European Union (Amendment) Bill

I think that the noble Lord might have to take that up with the Canadians, because I believe that the situation is improving significantly, particularly since they kicked out the Spanish fishermen who were overfishing Canadian waters. The Spanish have a long history of fishing in those waters. The noble Lord should read Kipling’s Captains Courageous. The fact is that the common fisheries policy simply is not working, yet we seem to go along with it as part of the deal. There are passionate speeches made about how deplorable it is and Ministers make speeches saying that they do not agree with it, but it carries on and there is no sign of improvement. The Fisheries Commissioner may wish that things will change, but they do not seem to. Therefore, the amendment is definitely worth pursuing. If something is not working, why continue banging your head against a brick wall? Why not try to change and return to where we were, in control of our own fisheries? When we had a proper fishing industry, we could easily police our territorial waters, so that would be no problem at all. I am not persuaded by the arguments that, because we have handed over our fishing industry to the European Union, we should go on doing so even though it is not working. Everyone admits that it is not working, so why do we not change and do something different?