Official Report 215KB pdf
Fishing Industry (PE804)
The next item is a petition that has been referred to the committee by our colleagues on the Public Petitions Committee. It is from Carol MacDonald and Morag Ritchie and it calls for the Scottish Parliament to use its influence to return control over its fishing industry to Scotland. There is a copy of the petition at annex A of members' papers. At annex B is the Official Report of the Public Petitions Committee meeting of 7 December 2005 at which it was agreed that the petition should be passed to us.
We have four options: we can agree to take no further action; we can refer the matter to the Environment and Rural Development Committee; we can invite the petitioners to give evidence to the committee; or we can agree with the petitioners and write to the Executive accordingly.
The members of the Environment and Rural Development Committee might feel a bit miffed if we do not consult them on their views. In fact, I am surprised that the Public Petitions Committee forwarded the petition to us. I would have thought that it would have been more relevant to inform us and the Environment and Rural Development Committee. I certainly think that we should consult the Environment and Rural Development Committee before coming to a conclusion.
I think that the Public Petitions Committee sent the petition to us because it deals with a constitutional rather than a fishing issue. That would be a good reason for sending it to the European and External Relations Committee.
I have looked at the petition and the petitioners clearly say that they would like withdrawal from the common fisheries policy. If the petition had said that the petitioners would like the Scottish Parliament to consider a simplification of the CFP or to do something about our fishing communities, there would be a strong case for hearing from the petitioners. The problem is that, as I read it, the petition asks for withdrawal from the CFP, which I think is a matter reserved to the UK. If the petition was about discussion, regional management committees or fishing communities, we would have a locus in it, but it is about withdrawal from the CFP and I do not think that the committee has a locus in that. I believe that our position is clear cut and that it would be wrong to raise expectations that the committee cannot meet. However, I am interested to hear the views of Jim Wallace and Gordon Jackson, who have much more technical and legal expertise than I do.
Just before I bring in Gordon Jackson, I point out that when a petition goes to the Public Petitions Committee, it rules on whether it is competent to come to the Parliament. I presume that that committee has been through that process for this petition and deemed it competent.
I did not see much sign of that in the Public Petitions Committee's deliberations. People do not always apply their minds to everything. I noticed that the petition is being, or has been, presented to Westminster. It actually says that. Therefore, I do not think that we should get into a double-whammy situation. The petition is going to Westminster and addresses a Westminster issue.
The petition went to the Westminster Parliament for information only, from what I gather.
Perhaps so, but it says at the bottom of the Cod Crusaders' letter that accompanies the petition:
Yes, but you must also bear in mind the fact that the Public Petitions Committee deemed the petition to be competent. It took evidence on it, agreed its competency and passed it on to another parliamentary committee.
If we look at what the petition actually says, we can see that the petitioners are
Oh, it will. It is bound to.
I think that Dennis Canavan's point is right and that we should hear what the Environment and Rural Development Committee has to say on the petition.
Just to recap, Dennis Canavan's point was that, given that the Environment and Rural Development Committee is getting the other stuff about the CFP, we should write to it about the petition to get its views on how the petition should be dealt with. Does that summarise what you said, Dennis?
Yes.
Gordon Jackson's point about the petition having gone to Westminster, which is the most appropriate place for it, is obviously right. However, the trouble is that those of us who have been at Westminster know that petitions there go into a bag behind Mr Speaker's chair, are emptied out by somebody and are never seen again. There is no procedure for the proper consideration of petitions at Westminster—the system is flawed. I understand why people send petitions here: they know that they will be read and responded to.
This is a complex issue. I know both Carol MacDonald and Morag Ritchie. Many of us have probably met them, as they have been regular visitors to the Parliament. I am concerned that the views of 250,000 people may somehow get lost in the mists of time or the fog of procedures in the Scottish Parliament. As Phil Gallie said, it is important that we engage directly with the people. The women of the fishing communities are the people who have to deal with the stark realities at home, and—leaving aside the common fisheries policy, which we could debate at length—I think that what they seek more than anything is to have their voices heard.
Are you suggesting that the committee pass on the petition to the other bodies that you have mentioned?
Yes, for action.
The Official Report of the Public Petitions Committee meeting on 7 December refers to a response from Ross Finnie. The convener stated:
I have a note of that and will summarise it later.
I do not honestly think that this discussion is about whether we feel sympathetic or otherwise towards the fishing communities. We all appreciate the importance of fishing and the fishing communities to Scotland, but the petition is about something more technical than that.
On page 8 of the documentation accompanying the petition, there is a letter from the Cod Crusaders to Michael McMahon, which states:
We should recognise that the petition went to the Public Petitions Committee of the Scottish Parliament and was deemed competent by—
It was not really. If you read the Official Report—
The fact that the Public Petitions Committee took evidence on the petition means that the committee ruled it competent. Under our parliamentary system, the Public Petitions Committee referred the petition to us; therefore, the European and External Relations Committee must now deal with the petition and decide what to do.
