Lord Campbell of Croyasked Her Majesty's Government:
What percentage of the British fishing fleet they expect to be decommissioned under the current scheme, with the recent addition of £28 million; and what approximate percentages of their fishing fleets are being decommissioned by similar schemes in France and Spain.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe)The decommissioning schemes operate through a tendering system in order to obtain best value for money from the available funds. Therefore it is not possible to say in advance how many vessels will be decommissioned as a result of the additional funding. On the basis of experience with previous schemes, however, I would expect the results to make significant further contributions towards meeting the targets for capacity reduction in our multi-annual guidance programme.
Each member state is set its own MAGP target and the European Commission publishes an annual report on the programme. A copy of the 1994 report is in the House library. Member states are not obliged to rely solely on decommissioning in order to achieve their targets under their MAGPs. While decommissioning is available to French and Spanish fishermen details of the degree to which this will assist meeting French and Spanish MAGP targets are not currently available.