Fishing Quotas (Hansard, 30 November 1992)

§ Mr. David Porter
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement about the procedures which his Department follows in allocating quotas for the remainder of the year to a vessel which is expelled from a producer's organisation for overfishing and misconduct part through a year; and how a vessel's track record is assessed by his Department.

§ Mr. Curry
Producer organisations (POs) may request the suspension of the licence of a member who has persistently ignored the PO's quota management arrangements. If, after notifying Fisheries Departments of such a request, and following the full range of the PO's own disciplinary procedures, the PO subsequently expels the member, Ministers would not normally issue a fishing licence for the remainder of the quota year in question. If this procedure is not followed by the PO, Ministers may issue the expelled member with a non-sector licence. In these circumstances, a proportion of the PO's allocation based on the expelled vessel's share of the PO's track record would be transferred to the non-sector.
A vessel's track record is its total reported landings over an agreed reference period. Vessels which are new to the fishery, or have licences aggregated onto them, during the reference period are given track records based on the vessels to which the licences were previously attached.

§ Mr. David Porter
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make it his policy to administer non-producer organisation sector cod and sole quotas for 1993 on the basis of a quarterly allocation with a roll-over allowed for under fishing and a fishery closure for overfishing, in place of the monthly allocation arid annual shutdown in December; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Curry
The management of quotas is not a precise science and we do not want to make the system more complicated to operate both by fisheries departments arid fishermen than is absolutely necessary. Seasonal fishing patterns may be subject to fluctuations from year to year. However, fisheries departments are considering ways of improving the management of non-sector quota allocations with particular reference to seasonal fisheries.

§ Mr. David Porter
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he has to consider a scheme of individual boat fishing quotas for all boats regardless of length and for all species; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Curry
Fisheries departments considered in 1990 whether to introduce individual transferable quotas in order to allow market forces to operate more effectively. Such a regime would be difficult to operate in the common fisheries policy context and difficult to enforce in United Kingdom conditions. I do not believe it would be practical to introduce such a scheme presently.