European and External Relations Committee, 05 Sep 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Official Report 285KB pdf

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Petition

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Fishing Industry (PE804)

Item 3 is PE804, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to use its influence to return control over the fishing industry to Scotland. Members will no doubt remember that we wrote to the United Kingdom Minister for Europe—then Douglas Alexander MP—inviting him to give evidence to us as part of our consideration of the matter. The minister's office indicated that the invitation had been passed to Ben Bradshaw MP in his capacity as minister with responsibility for fishing. Over the summer recess we received two responses from Ben Bradshaw, which members will have read as they were attached to the committee papers. Members will have noted that the minister indicated that he is unable to accept the committee's invitation at this time. Do members have any comments as to how we should proceed?

The content of the letter makes clear the position of the UK Government. That is the clarification for which the committee has been asking for some time. It clarifies that the matter clearly rests with the UK Government and that what the petition asks for would require our withdrawal from the European Union. As the minister says in his letter:

"the UK would need to renegotiate at Community level. Such a renegotiation is not on the agenda."

Given that we now have the clarity that we have asked for over a considerable period of time, we should note the petition and move on.

I go along in part with Irene Oldfather's comments. I am grateful to the minister for at long last replying in as full a way as he could. Irene referred to the position of the UK Government. That is precisely what the minister has laid out. I do not necessarily agree with his conclusions with respect to the renegotiation of treaties, because Europe renegotiates treaties all the time; it is a matter for a future Government to take up in Europe. However, the question has been answered. It is a pity that UK ministers did not act a little bit quicker, as that would have removed some of the heat that has undoubtedly been stirred up on the matter.

I expect copies of the correspondence and any comments made by the committee to go back to the petitioners. I do not know whether the Public Petitions Committee should also be involved, but our clerk is an expert on such matters so I am sure that everything will be done properly and that we will ensure that there is proper feedback.

I understand what members are saying, but given the importance of the Scottish fishing industry to Scotland, the fact that the Scottish fleet makes up two thirds of the UK fleet and the fact that the petition attracted 250,000 signatures, I am very disappointed in Ben Bradshaw's refusal to come to give evidence to us. He has raised some interesting issues in his letter, which I would like to touch on. I would certainly have liked the opportunity to cross-examine him on some of his assertions, which I do not accept. Given the importance of the issue to Scotland, he has effectively treated the committee with some contempt.

It will come as no surprise to people that I and the SNP support the petitioners' position. We want to bring back control of Scottish fisheries to the Scottish people and the Scottish Parliament. The minister contends that that would require withdrawal from the EU, but that is just posturing. The correct UK constitutional law position is that it is possible for the UK Parliament to amend and repeal the relevant sections of the European Communities Act 1972 to withdraw from the policy.

Countries get their own way on such issues in Europe when they are prepared to stand up for the rights of their own communities. Sometimes they do so by throwing their weight around, but Europe works through such negotiation.

There are three recent examples of agriculture and fisheries matters in which national interests were raised and subsequently protected through determined action by the states concerned. In the 1990s, the MacSharry plan for common agricultural policy reform was blocked by France because it was not satisfied with the new arrangements. That was outside the treaty, but France was still able to negotiate a position. In 1994, Spain successfully threatened to veto the enlargement of the EU in return for a better deal on fisheries access.

In 1999, President Chirac blocked another common agricultural policy reform deal after it had been agreed by EU agriculture ministers, despite there technically being a majority vote. The issue is whether a state is determined to make something work on behalf of its own communities.

I would like the committee to condemn Bradshaw's refusal to come to give evidence to us, which would have allowed us to test the arguments in his letter. I do not accept that the position that he has described is right and would like the opportunity, as a parliamentarian in the Scottish Parliament, to discuss it with him, but we will not get the chance to do so. In the light of how Bradshaw has treated us, the committee can rightly say that it supports the petitioners.

If we are going to respond to the petitioners, we should at least express our regret at or disappointment with the substance of Ben Bradshaw's reply and the time that it has taken to reply. We first wrote to the UK Government about the matter on 28 March. The minister did not get round to sending us a reply based on what I presume is the legal advice that the UK Government has received on the possibility and consequences of withdrawing from the common fisheries policy until 5 July. He did not get round to responding to our invitation to speak to us until 9 August, when he gave us a negative reply as a result of so-called diary commitments. If we are going to respond to the petitioners, we should express disappointment with or regret at the UK Government's handling of the matter.

I do not know why a reply has been delayed and am not too bothered about why it has been, but I do not regret its substance; indeed, I would be fiercely unhappy if the committee took the line of regretting its substance. The reply seems to be right.

