ideas, I have to say, but if we are serious about this, it is important that there is much more consciousness raising.

Mr. Gray:

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a fourth group of people who might pay? I am talking about the people who eat bass. The truth is that people are already ready to pay significantly more for line-caught bass: it is £10 a kilo as opposed to £2 a kilo for bass caught in nets. It is perfectly reasonable to say that they must pay for the higher standards that we now demand.

Mr. Drew:

I agree entirely. I suppose, in a sense, because the fishermen will pass the cost on wherever they can, and the public are also the consumers, we meet in the middle. Somebody has to pay the cost.

Ms Atherton:

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the general public knew that dead dolphins were mixed in with industrially trawled sea bass, the market for that fish might completely disappear overnight?

Mr. Drew:

That is inevitably the way. My hon. Friend will have to consider the time scale. If the situation does not rapidly get perceivably better, we will have to call for a full-scale ban. I concur with the hon. Member for Torbay. I would not mind a full ban now, but we must convince the industry that there is a logical underpinning.

The industry is going through a dramatic downswing. There is doubt about whether it is another mining industry, or whether it is an industry like farming that will suddenly pick up again. However, we must be honest with fishermen. They realise that the times of being able to go out and catch what they want when they want are long gone, but we must now decide whether there should be even more constraints. I know that the Minister has to come up with what he thinks is a wonderful deal to sell to the fishermen; they say it is a wonderful deal, but then talk to the press and say that he is the devil incarnate and anyone could have negotiated a different deal. We must be a bit more mature. The damage is such that we must take people along with us. There would be a huge impact on certain communities, but dolphins and porpoises are members of our mammal species and we ought to convince people that they are important as well.

What should we do, then? All the ideas that we considered—pingers, separator grids, putting observers on boats, better monitoring—have their drawbacks. The report explains that there is no silver bullet that the Select Committee can put in place and feel very satisfied about, with Parliament also doing its bit and the Government saying, "We've done our damnedest to get on top of this." All the ideas have negative repercussions as well as positive ones. However, we must do all those things, and do them much more effectively. We must convince the industry and the general public that the issue really matters.

I hope that Front-Bench Members will agree on the need to take action. There may be disagreement about what that action should be, and who should pay for it, but we owe it to the Select Committee, which has produced an excellent report—for which I claim some credit—to understand that it is not acceptable just to carry on as we are doing. There is a crisis. People do not see it, and not many people know about it, but it is a crisis. I hope that the Government realise that and act accordingly.

3.40 pm

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD):

It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) on her opening speech and on the report that the Select Committee produced. If I understand her argument properly, she is now calling for more action than the Committee called for. All the speeches that we have heard today seem to concur with that. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) on the ten-minute Bill that he introduced yesterday. Many of the thoughts expressed this afternoon were also expressed in his speech yesterday.

What strikes me immediately about the report—and other hon. Members have spoken about this—is the lack of knowledge about the problem. All of us will be appalled at the number of cetaceans that are found dead on our beaches along the southern coast of Cornwall, and, indeed, the north French coast. Those, however, are only a small proportion of the mammals that are harmed and killed by the commercial fishing of bass in the western approaches and the Celtic sea overall.

I have some experience in trying to estimate the populations of wild animals—birds, mammals and, on occasion, reptiles, in particular areas—and I know how difficult it is to do that satisfactorily and obtain accurate answers. However, I have never tried it in a marine environment. It must be very difficult to estimate the number of animals—especially mammals—in the sea.

The report states that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has estimated that there were 300 to 500 bottle-nosed dolphins present, whereas the Joint Nature Conservation Committee's opinion was that the number was below 300. When we are talking about such small numbers anyway, that margin of error in the estimates must tell us something important, including that we need to get on and do something immediately.

I know from my work that sometimes we can be surprised and delighted to learn that animal populations that we thought were very small, to the point of being endangered, are much bigger than we thought. However, more often than not, populations seem to vary considerably in short periods of time. Occasionally when we produce estimates we find that populations have decreased considerably. When figures like 300 are arrived at, there is always a possibility that the species could reach a point of no return. There is a minimum number of animals in any population that is needed to maintain it as a breeding population. Going below that number means that extinction will certainly follow.

I was pleased that hon. Members touched on animal welfare. Dolphins and porpoises are mammals, and we understand that they are intelligent, sensitive animals. The public write letters—certainly to me—about the thought that these animals are harmed and hurt, let alone killed or destroyed as by-catches. I represent a constituency that has no coast. It is completely landlocked, although we are very pleased in Wales that porpoises are seen in Cardigan bay.

If I may misquote a constituent of mine, Lord Burns, who was producing a report on another matter, commercial fisheries severely compromise the welfare of small cetaceans—to put it mildly. A number of the Committee's recommendations must be considered closely.

The issue of pingers was outlined by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne: they could disturb the feeding areas of these mammals. It has also been put to me by experts on marine mammals' behaviour that the pingers could act as attractors if it became known within a population that fish shoals were in the area when the pingers were heard. It has also been suggested that pingers should be activated only when mammals have been detected in any area, and that leaving them on would either attract mammals or cetaceans there, or would have no effect. There is the question of the expense of purchasing them, fitting them to the fishing tack, maintaining them and ensuring that the batteries are working.