Let us assume that the petition is competent on the basis of Jim Wallace's interesting idea—that the petitioners are only asking us to use our influence. Let us move on. The petitioners wanted the Public Petitions Committee to agree with them; now they want this committee to pass a resolution calling on Westminster to withdraw from the common fisheries policy.
Before I bring in Phil Gallie, I want to summarise the three recommendations that are on the table so that everyone is aware of them. First, we can write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee asking for its views. Dennis, I take it that you meant that we would get that committee's view on its capacity to take the petition on board and on whether it would wish to consider the matter.
Yes. Even if the Environment and Rural Development Committee does not wish to take the petition on board, I would still be interested in its response. I listened carefully to Gordon Jackson, but there was a precedent in the last session: this committee made a report on the common fisheries policy. We may not all be experts on fish—far from it—but if the Environment and Rural Development Committee does not want to take the matter forward, we may wish to consider doing so at some future date.
The second suggestion was that the committee should obtain Ross Finnie's reply to the Public Petitions Committee's letter.
It appears that the petition has been sent to the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions, which is fairly thorough—I will give it credit for that—so we would be better to make contact with its officials and to find out what happened to the petition.
The lawyers on the committee are jumping up and down. I think that Gordon jumped first.
Call a spade a spade, Phil: your agenda is not the fish or the fishing; it is the constant constitutional argument.
Of course it is.
The petitioners are interested in the fish and the fishing; they are not interested in your agenda of trying to pull out of Europe at every opportunity. The petition is about fishing and I am still of the view that we should send it to the committee that deals with fishing more than we do. If it wants to do anything with the petition, it can. You are using what the petitioners want for your own agenda, and we cannot play that game.
I am disappointed that you feel that way, Gordon, because it is not the case. When I read the petition, I read that what the petitioners want is for us to pull out. If it is not possible to pull out, it would be unkind to leave them believing that withdrawal would solve all their problems. The fishing issues are another matter altogether, which is why the Public Petitions Committee sent the petition to this committee rather than to the Environment and Rural Development Committee.
I have looked through the Official Report of the Public Petitions Committee's discussion on the petition and I cannot see any reason why it was sent to us other than the fact that someone thought that it was a good idea.
The point is not whether or not we endorse the CFP. When people who are involved in industries lodge a petition—whether they are in manufacturing, which Irene Oldfather mentioned, or in fishing—they feel that their voices are being heard. Whether we agree or disagree is a political decision that we have to take, but the important thing is that the petitioners' voices are heard. I do not want the petition to get lost by being circulated around the Parliament.
I remind the committee of what I said at the start. Under agenda item 4, we will consider whether to refer to the Environment and Rural Development Committee the European Commission's action plan for simplifying and improving the common fisheries policy. With that in mind, I return to the recommendations. The first recommendation is that we write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee to ask for its views on its willingness and ability to take on the petition.
I listened to what Gordon Jackson and Jim Wallace said and, on that basis, I am willing to remit the petition to the Environment and Rural Development Committee. I think that we should do that, because they are the experts. We did a report on the matter in the first session of Parliament, but that was simply because of the timing of what was happening with zonal management committees. We wanted the Parliament to have an input to that and the Rural Development Committee did not have the capacity to undertake the work at the time. If we had not done it, we would have missed an opportunity to express the strong view of the Parliament—the view that all the political parties held—on regional management and zonal management committees. That said, the report took up 10 months to a year of the committee's time. Gordon Jackson is quite right; an inquiry on fishing would be a hugely onerous task for us and there is another committee that has expertise in the matter.
So you are saying that we should remit the petition to the Environment and Rural Development Committee rather than write to ask whether that committee has the capacity to consider it.
Yes. The petitioners have been to the Public Petitions Committee and they have had their voice heard there. The members of the Environment and Rural Development Committee are the experts. If they want to do something about it, that is where it should be done.
There is a slight risk of pass the parcel here. There is a consensus that the petitioners are a serious group of people with serious opinions and concerns. Whether we agree with them or not, they attracted a lot of signatures and they want to be heard by the Parliament. I gather that they have already had a session with the Public Petitions Committee.
They have.
I suggest that the convener has an informal word with the convener of the Environment and Rural Development Committee. If there is a need to give the petitioners an opportunity to say a bit more, either we or the Environment and Rural Development Committee can invite them to do so, although Gordon Jackson is right to say that, if we listen to the petitioners, we will also have to get in the fisheries scientists and goodness knows who else. It would become quite complicated. I suggest that the convener has an informal discussion with Sarah Boyack.