I am not sure that Bruce Crawford's analogies are right. The people whom he mentioned obviously played hardball negotiations inside a policy. I do not doubt that when Ross Finnie goes to Brussels to do whatever he does there, he negotiates inside the common fisheries policy in the same way that people have negotiated inside the common agricultural policy. The petitioners' agenda is to take us out of the common fisheries policy, which is entirely different from negotiating within it. Therefore, Bruce Crawford's analogies do not work.

Leaving aside questions of delay, the minister's answer is right in the light of where we are within the European Union. Obviously, people such as Phil Gallie want us to leave the European Union, and there are people with legitimate political aspirations—such as Bruce Crawford—who want us to leave the United Kingdom and do our own thing, but the minister's answer is right within the structure that we are in, and I do not regret it. Moreover, I do not want the committee to say that it regrets his answer.

I understand Phil Gallie's political position, his general view of the European Union and the CFP in particular, and where Bruce Crawford and his colleagues are coming from politically. However, there is a cruel point behind the matter with which we are dealing—the problem is not a political problem; it is a conservation problem. I am a former fisheries minister and can confirm what Gordon Jackson has said. Scottish ministers fight their corner as hard as they can as part of UK delegations at the Council of Ministers, and doing so ain't easy.

The underlying problem is that several important species of fish in the North sea and the waters around Scotland and the European Union are under severe pressure, and it is incumbent on ministers and scientists to do what they can to protect them. That will not be done by walking out of the European Union and away from the common fisheries policy—it must be done within the European Union and within that policy.

It serves no useful purpose to pursue the political argument; we need to engage in the conservation argument on the best way forward for Scottish fishing communities, which I am well aware are having a difficult time. I am inclined to accept the reply that we have received from the UK fisheries minister. That said, I take the point that other members have made that it has taken far too long for the reply to come through.

John Home Robertson is right to say that the key issues for the fishing industry are to be found in the content of the common fisheries policy. There is much that we could say about the way in which that ought to be improved. However, the issue that we were presented with, and to which the minister responded, is substantially constitutional in nature. His reply could not be described as surprising; it is as predicted. Nonetheless, it is important that we raised the issue. I endorse Irene Oldfather's point, and I think that we should send the response to the petitioners, although we should do so without comment.

At the outset, given the strength of support for PE804 and the importance of the issue involved, we were anxious to take stock of what the petitioners were saying. We have taken the petition seriously, but we have now exhausted what we can do. Of course, the irony of the situation is that the places where the petition was properly directed—the Westminster Parliament and the European Parliament—seem not to have given its contents a blind bit of attention. The Scottish Parliament has no power to do what the petitioners want, but we have discharged our responsibility. Perhaps those at Westminster and the European Parliament might wish to reconsider their response to the petition.

Richard Lochhead has asked to make a contribution.

Thank you, convener. As members know, I have followed PE804 closely over the past year or two. I have tried to attend every meeting at which it has been discussed and I know that members have given a great deal of time to this important issue.

First, it is absolutely disgraceful that the United Kingdom minister has not shown the courtesy of appearing before the committee in person to discuss an issue that comes under his remit, which is of huge social and economic importance to Scotland and which has been raised in a petition that a quarter of a million Scots have signed. That illustrates contempt for the committee and the Scottish Parliament. It is a great pity that the minister did not agree to appear before you. I hope that the committee will make its views known directly to him—after all, fishing is essentially a Scottish industry. As Bruce Crawford and other members said, over two thirds of the UK fishing industry is based in Scotland, so it is a great pity that the UK minister failed to recognise that by not coming to the Scottish Parliament to discuss the petition, as the committee requested.

The petitioners believe that the common fisheries policy has, in its first 30 years of existence, failed Scotland. They will continue to believe that, and all the evidence is that that is the case. One quarter of European Union waters are in the Scottish fisheries zone, yet our fishing industry has been decimated and our fishing rights handed to other nations that now fish our waters. The decline in many of our fishing communities has led to the huge support for petition PE804. Our coastal communities submitted the petition to the Scottish Parliament because they believed that they would get its support, given that they fought for the Parliament, which came into being in 1999.

Even over the past few weeks, the European Commission has admitted once again that its current policy is failing. The cod recovery plan—the big plan that was imposed a few years ago at great pain to Scotland—is now being seen to fail. Despite having the full co-operation of the Scottish industry, the European Commission has now accepted that the plan has failed and wants to review it. Once again, the Commission has accepted that the CFP is failing. The evidence continues year in, year out. I hope that the petitioners made that clear to the committee.

There is a very strong case for the committee to criticise and condemn the UK minister for not appearing before the committee and to express a view. If there is one thing that the quarter of a million people who signed the petition and the petitioners want to hear from the committee, it is its view on the common fisheries policy. They want to hear whether you think that it is a good or a bad thing and whether you support them in their campaign for the Scottish Parliament to regain control of Scottish waters. It would be a good thing and a brave thing for the committee at least to express a view.