Ms Atherton:

Is the hon. Gentleman perhaps aware that most of this equipment qualifies for European Union grants? The upkeep of the pingers would be the only cost to fishermen.

Mr. Williams:

I understand that, and that point has been mentioned to me. There is the cost of the upkeep of the equipment. We must be certain that the equipment is used, not just in the fishing nets, but is switched on, maintained and kept in operation. I welcome the suggestion that observers in the fishing areas could estimate the extent to which cetaceans are caught and killed as by-catches. It will be a voluntary scheme, so the question is: how many fishermen would welcome the presence of observers, and how would we attract enough people of quality to undertake such work? People should have a sturdy and persistent character to ensure that records are kept and reflect what is happening in the fishing fleet.

Mr. Drew:

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. The worst weakness of the international community is the lack of a mechanism. To be fair to the British Government, we are prepared to recognise that there is a way forward. However, from what the Committee saw, there is no evidence that any other nation treats the issue seriously. That is a weakness.

Mr. Williams:

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I shall say something about that later.

The suggestion that we have separator grids in the fishing tack has been accepted by some in the fishing industry and by people who have experience of the behaviour of marine mammals. However, it has also been suggested to me that sometimes such escape grids have been misplaced. Some of the cetaceans that escape from such nets are badly damaged. They may survive, but in some instances, the fins have been completely removed. The worst excesses of the by-catch problem arise in the bass fisheries where pair trawling takes place. The bass fisheries are an important economic part of British fisheries and I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne that, although she wants to draw an end to pair trawling of bass or to place an emergency stop on it, she did not want to stop all commercial exploitation of bass. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) mentioned the increased amount of money that people are willing to spend on line-caught bass, as opposed to bass caught by pair trawling. I was told recently that the sport angling of bass, particularly off the Welsh coast, is an important industry, and I am sure that applies to the west country, too.

Ms Atherton:

I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is an exceedingly popular sport off the coast of the west country, and it is very important for tourism.

Mr. Williams:

It will put a lot of anglers' minds at rest to learn that they will be able to enjoy their sport again.

Many options are open to us. They include the use of ASCOBANS, which most northern European nations have signed, but not Spain and Portugal; the habitat scheme; special areas of conservation; and the common fisheries policy. All those tools are available to us. but they do not seem to have been used to achieve what we want—a complete ban on pair trawling for bass.

If I have any criticism of the report, it is that it was not explicit enough in asking for an emergency measure. The number of these animals is so low that we must use the precautionary principle, because we cannot say with great certainty when their population will become so depleted that the species may become extinct—not worldwide, but in some areas.

Ms Atherton:

When we published the report, we were hoping for a resolution at European level. We wanted to give the European Union the opportunity to come up with a proposal that would have enabled the fishery to continue. It is because I am so disappointed at the resolution from the Fishery Ministers that I have moved forward from the report.

Mr. Williams:

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Somewhere in the report there is a reference to "our dolphins". I do not see the issue as nationalistic; dolphins and porpoises are migratory species—they migrate for feeding and breeding purposes and travel many hundreds of miles. The use of the word "our" should indicate that the issue is the responsibility of all members of the human species. We should look to other nations to take part in the process, too, because unless they are active in assisting us, we will not be successful.

I am critical of the Minister for being too timid in his approach to getting a satisfactory resolution in Europe—he will be able to tell us what he has been doing—because the great majority of these trawlers come out of French ports; very few are based in this country. To get a resolution, the Minister must take the issue up with Fishery Ministers in the European Union. Could Britain take some direct action not only within our territorial waters of six miles but within the 12-mile limit as well, where some of the inshore fishing takes place? Could he take action at that level to safeguard the welfare of marine cetaceans, certainly within our area?

Unless we take emergency action, we will not be doing our duty to safeguard these valuable species. We look forward to the Minister assuring us that he intends to take action and to do so very quickly indeed. If he does not, the future of the marine animals around our coast will be the Government's responsibility.

3.55 pm

Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con):

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). He and I agree on an enormous number of subjects to do with the countryside and wildlife, and I found myself agreeing to an almost worrying level with him and most of the other Members who have spoken this afternoon.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) used the word "collude" with regard to what the Front Benchers were about to do. I think that the only thing that we will collude in doing, as opposed to co-operate in doing, is making sure that we do not delay the Chamber for the entire hour and a half that is left to the Minister and me for our winding-up speeches. I will take the hour, but the Minister may well be a little shorter than me. In response to the Minister's worried look, I will try to keep it down to 45 minutes.

This is the second day that I have spoken in a debate in this Chamber on an animal welfare issue where I find myself in agreement with hon. Members from all three parties, although not necessarily with the Minister on either occasion. Yesterday, our debate was on the live export of horses for slaughter on the continent, and today, of course, it is on dolphins and porpoises. I took the opportunity to ride a horse into Parliament yesterday to publicise the issue, and I am delighted to say that I did not arrive today in my wetsuit, flippers and goggles. None the less, this is just as important an issue. I am glad to be in agreement, for once, with so many people throughout the Chamber.

