§ Mrs. LaitTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what decision she has reached following her consultation exercise on the application of the one-net rule.
§ Mr. JackWe had hoped that the EC would agree on a Community wide rule that only one type of net should be carried on a fishing trip. This would have been a useful measure to support enforcement of technical conservation rules. Unfortunately, no agreement has been reached in the EC on this issue. We therefore consulted the industry on the way forward.
A range of views was put to us, but a significant proportion of the United Kingdom industry believed that we should not continue unilaterally to apply a one-net rule in the United Kingdom, and should discontinue it unless and until an EC-wide measure was introduced.
We have decided to accept that view: it would not be reasonable for our industry to be more tightly regulated in this regard than its competitors from other EC countries fishing in the same waters.
The one-net rule will therefore end on 31 December 1993.