Something as important as the petition is worth more than an informal discussion between two conveners. We should write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee. Before I bring Irene Oldfather back in, I invite other members to give their views. It seems to me that John Home Robertson is suggesting that we should—
Remit it.
Well, no. John did not say that we should remit it. He suggested that we should find out how the Environment and Rural Development Committee is placed. Do other members have views on whether we should write for information or remit the petition? There is a clear difference.
Before you take views on that, may I add something that is relevant? In the petitioners' letter to Michael McMahon of 14 November, they clearly state:
The petition is still live and we have to deal with it.
I have to be a realist about this. We must look at the context. Sometimes, petitioners bring us a petition and we say, "Oh, that's interesting. I never thought of that before." People come along and say, "Here's a mischief that should be corrected," and everybody says, "We should look into that." Whether or not the UK is in the common fisheries policy is on the table for discussion all the time. For the main players in making such a decision at Westminster—and, to some degree, for our Minister for Environment and Rural Development—it is a constant, live issue, not a new idea. Is the European and External Relations Committee prepared to spend the next year reaching a decision—whatever good that would do—on whether to withdraw from the common fisheries policy, so that the petitioners can have a public platform?
So you are saying that we should remit the petition to it.
I am. I do not think that we should pretend to the petitioners that we can do what they want, because we cannot.
I seek clarification on two technical issues. First, can we remit to the other committee?
Yes, we can.
Secondly, Gordon Jackson's point is that we should hear petitions only if, at the end of the day, we are going to concur with what they say.
No.
Perhaps there is merit in hearing a petition even if we conclude the opposite.
No. I meant that we should reach a decision; I did not mean that we should concur with the petitioners. I was talking about our ability to reach an informed decision.
Everything else we do hinges on the decision that we must take on whether we remit the petition to the Environment and Rural Development Committee or write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee about it and ask it for its views. Two members have expressed quite firm views in favour of remitting the petition.
I am quite happy to go along with taking the Environment and Rural Development Committee's views on the petition. I am totally against remitting it at this point. Once again, I point out that the petition deals with a constitutional issue and we must consider the reality or non-reality of that constitutional issue. To my mind, the committee should have the bottle to stand up and be prepared to examine the issue. Gordon Jackson said that that could involve a year-long inquiry. Perhaps that is so, but what inquiries do we have at the moment? We are concentrating on examining our own navels on plan D, as we call it. Where is that going and what is it going to achieve? There is perhaps nothing more important right now in Scotland than the issue of fishing, and I think that we would do a grave injustice if we were to turn our backs on the petitioners. However, I accept that it would be helpful if the Environment and Rural Development Committee were to take a view on the petition.
It looks to me as if there are quite entrenched views on the matter, so we will have to take a vote on whether to remit the petition to the Environment and Rural Development Committee or write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee. We will vote by show of hands. The first proposal is that we write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee to ask for its views on the petition and on taking the petition on board in conjunction with the other information that it is being given about the review and simplification of the common fisheries policy.
Are we seeking that committee's views, first, on the contents of the petition and, secondly, on its willingness to take the matter on board for further investigation?
My view is that we are asking that committee about its willingness to take the petition on board. First, I would like to see a show of hands from those who believe that that is what we should do. The other proposal is to remit the petition straight to the Environment and Rural Development Committee.
That is option B in the paper, I think.
The question is, that the committee agrees to write to the Environment and Rural Development Committee inviting it to consider the petition. Are we agreed?
No.
There will be a division.
For
There are four votes for and four votes against, so I will have to use my casting vote.
You must vote first.
I understand what you are saying. I get to use my casting vote only in the event of a tie. I was trying to be an impartial convener.
Vote early, vote often.
I vote for the first option. The result of the division is: For 5, Against 4, Abstentions 0.
If we get one, we may as well get the other.
We will get the minister's reply at the same time as we get a response from the Environment and Rural Development Committee.
I am not really happy about the suggestion. I voted to refer the petition on. The Environment and Rural Development Committee, rather than this committee, should decide what is done with it. Members of the European Parliament will and should be actively involved in the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions.
We are only seeking information. Surely this is not a major issue. We are saying that the two sets of clerks should get together and that there should be communication and co-operation in Europe. We should ask the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions what the hell it is doing about the issue. It will tell us.
I will not push the issue to a vote, if the committee wishes to proceed in that way. However, in my view we have MEPs who can argue the case for us in Europe very competently.
Do we want to know what the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions is doing with the petition?
I want to pick up one suggestion that may not have been picked up. During the Brussels visit, could you meet the director general for fisheries and maritime affairs, to fill in some of the blank spaces?
Are you not coming on the visit?
No, even though it is warmer in March than it is in February.