European Union (Amendment) Bill

I was somewhat bewildered at the speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose. The treaty states that the EU should have competence over marine biological resources and shared competences over everything else to do with the CFP and the common agricultural policy. That seems pretty straightforward. Biological resources clearly do not include oil, minerals, water, wave power, energy and all other issues in that area. We on these Benches would support the status quo. I was for five years on the European Parliament’s fisheries committee, which it was good of him to mention. We were very clear about these issues of where the current treaties and practice actually stood. It is absolutely right that the common fisheries policy does not work. That issue is not one of biological resources. The Conservative Government in 1973 overwhelmingly handed a huge proportion of their allocation of channel stocks to the French and the Belgians. During their most recent period of government the Conservatives made no effort whatever to change the common fisheries policy, much to the dismay of other colleagues of mine in the European Parliament. I am delighted that the Conservatives are now repentant and that they have changed their minds on that policy—and that we might have from their Front Bench an apology for the misallocation that started back in the 1970s. Yes, the common fisheries policy needs to be radically changed and needs to become a regionally managed policy that involves not one member state and its national territorial waters, but nation states around natural fish stock areas. It is clear that renationalisation of the seas does not work. We have marine biological resources—mainly, but not exclusively, fish—that strangely do not have passports, despite e-borders programmes. They go from one national territory, sea or EEZ to another without any hindrance whatever. We can control our fish stocks as tightly as we might wish to nationally, but when the fish cross a boundary, another member state can take those fish stocks. That is why regional management around areas such as the channel, the North Sea and the Irish Sea is the basis on which the common fisheries policy should change, not the principle of a common biological resource. One of the things clear to me in terms of my fisheries work was that the states and regimes particularly successful at fisheries included New Zealand and Iceland, which had exclusive control and sovereignty over a continental shelf. That is not physically possible in the countries of the European Union, but we can get somewhere towards that if we have—as we have had since we joined the European Economic Community in 1973—at least a basis on which we can change the common fisheries policy to something far more satisfactory. To move it back to a sort of exclusively national regime would be a disaster for the fishing industry generally. I absolutely agree that we need to keep control of coastal waters and I am sure that that derogation will be renewed in the future, as it has been in the past. It is in the interests of all member states to do that. Therefore, from these Benches we see no problem with the status quo as it is described now, but I absolutely welcome the Conservative Party’s determination to change fundamentally the common fisheries policy. It is a pity that they never lifted a finger to do so in their last Administration.