HC Deb 16 December 1993 vol 234 c800W
Mrs. Lait

To 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. Jack

We 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.

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