§ Mrs. Ann WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to her answer of 31 January 2002,Official Report, column 409, on fisheries, if she will make a statement on whether the effort distribution set out in the proposal for the cod and hake recovery programme will be directly linked to the quota distribution scheme as under the present Relative Stability keys. [35881]
§ Mr. MorleyIn their proposals for measures for the recovery of cod and hake stocks, the Commission envisage that the allocation of permitted effort between member states should be based on relative fishing effort by each member state's fleet over the reference period 1998–2000. The Commission proposals effectively leave the distribution of the national effort allocation within each member state to national discretion.
652W
§ Andrew GeorgeTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what progress her Department has made in securing the effective UK management control over fishing effort within the(a) six and (b) 12-mile limit from the UK's coastline. [35264]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 11 February 2002]: A decision on the six and 12-mile limits will be taken as part of the CFP review in 2002. Previous discussions in the Council of Ministers have revealed a very strong consensus among member states in favour of renewing the present provisions; the commission is also known to support them. For my part, I shall be making every effort to get the limits made permanent.
§ Mr. BreedTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many fishermen there were and what the value of fish caught by the fishing industry was in each relevant constituency in each year since 1990. [34869]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 11 February 2002]: Data are not available by constituency. However estimates of the number of fishermen from 1994 by district and the value of fish landed by UK vessels over 10m in length for the major UK ports are published in UK Sea Fisheries Statistics available in the Library of the House.
§ Andrew GeorgeTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to her answer of 29 January 2002,Official Report, column 242W, if (a) the whole £6 million decommissioning scheme funds will be paid through her Department's account and (b) the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Objective I budget will be fully restored. [35293]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 12 February 2002]: It is in the public interest for grant payments under the fishing vessel decommissioning scheme to be co-financed by EU funds, and we will therefore draw on the available EU finance. Under the Community requirements the EU contribution for vessels which under the scheme are Cornish must be set against the total allocation of EU funds for the Cornish Objective 1 fisheries programme for the 2000–06 period. this arrangement was agreed by the Objective 1 programme monitoring committee for the decommissioning scheme.
This process does not reduce the availability of the £5 million funds which we have made available for fisheries for the period 2001–02 to 2003–04 under the Cornish programme. Only £1 million of this provision has so far been committed through projects approved by the Objective 1 Working Group. I welcome the work being undertaken by the fisheries task force to develop a strategy for future expenditure in Cornwall.