First, I congratulate the Select Committee and the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) on an excellent report. This is a gripping issue. Someone said earlier that this is not a sexy area—I think that it is; it is extremely interesting. As is the case with so many issues of animal welfare that are increasing in salience, the people of Britain will be taking a keen interest in our discussions this afternoon. The report is very good, and I congratulate the hon. Lady on it. I also congratulate her on the elegance and precision with which she introduced her subject, despite a large number of interventions. It was a good exposition of the subject.

I also pay tribute to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, which, I am delighted to say, is based in my constituency, in Chippenham. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire said that he had an inland constituency, as do I. North Wiltshire is probably the most inland constituency that I can think of; until recently, we had the most inland royal naval base at RN Copenacre. The society has been extremely helpful in providing briefing for this debate. It does a fine job in highlighting the issues and in fighting to do what it can to preserve whales, dolphins and porpoises. I have some small degree of personal experience of the excellence of these animals. Every year, I go to Trebarwith Strand in north Cornwall. Last year, a whole school of dolphins came and swam with us—the only time that I have ever experienced that in British waters—and it was a wonderful experience. When I was the candidate in 1992 for Ross, Cromarty and Skye in north Scotland, we went backwards and forwards across the Moray Firth bridge. From the bridge, one can often see a school of dolphins—bottle-nosed dolphins, I think—playing in the surf. The first word that my son, who is now 20, said in life was "dolphin". That is probably a unique experience.

I speak with some personal feeling on the subject; curiously, a number of people referred earlier to the fact that a great many human beings do so. We have a greater affinity, in some ways, with dolphins and porpoises than we do with many other animals and even with many other mammals. There is something about dolphins and porpoises that is somehow like us, and we therefore speak with some passion on the subject.

There is no doubt about the continuing rate of tragic deaths experienced as a result of fishing. The report by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne talks about it at some length, and all the scientific evidence states that there is a significant and growing number of dolphin and porpoise deaths as a result of fishing.

As the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) said, we do not know whether deaths constitute 1 or 1.5 per cent. of the population because we do not know the size of the population or the percentage of deaths within it. It is impossible to work out, but even if it were 1.5 per cent., it is a significant number of deaths of animals with which we have a particular affinity.

The number of deaths is large, but they are particularly distressing deaths. I pay tribute to the Devon campaigner Linda Hingley, a trawler owner who set up the Brixham Seawatch. That has done superb work around most of the Devon and Cornwall coast keeping an eye in particular on how many dolphins have been killed. She said: They are mammals and they need to come up for air and they can't. They drown in these giant nets. That is a distressing thought—mammals, like us, drowning in nets and kept underwater for six hours before they can finally come up for air. Of course, by then they are long gone.

Mrs. Hingley

went on to talk about how last year she had found 87 common dolphins dead in Devon alone, and many had ropes attached to their tails so that trawlermen could sling their heavy bodies over the side. Two had even been tied together having been caught in the same trawl. Local boats, whose nets trawl the sea bed, brought up rotting carcases. Often the bodies had puncture wounds, apparently made from the pair trawlers, so that they would sink. That way bodies would be less likely to reach the shore, thus disguising the scale of the problem. Mrs. Hingley said: They cut right through to the hearts and lungs and get the air out of them. We have had a few which were obviously alive when they got them on board. They would have died of their injuries anyway. That is an inhumane and disgraceful practice by anyone's standards, and it is important that we do something about it. The question before us, which has been discussed at length at the European Union, is what can we do about it. All in the Chamber agree that it is a huge problem; that the number of deaths is increasing; the way in which dolphins die is a disgrace; and that we must do something about it. That is the nature of the hon. Lady's excellent report. The consensus ends at that point, however. We should not be so consensual that the debate becomes dull; it is important to tickle the Government's tail and ensure that they are doing what they ought to.

That is why I was glad to come across a quotation on "Newsnight" from the then Fisheries Minister, now the Minister for the Environment, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who said he had 'breakthrough' evidence of dolphins being killed. He added: What we have got as far as I am concerned is enough to take action and we intend to do that. I thought, "That is terrific; the Fisheries Minister intends to take action." When was that? June 2000. Here we are four years later, and the Government have taken no action at all. They were keen to say that they would take action, that it was a very urgent, multinational problem and that we must do something about it, but they have done remarkably little.

The Minister shakes his head, but I will be glad to hear what the Government have done. Perhaps I am being unkind. I am sure they have done some things. They have certainly not solved the problem, however. Trawlers still go out in pairs and there are still significant numbers of deaths, despite the hon. Member for Scunthorpe saying that they intended to do something.

The Government have not done anything because up until now this has been viewed as an international problem—an EU problem—so we could not do something as a Government or a nation. I totally accept that it is no good us doing something on our own, but we must get other nations to do something. Also, there would be no point in just part of our great nation doing something about the problem; something must be done throughout the nation. We must get not only EU nations but a large number of nations—such as Baltic states, some of which are joining the EU, which might be helpful—to find ways of taking action across the world.

