European Affairs

My first point is about the European common fisheries policy, which has completely failed. Only last month, the EU Commission was forced to admit that its quota fishing system had failed. The position paper stated that 88 per cent. of European fishing stocks are overfished and 30 per cent. of managed fisheries are now outside "safe biological limits". The single market is encouraging greed in the fishing industry at the cost of ecosystems and the national fish stocks that they support. Enough is enough. The best place to make a safe and sustainable fishing policy for Britain is here in this House. Is it not time to renounce the European common fisheries policy—before the British marine ecosystem is damaged for ever? My second point is that, although the single market has some clear advantages, such as the removal of trade barriers, there are elements that still harm rather than help our country. First, there is the open-door policy for labour to move back and forth across our borders. That may help to fill vacancies for unskilled labour and the like, but it may be damaging to the future of certain professions in this country. I am sure that Members from throughout the country will have heard stories, from their constituents or in the media, of EU workers undercutting their British counterparts. I welcome healthy competition in the market, but prolonged and widespread cost undercutting in plumbing and joinery, for instance, damages our economy. It forces many British tradesmen to retrain or leave their professions entirely. Some people simply have nowhere else to go and join the unemployed. As we have seen, since the expansion of the EU, labour has almost always been in a state of flux. Once British tradesmen have been forced out of the market through undercutting, British expertise will be lost. If the migrant workers decide to return to their home countries, who will be left to carry out the work?