European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, in following my noble friend on this issue, I hope that he will forgive me if I look at the whole ambit of the amendment rather than simply the fisheries policy. As we have seen at previous stages of the Bill, we are dealing with two topics that raise great concern whenever the treaty of Rome and its successors come into discussion. One of them requires a large proportion of the finances that are available to the Community, and the other remarkably little, but both can be seen as being in urgent need of reform. As my noble friend emphasised, politicians from all parties in this country have been arguing for reform for some time. I must also declare my interest as a livestock farmer in one of the designated ““less favoured areas”” of the European Union and as someone has watched all the stages through which the CAP has evolved since the United Kingdom first signed up. The reforms that we are facing now appear to require consideration of reform of the CAP in a different context; that which the Government were inclined to use in the past few years. My noble friend Lord Taylor emphasised that point. It is surely still worth reminding ourselves of the aims with which the common agricultural policy was set out. There were two prime objectives: first, to secure a stable food supply for the population of Europe and, secondly, to bring the income levels of those working in the agricultural community up to the same level as industrial wages. In many ways it exceeded its aim in both fields, although it is worth bearing in mind that at the beginning a largely peasant agriculture meant that a country like France had nearly 50 per cent of the working population engaged in food production and now has less than 10 per cent. If anything, that represents a gigantic social revolution. Even today it is affected in that country by a level of unemployment two or three times that which we have in this country. The challenge that any review of the CAP faces in this area is to provide a sustainable and stable food supply in world terms where agriculture in this part of the world has embraced diversification into leisure, fuel production and many other fields. There is surely no doubt that Parliament should have a chance to comment on the direction in which it is felt that we should go. A different picture emerges when we come to the fishing policy, which has caused a rapid decline, particularly in our own fishing industry, but at the same time a huge decline in the resources on which the fishing industry depends. It is surely all very well to say that a requirement of a common market is that all participants should be able to exploit the resource freely or at least do so outside the six nautical mile limit, but it sounds like the proposition that we should all have a common currency but we do not consider it necessary to have a central bank to control those who wish to take more money out of the system than they should, because it suits them to do so. Even a central bank has a little trouble in imposing discipline on the European Union at present. When it comes to fishing, the European Union is big on producing scientific papers and computer models on what it thinks the fishing industry needs, but less effective in having the resources or inclination to provide any meaningful control on the activity that occurs out at sea. It was in that light that in Committee I moved an amendment to ask the Government to consider excluding the European Union from sole competence on the conservation of marine and biological resources, that being the most fundamental element of any common fisheries policy. There are such glaring ways in which the current fisheries policy is not working that radical changes will be required, all of which will have major consequences for our own fishing communities and on which the representatives in Parliament will be able to throw a much more realistic light. Technology for the first time offers us the surety of knowing where our national boundaries are at sea and where fishing activities are going on in relation to those boundaries. Whatever route Europe decides to go down on the policy for fisheries management, surely the only practical way of exerting management on these activities is to allow member states to police their own waters. That is incredibly important between the six and 12 nautical mile limits. The 12 nautical mile limit represents a source of 90 per cent of our shellfish catch, let alone anything else, but proper control could also have benefits in a wider area. I support the amendment.