Some countries have done something. America banned dual trawling for sea bass long ago, but the Japanese have not. It is a question of leading not the EU, but the world. Even if it were a matter for the EU and by some magic means we could persuade it to do the right thing, we would not necessarily achieve the desired solution, because by definition international negotiations take some degree of compromise—the nature of the EU is that we must compromise. That is why I welcome the step that the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne has taken to go beyond what she asked for in her report. She says that we have tried the EU, but that route has not worked and we have been forced to compromise and downgrade.

Ms Atherton:

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gray:

I will give way in a moment but I would not want to misquote the hon. Lady. She says that the EU has not delivered, so we must move forward and consider what national undertakings we can use to solve the dreadful problem.

Ms Atherton:

I want the British Government to ask the European Commission to take action to close the fishery. That is different to what the hon. Gentleman suggested. I still want the EU to take action, but I want it to move further and quicker.

Mr. Gray:

I hope that I did not misquote the hon. Lady. We would all like the Government to ask the European Commission to do something about the problem. No doubt the various commissions, organisations and committees in the European Union will discuss the issue, produce papers, compromise, downgrade the problem and do nothing about it. Four years after the "Newsnight" programme, on which the then Fisheries Minister said that he would take urgent action, nothing has happened because the EU is still discussing the issue. There will be another directive, another piece of paper, more discussions, more lobbying and more chats, but nothing will have been done. I accept that the solution must be sought through international agreement—we cannot act alone; we must persuade others to take action—but if the EU does not act, we should do it ourselves. We should lead from the front, demonstrate to the rest of the world what can be done and demonstrate to the EU that we will act and we want it to join us.

Mr. Bradshaw:

The hon. Gentleman says that it is desirable to take action not only at European but at international level, and all hon. Members would agree with that. But how will that be done without a legally enforceable international system to govern the seas? We have such an agreement in the EU, but if we followed his party's policy of withdrawing from the common fisheries policy, we would not.

Mr. Gray:

The Minister may not have realised, but the Atlantic is not part of the EU. There are perfectly acceptable fishing constraints between, for example, us, the United States, the Japanese and the Russians. Russian boats enter the Atlantic near my old constituency of Skye—most are huge trawlers and they are not constrained by the common fisheries policy because they are outside the EU.

The Minister is right to say that we must have international agreement on this and so many other environmental issues. Of course we must negotiate with other European countries, but we must also negotiate with the United States, Russia, Africa, India and the far east. The mere fact that we need international agreement on such matters does not mean that we have to be constrained by the bureaucrats who sit in Brussels thinking up difficult ways of not doing something. The fact that nothing has been done about the issue demonstrates the problem that I am talking about.

Last Monday, the EU produced new laws to try to prevent the awful killing of dolphins and porpoises, and I agree with my Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament that steps have been taken in the right direction to do something about it. However, the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne and others have commented on the fact that drift nets, in which dolphins become entangled, will be phased out by 2008 instead of 2007. That is another example of compromise, which is all we get from the EU. Boats under 12 m long will be exempt from the need to install pingers—I will talk about the benefits and disbenefits of pingers in a moment. By definition, if we have to act alongside our EU partners, the solution will be compromised and downgraded.

If we had control of our fisheries and waters we could show that we are determined to act. We could bring pressure to bear on our European partners and say, "We have done it, so why are you not doing it? Why is it, Mr. France and Mr. Spain, that you are still determined to kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins and porpoises through a practice that we gave up years ago?" I like to think that the British Government would remain powerful in persuading them to take action.

Control of our fisheries would also be advantageous in another area. I do not want to be too controversial, but the Minister's recent position on the haddock catch in Scotland has meant that haddock trawlers are now moving down to the south-west. We heard a moment ago from the hon. Member for Torbay that there are 12 Scottish trawlers operating in Plymouth. They are precisely the people who are contributing to the problem. If they were not prevented from catching haddock in their home waters in Scotland, they would not be busy down in the south-west catching sea bass, and therefore dolphins and porpoises by mistake.

There are a number of areas in which, by insisting on supporting the CFP, we are failing to act independently to solve the problem. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Chippenham has expressed its disappointment on the regulation tax, which it says has been "drastically watered down" from the original. It believes that the EU has not done enough to prevent the unnecessary deaths of cetaceans in fishing nets, which are driving some populations towards extinction. The society says: The EU has thrown away a major opportunity—compromising the survival of our marine wildlife in favour of commercial interests. I am sorry to tell the Minister this, but it goes on to say: We are particularly angry that the Ministers have excluded vessels using pingers … from the requirement to carry observers. It is vital that if pingers are to be used, they must be monitored. If they are not used properly, porpoises will continue to die and if they are not being monitored, no one will know. We are also disappointed that so many vessels (under 15m in length) are to be excluded". That was echoed by the WWF, which was "appalled" that EU Fisheries Ministers had delayed the ban on the introduction of drift nets. The International Fund for Animal Welfare—not an organisation that I tend to quote in support of my speeches very often—says that the EU has missed a crucial chance to protect dolphins and porpoises from dying in fishing nets by caving into economic interests". The organisations are saying that the EU, including our own Government, caved in to commercial interests and, by failing to take independent action in this country, the Government have endangered more and more dolphins and porpoises. We have heard about the pingers and their downside. Some people say pingers attract dolphins into the nets rather than repel them. Others say that the pingers are drowned out by the noise produced by the trawlers. Other people say that the dolphins, rather curiously, do not want to go into the nets anyhow and go around the sides. There is scientific doubt about the value of pingers but it would be worth knowing more about them. The Government's recent survey of the use of pingers failed, not least because one of the television cameras fell off the net, which perhaps reduced it to the level of farce. I do not believe that enough work has been done to study what can be done.