I turn to the argument that fish have to be managed across boundaries because they swim between national boundaries. Of course that is the case, but the common fisheries policy has failed, and 47 per cent of Scottish stocks are negotiated with Norway, not with other EU countries. There is no need for the CFP in that respect. Norway is not in the CFP, yet it is managing just fine—

On a point of order, convener.

All the evidence that you have heard over the past year or two has pointed towards the—

On a point of order, convener.

I shall let you in, Mrs Oldfather.

I hope that the committee supports the petitioners today.

The committee has been addressing the letter, but I feel that Richard Lochhead is exceeding the boundaries—although I understand why, politically, he would want to do that. I feel that it is important that we address the content of the letter.

I was very careful not to turn this into a political battlefield. I made the comment that the letter was a statement of the Government's intent and its interpretation, and that parties would take different views of that. If the committee is reported, it gets the message home to the petitioners that we do not accept the contents of the letter, but that we accept the reply as representing the Government's stand.

Yes.

I wish to make another point. There have been a few hard words about the minister's not coming to the committee. I remind the committee that an e-mail from Ross Finnie's department in the Scottish Executive went to the ministries in Westminster, suggesting that UK ministers would not be welcome. If we are reminding the Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare that it is a shame that he has not come to address the committee, we must recall that the Scottish Executive did not want him to come before us. I would not like members to forget that.

I am perhaps stating the obvious—this is in the letter from the Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare, and I think he is right. The Minister for Europe was asked to come

"to give evidence on possible withdrawal by the UK from the Common Fisheries Policy".

That is, he was asked to come and give evidence on how a withdrawal would work—on the constitutional issue, as Phil Gallie calls it. The committee was at no time up for conducting an inquiry into the merits or otherwise of the common fisheries policy.

That is correct.

As Phil Gallie says, that is right. For Richard Lochhead to say that we should be expressing a view on the merits of the common fisheries policy is, to be charitable, to misunderstand totally all that we were ever doing. I understand that this has been a nice piece of what Bruce Crawford would call political posturing, but it is not what the committee was ever involved in. It would be wrong to suggest that we are ducking an opportunity to give our opinion on the common fisheries policy, as Richard Lochhead has suggested. We were never asking that question; we were dealing with a different matter—a constitutional issue, as Phil Gallie has called it.

It is pretty obvious that political positions will be taken on the matter. It would be simplest for me just to say that I would like to say that we regret the non-attendance of the Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare, given the importance of the fishing industry to Scotland. I do not think that he has treated the issue with the importance that might have been expected. Secondly, I would say that the committee supports the position of the petitioners.

I take that on board. I suggest, having listened to the discussion, that there are two things that we have to decide. First, do we carry on with the petition and support the position of the petitioners, or do we close the petition? The second issue is whether we write to Ben Bradshaw to express disappointment at the refusal to come here and at the time that has been taken for the Government to work out its position. Do members agree that there are two issues to be addressed?

I will not get into all the political arguments—we could run around the issue until tomorrow. If I picked up all of Bruce Crawford's and Richard Lochhead's points, we would then be arguing about the merits or otherwise of the common fisheries policy. As Gordon Jackson has said, that was clearly never the committee's intention.

My proposal is that, first, we note the letter; it would also be useful to pass it on to the petitioners. Jim Wallace is right—we have aired the matter considerably in this committee and I understand that it has been discussed by the Environment and Rural Development Committee and the Public Petitions Committee. The petition has had a good airing. I propose that we note the contents of the letter and advise the petitioners that we have dealt with the matter as far as we can, attaching a copy of the minister's letter to our letter to the petitioners—and that is the end of it.

The petitioners will already be aware of the letter. Remember that all these things are on the internet and have been published anyway.

Okay.

We should still pass the letter on to the petitioners.

We will send it to them with our response. I was trying to simplify matters by saying that we had two things to decide. The first thing is whether or not to close the petition.

Agreed.

Yes.

Do we wish to have a vote on whether to close the petition?

It depends on how contrary that runs to my position that we support the petitioners' position.

Fairly contrary, but—

I think that we have to close the petition—we cannot carry it on. However, it is fair for the committee to make it clear to the petitioners that there are members of the committee who supported their position and members who did not. Perhaps they will be able to judge that from the Official Report of this meeting. Nevertheless, we must close the petition. As I say, Ben Bradshaw was encouraged by the Executive not to come to the committee.

We must vote either to close the petition or to keep it open. If we keep it open, that is when a statement about whether the committee supports it will be made. Do you see what I am saying?

I propose that we close the petition.

If those are the rules of the game, I have to say that I support keeping the petition going so that I am able to put forward the view that I support the petitioners' position—if that is the formal position that the convener is outlining to me.

I regret that I would be forced to support Bruce Crawford's position, although that is not what I think. We should say to the petitioners, "That is the end. We can take the petition no further." However, if Bruce Crawford's suggestion is the constitutional way, I have to accept that.

