Treaty of Lisbon (No. 7)

I should like to talk about competences, and about marine biological resources in particular. Instead of having a debate about the levels at which marine biological resources and the marine environment are best managed, and clarifying those responsibilities in a directive or treaty that would hand more powers back to the UK, we are being forced to accept EU ““exclusive competence””. I fear that, once this power grab—which is codified in articles 2B and 2C of the Lisbon treaty, and is identical to the provisions in the EU constitution—has taken place, it will be difficult ever to reverse or amend the problem in the future. Most importantly of all, however, the measures will not materially benefit our marine environment, and will damage our conservation efforts. In the past, we have seen the EU frustrate our efforts to protect the marine environment, which in the UK includes more than 44,000 animal and plant species. French pair trawlers are able to operate up to six nautical miles from our coast, crushing, wounding, drowning and killing porpoises and dolphins, which are supposed to be protected under EU law. The Government banned our fishermen from using this harmful practice, but the European Commission rejected their proposal to make this ban effective for all vessels fishing within the 12 nautical mile limit. The Fisheries Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), said:"““We banned pair trawling in the western channel. We do not have the ability to ban French vessels…We presented our argument in Europe and we took unilateral action to ban pair trawling—that constitutes taking an effective measure.””" Now, he is not a bad chap and he had the decency to blush a sort of salmon pink on the top of his head as he went on:"““We argued our case and we were unable to persuade others, but we are taking action ourselves.””—[Official Report, 31 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 456.]" Well, I say tell that to the families who might have the misfortune find a dead cetacean washed up on the beach. That really that is not good enough at all. Given the Government's own admission that the EU has already blocked our domestic efforts to protect our marine mammals, can it really be trusted with exercising ““exclusive competence”” in this matter?