Nearly everyone who knows anything about the subject would agree on one thing. Pair trawlers operate gigantic nets; they are about the size of 10 London double-decker buses. Two ships move along at high speed to catch the maximum number of fish. They catch an enormous quantity of fish, and an enormous number of dolphins and porpoises, as they go by. That is a purely commercial interest; the fishing industry says that it needs that size of catch to make fishing pay.

There is an alternative to that commercial interest, which we as a nation might like to promote, and some of us have mentioned it this afternoon already. That is long-line commercial fishing of bass with no nets at all. There is already a huge industry—not only one in which fish are sold to be eaten, but one of sport and tourism, as the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne mentioned. That catch, particularly the young catch, is being decimated by the gigantic nets, and the industry is very important in the south-west. I have seen the boys fishing with their long lines—I should say boys and girls to be politically correct. A fine industry is being damaged. If we were to enforce a unilateral ban on pair trawlers, it would save a significant number of dolphins and porpoises, but it would also be beneficial to long-line bass fishermen, who are part of an industry that we all want to preserve for so many reasons.

Mr. Sanders:

I am very concerned about all this. My Bill yesterday was about banning such boats from UK waters, but I am under the impression that all that would be achieved is the saving of a few lives. That would be welcome, but the reality is that without the agreement of EU nation states, because of currents and wind conditions, dead cetaceans would still wash up on our shoreline. Therefore, we must have agreement with others, irrespective of our domestic policy on the subject.

Mr. Gray:

Of course, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I should clarify my stance on the matter. I am not for one second suggesting that we should fall out with other nations, whether in the EU or elsewhere, on the subject. It is important that we enter into all kinds of agreements with nations around the world on this matter as on so many others, and it is important that we persuade the EU to do what we are doing; there is no question about that at all.

Cetaceans are not national resources; they move over enormous distances, but so do migratory birds, and the UK Government decide, in this Palace, who can shoot what and when they can shoot it, and what is banned. Nobody says that because migratory birds come mainly from Africa there is no point in doing anything unless we have a multinational agreement with Africa, and that we cannot do anything unless we get such an agreement. That would be the equivalent.

Because the multinational agreement in the form of the common fisheries policy demonstrably is not working, and because after seven years of a Europhile Labour Government nothing has happened, let us try to do something ourselves.

Mr. Bradshaw

I am not sure that I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly. He used the example of migratory birds. Is he aware that without the EU there would be absolutely no restrictions on the shooting of migratory birds in either France or Italy?

Mr. Gray:

I am extremely well aware of that point. It is plain that the Minister was not listening. I agree that the shooting of migratory birds in France and Italy is controlled by the EU; however, it is not in the UK. It is controlled nationally, in that we control who shoots what and when. For example, the EU does not dictate the length of the shooting season. I thought that the Minister was in favour of shooting. He knows, for example, that the way in which wild geese are controlled in the UK is decided entirely in this Palace. We control it; it has nothing to do with the EU.

The Minister is right to say that it is very beneficial to persuade European partners and other nations to go the same way that we have. That applies to things such as negotiations on the convention on international trade in endangered species, for example, in which we persuaded other countries not to kill, or allow a trade in, elephants and other animals. That is not an EU convention but an international negotiation through which we reach agreement with the other CITES signatories.

If it has been demonstrated and is obvious to all that the EU is not doing what we want it to do, it is reasonable for us as a nation to decide what we will do. We can hope that our European partners follow us, but our action should not be dependent on their agreement to it. If the Minister seeks this afternoon to do anything other than pay lip service to the awfulness of killing dolphins and porpoises, he must give us some indication that he is ready at last to take the debate forward and at least to consider the notion of a UK unilateral ban on the use of pair trawling. That would be a significant step in the right direction, and I know that Members of all parties would very much welcome any such commitment.

4.19 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw):

I thank all hon. Members, present and already departed, for contributing to this debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) for securing it. I thank her and members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their excellent report. I apologise that they were able to get sight of the Government's response to it only recently and hope that they understand that, because agreement was reached at the Council only last week, we needed some time to adjust our response to the report in the light of what had been agreed. It is my strong view that my hon. Friend has done more than any other politician, not just in the United Kingdom but in the whole European Union, to bring the serious issue of cetacean by-catch to public attention. She does herself down a little. I understand why she concentrated on the areas of the Council agreement and the parts of the Government's response with which she was not satisfied. However, the honest truth is that, without her hard work representing not just her constituents but the various conservation and animal welfare organisations, the issue would not be so high on the agenda in this country or at the Council of Europe. She deserves a great deal of credit for that.