If Irene Oldfather's suggestion has majority support, that will end the matter.

Why cannot we simply convey to the petitioners the contents of the minister's letter and attach to it the Official Report of the discussion that we have had in the committee? That will make it obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to read it where we all stand and will preserve everybody's position.

That would be done anyway as normal practice. The decision that has to be made by the committee is whether to leave the petition open and deal with it further.

Let us just vote on whether to keep it open or to close it.

I support Irene Oldfather's position.

Her position is that the petition should be closed and that we should write to the petitioners. That is separate from whether we should write to the minister expressing disappointment about the time that was taken to respond to us.

We can have a separate vote on that, if you like.

That is what I suggested before this whole conversation started. I said that there were two issues on which we had to decide. Can we go back to where I was?

Fine.

Good. We have a terrible habit of doing this in the committee.

The question is, that the petition be closed. Are we agreed?

No.

There will be a division.

For

Gordon, Mr Charlie (Glasgow Cathcart) (Lab)
Home Robertson, John (East Lothian) (Lab)
Jackson, Gordon (Glasgow Govan) (Lab)
Oldfather, Irene (Cunninghame South) (Lab)
Wallace, Mr Jim (Orkney) (LD)

Against

Canavan, Dennis (Falkirk West) (Ind)
Crawford, Bruce (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP)
Fabiani, Linda (Central Scotland) (SNP)

Abstentions

Gallie, Phil (South of Scotland) (Con)

The result of the division is: For 5, Against 3, Abstentions 1.

I abstained on the basis that a copy of the Official Report of the meeting will be sent to the petitioners.

Okay. Thank you.

We move on to the second vote. The question is, whether we should write to the minister, Ben Bradshaw, expressing disappointment and concern about the way in which his department has dealt with the committee—and, therefore, the Scottish Parliament—regarding visiting and writing.

The point was raised earlier about the length of time that it took for us to receive a reply. If we want to respond to that, I am happy for us to do that; however, it is clearly a Westminster issue and we also had a timetable. I would not want to complain about the fact that the minister did not visit the committee.

Everybody is now wanting to talk.

I accept the hard reality—although I might not like it—that it is a Westminster issue. However, the Scottish fishing fleet makes up two thirds of the UK fleet, so I would have thought it incumbent on the UK minister to come and hear a view from Scotland and to have a discussion in Scotland about this very important matter. We can only condemn him for not attending.

That might be right if we were doing what Richard Lochhead would like us to do, which is to look at the merits of the policy. The minister has laid out the constitutional position with clarity. I suspect that, if he came to the committee, we would just get into the merits of the policy, which is what we were never to do. As far as the delay is concerned, it seems on the surface to have taken a bit too long for us to receive a response, but I do not know why that is the case and I am not going to start condemning something when I have not seen the papers for it. I suggest that we simply thank the minister for his response and leave it at that.

I think that we have already asked why we did not receive a response. Both the letters of 5 July and of 9 August apologise for the delay in replying. Given those apologies, we would be petty to make more of the matter.

The minister's refusal to appear before the committee is not because the matter is reserved to Westminster. His letter states:

"I … regret that, due to diary pressures, I am unable to accept on this occasion."

As I recall, we took evidence by video link from Hilary Benn on international development, which is also a reserved matter. Therefore, this business about UK Government ministers not giving evidence on reserved matters just does not wash. We have a precedent for that.

I think that we just need to take a vote on the matter and move on.

Gordon Jackson has suggested that we simply thank the minister for his response and end the matter at that.

I suggest that we condemn the minister's refusal to give evidence.

If I remember rightly, Bruce Crawford actually put forward his suggestion before Gordon Jackson. We will vote on Bruce Crawford's suggestion. That will end the matter.

The question is, that the committee condemns the minister's refusal to speak to the committee. Are we agreed?

No.

There will be a division.

For

Canavan, Dennis (Falkirk West) (Ind)
Crawford, Bruce (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP)
Fabiani, Linda (Central Scotland) (SNP)
Gallie, Phil (South of Scotland) (Con)

Against

Gordon, Mr Charlie (Glasgow Cathcart) (Lab)
Home Robertson, John (East Lothian) (Lab)
Jackson, Gordon (Glasgow Govan) (Lab)
Oldfather, Irene (Cunninghame South) (Lab)
Wallace, Mr Jim (Orkney) (LD)

The result of the division is: For 4, Against 5, Abstentions 0.

That concludes that matter.

I have a slight concern about all the people who signed the petition and about the strength of feeling that they have about the matter. Therefore, when we come to the next item, I want to throw in for discussion the suggestion that, if we agree to have a day conference on maritime issues, we should also consider inviting the Cod Crusaders to the conference. That is open for discussion.

Convener, we have just agreed to close the petition. We should deal with that matter as a separate item.

Okay, we will do so.