Everyone who spoke in the debate was right to say that the problem was serious. Hon. Members may be interested in the latest figures on strandings. Encouragingly, they show a fairly dramatic decrease from the high levels that we saw last year. Total strandings between 1 January and 31 March in UK waters of common dolphins and porpoises were 251 this year, compared with 379 last year. For dolphins, there were 84 this year, compared with 132 last year. For harbour porpoises, there were 125 this year, compared with 78 last year, so those figures have gone up. The figures are still extremely worrying and the historical trend over the past five years is not encouraging.

Ms Atherton:

I thank the Minister for his kind comments. Does he accept that evidence is coming forward that some fishermen are going to extreme lengths to massage the figures by taking dreadful action to sink carcases when they are caught? Not all are doing that, but some are. Is that not one reason for the fall in the numbers, or is it that the bass fishery is reducing in size?

Mr. Bradshaw:

Our bass fishery at the moment is bigger than it was last year, but there is evidence to suggest that the practice to which my hon. Friend refers takes place. However, I doubt whether it would account for such a big decrease in the numbers. The number of strandings its not necessarily an accurate indication of the level of mortality because many more porpoises and dolphins will not be stranded but will be caught up in by-catch.

Linda Gilroy:

I wonder whether the interesting figures that my hon. Friend the Minister gave bear out what I reported in my contribution—that the shoals are moving in, so the porpoises tend to be inshore. The fishing fleet follows the shoals, and the falling figures may reflect that because the goalposts are moving.

Mr. Bradshaw:

My hon. Friend is probably right.

Mr. Gray:

I simply want to inquire of the Minister what he thinks the reason is for the numbers coming down. If he argues that action by the Government is satisfactory because the numbers are coming down, we need to know why they are coming down.

Mr. Bradshaw:

It is too soon to speculate. I saw the figures only moments before the debate started, but I shall try to find out. As many hon. Members said, there is a lot we do not know and we need to carry out a lot of research to be able to implement effective action to solve the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne went through a number of the recommendations made by the Select Committee. When I appeared before the Committee, I was sceptical about some of them and resistant to accepting them. Having reflected on them, we have made significant progress in moving towards meeting the requests and demands of her Committee, as she will have noted if she has had time to read the Government's formal response. I shall give two examples of some of the most important areas about which she was concerned.

One is the exemption that we would have liked for pingers within six miles. I consulted my officials and groups of environmentalists after the Committee published its report and agreed that we would drop that exemption before the Council meeting last week. Similarly, I hope that my hon. Friend will acknowledge that we moved significantly towards the position of the Committee in exempting the eastern Channel.

A number of hon. Members spoke about the politics of the European Council negotiations last week. One effect of the campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne and others is that Britain is probably in the lead on the matter in Europe, with the possible exception of Sweden. In Council, we argued for more radical measures to be implemented more quickly than those that were finally agreed.

The simple arithmetic of that Council was that we would probably not get agreement unless we compromised to a certain extent. A blocking minority of what I would describe as non-conservationist Governments would not have agreed to anything more radical. I am sure that hon. Members have noted that two countries still could not accept the agreement because they thought it too pro-conservationist: Spain and Italy both voted against it.

We could have gambled. Indeed, I threatened during the negotiations and in bilaterals with Commissioner Fischler to vote against the agreement because it did not go far enough. However, a combination of our votes and those of one or two other more conservation-minded countries, combined with the votes of the non-conservation-minded countries, would have led to our not reaching an agreement. I believe that it was important that we reached agreement last week because, after the accession countries come in, it will be even more difficult to get a majority for the sort of measures that we would like.

We were unhappy about the exclusion of under-12 m boats. I made that view clear but, after several hours of negotiation, I decided that it was better to have an agreement than not. I must correct something said by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). The observer system is mandatory, not voluntary. When hon. Members read the agreement, they will see much that is not happening quickly enough or is not extensive enough; but it makes a good start on a Europe-wide basis.

Mr. Gray:

Does the Minister agree that he is describing the very tragedy of the nature of the way in which European agreements are arrived at? In others words, what we have now is the lowest common denominator, because Europe could do no better.

Mr. Bradshaw:

Quite the contrary. I was about to come to that point. It is unwise, to say the least, in a debate on cetacean by-catch for Conservative Members to remind everyone of the party's official policy of attempting unilaterally to withdraw from the common fisheries policy. As some of my hon. Friends and others have said, not only do dolphins and porpoises move around more than almost any other species—they have even less respect for national boundaries than other fish—but the problem is caused mainly by the boats of other nations.

If Britain was isolated in taking unilateral measures and putting its fishermen out of business to save dolphins and porpoises, how much leverage does the hon. Gentleman think we would have in persuading the French, Spanish, Italian or Irish Governments, or the European Union in general to take similar action? Absolutely none—no leverage whatever. It is only because Britain has taken a lead, in partnership with other EU countries, that we have the present agreement. For the benefit of hon. Members, I outlined the main points of the agreement—those that are worth pocketing—in the Government's response to recommendations 1 and 2. I shall not quote it as I do not want to detain the Chamber. I have copies for those hon. Members who have not yet received a copy in the post.

I accept the Committee's recommendation on harbour porpoises and pingers. We believe that there is merit in monitoring how the pinger implementation works after a period. It was on UK insistence that a review period was included in the agreement—we negotiated hard for it. The review will not happen as quickly as we wanted, but it was one concession that we managed to achieve from the Commission. Not only will that review happen but, as stated in the agreement, the Commission will be expected to act on the evidence derived from the pinger use and the observers. Incidentally, that observation will give priority to the bass pair trawlers, including the French boats, and will not be on a voluntary basis. The Commission will also be expected to act on the evidence garnered from the monitoring, which will also cover under-15 m boats. We pressed for that and believe that it is important.

Ms Atherton:

Will the Minister be kind enough to outline where the observers will come from? Will they be from the fishing industry or conservation groups, for example?

Mr. Bradshaw:

To quote from paragraph 1 of article 5 of the agreement, which deals with observers: Member States shall appoint independent and properly-qualified and experienced personnel. That is something else that the Government insisted on inserting. We wanted not representatives of the fishing industry but independent scientifically qualified people. We persuaded the Commission to make it clear that the monitoring must be scientifically professional and testable, that annual reports had to be made by member states and that the Commission would be expected to act on them. For example, if the monitoring on under-15 m boats shows that there is a big problem, the Commission will be expected to act and we will press for that action.

Mr. Drew:

As can be seen from the general tone of the debate, the observers will have to be robust, so what level of protection are they likely to have? We can smile or even giggle about that, but in reality to go out on a trawler with an adversarial crew will not be like sending someone to referee a football game but like sending them into Dodge city.

Mr. Bradshaw:

My only experience in this area has been positive. The pelagic fishermen conducting the pair trawl from the UK fleet—the boats from Scotland—have been highly co-operative. As has been said, they do not like catching dolphins and porpoises and do not think that it is in their best interests to do so. They want to keep the fishery open and know that if we cannot find a way of avoiding the by-catch that we have seen in recent years, it may have to close.

The industry will be co-operative. Stringent reporting obligations on member states will be laid down in the regulations, which will set out exactly what they are expected to do. If they do not do it, or we believe that other countries are not fulfilling their obligations, we will expect the Commission to act. How those nation states decide to give the observers protection—if that is what they need—will be a matter for them.

I want to correct a point made by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor), who is no longer in his place. Although it is slightly away from this debate, he made the argument that another reason for banning the bass pair trawl fishery is that it is being conducted at unsustainable levels. That is not the latest advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Hon. Members from the official Opposition often challenge ICES advice, saying that it is far too conservationist, but this time its advice is that the fishing is being conducted at sustainable levels. I agree with what hon. Members have said about bass live fishery, and we encourage sustainable fishing, but there are currently no stock or conservation arguments to ban the bass pair trawl fishery.

Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne and the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders), have called for a ban on bass pair trawl fishery. Although the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) did not call for an immediate ban, he asked us to consider it, and I have said on a number of occasions that that is our position. However, I still have to resist the calls from other hon. Members to announce or instigate a ban now.

As I explained in response to the accusation by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that the Government have taken no action, we have taken a number of steps. One involves the trials that we have been conducting in the bass trawl fleet using separator grids. As the Select Committee report acknowledged, those trials were extremely successful last year in reducing cetacean by-catch. The trials are continuing this year. The fishery will come to an end in the next three or four weeks. I have made it clear on more than one occasion that I am perfectly prepared to implement a unilateral ban if the results of the trials show that we have not found a solution to the problem. I am also prepared to explore the other option, which would probably be much more effective, because it would involve the whole fishery returning to the Commission and investigating the possibility of taking action under article 7.

Mr. Sanders:

The Minister seems to be claiming a great victory as a result of separator grids. How many vessels use separator grids, and what is the evidence for a link between that and a reduction in by-catch? I am not sure how the two go together.

Mr. Bradshaw:

The hon. Gentleman may have misunderstood me. I was not trying to explain this year's reduction in by-catch or reduction in strandings in terms of the success of separator grids. However, he will be aware, if he has read the Select Committee report, that last year's trials of two boats operating a separator grid were highly successful in reducing the by-catch to, I think, about two, whereas those boats would normally have expected to catch about 50 or 60 small cetaceans in that period. We are not quite clear how that happened, but I saw film of a shark that swam into the net, hit the separator grid and swam out through the flap, which is how the grid is supposed to work.

The trials are continuing this year. I am not asking hon. Members to be patient for much longer, because we expect to know the outcome of the trials in the next few weeks. I have said time and again—I am not creating any news today—that I will not rule out any action when I see those results, but there is not much point in jumping the gun and pre-empting the results.

Mr. Gray:

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we must not prejudge the outcome of the trials. None the less, he mentioned the film footage of a shark. Will he accept that there is evidence that some sharks have used the separator grid, but there is no evidence of a dolphin or porpoise doing so?

Mr. Bradshaw:

There was not last year, but I have deliberately not tried to find out what is happening this year, because if a proper scientific experiment is being conducted, we should let the scientists do it. It is being conducted by probably the most respected marine biologists in the world. I await the outcome of this year's trials with as much interest as everyone else.

Ms Atherton:

My hon. Friend says that he will have the results of the trials in a few weeks. Will he make the results public? Will he let the Select Committee know them and make them known more widely among hon. Members?

Mr. Bradshaw:

Absolutely. If my hon. Friend would like to prepare parliamentary questions that she can table when this is over, I can enlighten her and other hon. Members in that way.

Mr. Sanders:

I want to return to the impression that the Minister has given. He mentioned that two vessels may have avoided catching 50 or 60 cetaceans. Let us consider the figures in the document. How many vessels are out there? If we multiply that number by 50 or 60, we wipe out the entire population—not 1 per cent. but the entire population. The figures do not add up. It cannot be 50 or 60.

Mr. Bradshaw:

I think that the hon. Gentleman is becoming confused between common dolphins and bottle-nosed dolphins. I am sorry that he takes a confrontational approach. His Bill is jumping the gun; it is premature. As the hon. Member for North Wiltshire said, it would be ridiculous to make an announcement now, when we do not know the results of the trials. The trials were highly successful last year.

The percentage matters more than the actual number. There has been a huge percentage reduction in the number of cetaceans that that fishery has caught compared to what it would have been expected to catch in a normal year without separator grids; the number decreased from 50 to two when separator grids were used. That is a massive reduction. We do not know whether there will be such a reduction this year, but we should wait for the results rather than jumping the gun as the hon. Gentleman is trying to do with his ten-minute Bill.

Once those results are known, I am prepared to consider any action. I am keen to investigate the possibility of the use of article 7, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne. That would be far more effective than any unilateral measure because, at present, there are six UK pairs and 30 French pairs operating in the bass pair fishery, so even if the UK were to implement a unilateral ban, that would tackle only the lesser part of the problem. As the agreement that we concluded last week shows, much more can be achieved if we can persuade other EU members to follow our lead.

With regard to the recommendation made by the Select Committee on special areas of conservation under the habitats directive, we are considering the identification of such areas for the harbour porpoise. Later this year, we expect to receive the conclusions of that work, together with recommendations for areas to be identified. That is outlined in our response to the Committee's recommendation 17.

Finally, I should like to address the more general marine environmental issues that were raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Mr. Drew) and for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy). It is useful that they placed this debate on the problem of cetacean by-catch in the broader context of a sustainable fishery. The UK is in the lead in the EU and the world in trying to move our fishing industry away from the unsustainable approach taken in many of our fisheries that was outlined by several hon. Members and towards a marine environmental approach. That will also be the best way of guaranteeing a long-term future for the fishing industry. If we do not fish our fish stocks at sustainable levels, there will be no fish left for fisherman to catch, sell and make a living from.

In that context, it is worth highlighting the recent publication of the Prime Minister's strategy unit report on the long-term future of the fishing industry. It is the first time that any Government have stood back and taken a hard strategic look at the state of the industry and where we need to move to in the future. If hon. Members have not already had the opportunity to read that report, I hope that they will do so. It offers us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put the whole of the fishing industry on to a sustainable basis for the future, so that fishermen from the communities that many hon. Members represent can make a living, but fish stocks and the whole of the marine environment are conserved and protected. The marine environment is one of our most important resources but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne rightly says, it has been neglected in the past because, to most people, it is not visible.

4.44 pm

Ms Atherton:

I thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. There was a fair degree of harmony in the debate—with one or two outbreaks of disharmony—but overall we recognised that this slaughter must stop.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for his kind words. Many people are doing much work on this issue. I pay particular tribute to conservationists in Devon and Cornwall who have been enormously helpful in gathering the evidence. It is our job to raise these issues in Parliament; the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders), who has had to leave, also made a useful contribution to the debate.

I accept that the Government have moved the EU forward, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister recognises that it is our job to keep pushing and pushing the Government. We need to go further. I am pleased that he will think seriously about article 7 in terms of the pair trawl fishery. I think that it is unsustainable. Many hand line fishermen in my constituency would raise a glass or two of Cornish ale if they heard that the ban was going to happen.

Linda Gilroy:

I think that the Bass Anglers Sportfishing Society might raise a glass as well. In a tagging exercise that it conducted recently with the Government Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquacultural science, it discovered that 80 per cent. of the tagged fish in the river area fisheries turned up in the bass pair trawlers.

Ms Atherton:

It is a very live issue. I am glad that it was raised in the wider debate. My hon. Friend is right to raise it. In fact, I am meeting representatives from that particular fishery in my surgery tomorrow, so it will be important and helpful to report back to them.

I say to the Minister that the issue needs addressing. I look forward to the results, but we will keep coming back to it. The people will demand it. We have to be a voice for the cetaceans.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

We have finished a moment or two early. I congratulate all those who participated in discussing what is clearly an important issue. It has been a fascinating debate to listen to. I wish every Member a restful and enjoyable Easter break.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes to Five o'clock.