Lord Stoddart of Swindon, a fighter of many years' standing against the European Union and, particularly, against the Common Fisheries Policy, put down the following Written Question:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will press for negotiations for the reform of the European Union to include the repatriation of agriculture and fisheries powers to member states.

If there is one set of powers we need to repatriate it is that of fisheries but is the Prime Minister likely to negotiate that? Well, not according to HMG's reply:

The Prime Minister has started to discuss his plans for EU reform and renegotiation with other EU leaders. He has been clear that the plans involve reforming welfare and immigration rules, increasing economic competitiveness and cutting red tape to create jobs and growth for hard working families, and protecting the UK’s interests outside the euro. It also means halting the constant flow of powers to Brussels including by ensuring a stronger role for national Parliaments.

Is that a yes or a no?

It was the UKIP peer, Lord Willoughby de Broke who referred to fishing as one of the competences this country has lost to the EU over the years, during the Second Reading of the EU Referendum Bill in the House of Lords on January 10.

Many of the powers were given away, as I will tell noble Lords in a minute, without the British people ever being asked whether that was what they wanted. Treaty after treaty—Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam, Lisbon—drained ever more power away from the British Parliament at Westminster and from the people of this country and channelled it to the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Very little that matters is now left to the Westminster Parliament, which has nothing at all to say about the economy, immigration, energy, trade, agriculture, fisheries and social policy.

That happens to be the truth. All else is moonshine. That is the position from which we must move forward.

While the various moves and counter-moves go on in the House of Commons about the possible but practically useless Bill for and In/Out referendum on the EU, over on the other side, where the red seats are, Lord Pearson has introduced a new Bill,the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill [HL] 2013-14. It had its First Reading on May 15 and its aim is "to make provision to repeal the European Communities Act 1972; and to make provision for the Secretary of State to repeal any enactment that has been a consequence of the European Communities Act 1972". It is unlikely to get very far but may well have a Second Reading and, possibly, the odd Committee day. The debates should be interesting and the subject of the disastrous and unreformable Common Fisheries Policy is likely to come up. We must make sure it does.

By which we mean the problems created by the Maastricht Treaty otherwise known as the Treaty of European Union. It is important to recall that it was not till this treaty was signed that the Common Fisheries Policy became part of the consolidated treaties, having been before that a policy created by regulations. (Discussed here and here.)

As mentioned in a previous posting, it was Article 38 under Title II that formally stated:

The common market shall extend to agriculture and trade in agricultural products. "Agricultural products means the products of the soil, of stockfarming and of fisheries and products of first-stage processing directly related to these products.

The Maastricht Treaty did something more that was noted by some people at the time but dismissed by the defenders of the treaty and the whole European project as being of little real importance: it established a European citizenship. In Article 8 we can read:

1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.

It then goes on to define various aspects of that citizenship and this Article has remained in all succeeding treaties. A good many people have argued that the citizens of this country were not asked whether they wanted to be citizens of the European Union and should, therefore be able to give it up. But can they?

This is what Lord Stoddart of Swindon (a good friend of FAL) wanted to know and asked

Her Majesty's Government what is the process by which British subjects may renounce their European Union citizenship.

The response given by Lord Henley on behalf of HMG but, undoubtedly, written by one or more of his minions in DEFRA was illuminating:

Under the Maastricht Treaty, every citizen who is a national of a member state is also a citizen of the Union. The UK has defined its "nationals" for European Economic Area (EEA) purposes as:

British citizens;

British overseas territories citizens who derive their citizenship from a Gibraltar connection and;British subjects under Part IV of the British Nationality Act 1981 having the right of abode under s.2 of the Immigration Act 1971.

A UK national as defined above who renounced that status and did not have the nationality of another member state would cease to be a European citizen. It is not possible, however, to renounce European citizenship while remaining a UK national.

So hard luck. If you want to remain British you have to remain a citizen of this preposterous Union.

Baroness Parminter's Question

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to achieve reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.

was scheduled for yesterday, conveniently for Lord Henley, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DEFRA, who was answering on HMG's behalf. This way he could point to the newly produced Commission proposals, agree sorrowfully with those peers who pointed out that the CFP has been a disaster even by EU standards, swat away Lord Pearson's comment about the need to run one's own fisheries policy with the words "we are where we are" and, above all, promise that Britain will fight for a radical reform of this catastrophic policy, will start to do so on Tuesday and will go on as long as it takes. Curiously enough, Lord Henley did not mention the many other times HMG's Ministers had promised to fight for that reform only to find that it was not actually possible to change the CFP in any radical fashion or to introduce sensible measures while it was in place.

And again, there are problems with the way it is discussed. The highly inadequate EU Bill has had its third day in Committee in the House of Lords. Various issues were raised during the debate and there was a reference to the Common Fisheries Policy even though it is not mentioned in the Bill.

Arguing against the need for a referendum, Lord Deben, who was once John Gummer a less than successful Secretary for the Environment, cited the CFP [scroll down] as one of the areas that needed reform but, curiously enough he thought it needed more integration, assuming for some reason that to be a panacea for a disastrous policy.

I want to say just two more things. The first is that if ever there were a policy that needs change, it is the common fisheries policy. It is hugely important, and it is based on a European competence, but there are some things on which the European Union does not have competence. For example, it does not have competence to enter member states' ports with European inspectors, but there is no way to have a sensible common fisheries policy without that. Who has been against that? We do not want people entering our ports. I cannot understand why, because we try to keep the law, but evidently we will not allow that. If we were to do that, we might do something about the very policy which is, for most of us, the least satisfactory of European policies. That is why, given the environment, it will be very important. Evidently, we are not going to do that unless we have a referendum asking people whether they are prepared for French inspectors to come into English ports. Of course, they will say no to that, because the question does not say what I want it to say: are we prepared for British inspectors to go into French ports? They would say yes to that. It depends what the question is. That again comes back to the danger of having referendums.

As muddled an argument as anyone has seen.

Later on in the debate, Lord Pearson of Rannoch challenged Lord Deben, particularly as the latter had referred to him in derogatory terms. [scroll down to bottom of Col. 444]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was good enough to mention me in his few remarks and to accuse me of what I think was the impossible and most undesirable dream of the United Kingdom being altogether free of the European Union in all these matters. He is of course correct. However, he then mentioned the common fisheries policy as though that has to be solved by the European Union and as though the EU will not solve the acknowledged disaster which the policy is, environmentally and in every other way, if it is prevented from doing so. Surely, from our point of view, as I have mentioned before, the answer is terribly simple. We simply leave the European common fisheries policy and take back our international waters. Seventy five per cent of the fish which swim in European waters all the year round swim in waters that used to belong entirely to the United Kingdom before we made the mistake of joining the European Union. We then manage our own waters, re-establish our fish stocks and let out any surplus to foreigners.

The following exchange can be read in Columns 445 and 446:

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: I am afraid that the noble Lord is yet again misleading the House. The waters did not belong to Britain before we joined the European Union. We had 12-mile limits in those days and the areas beyond those limits were high seas. The decision to go out to 250 miles was taken by the European Union collectively when we were a member.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: Yes, but we should not have gone along with that decision because we should not have been in the policy in the first place. I therefore insist that most of the fish which swim now in European waters and are fished by European boats used to belong to us and they could and should belong to us again. I do not wish to detain the House-

Lord Deben: The noble Lord really must not say that. It is not true. Most of our fishing grounds have always been shared with our neighbours-the French, the Belgians and the Germans-and we have always had to come to terms with them. All that the European common fisheries policy does is to have a sensible mechanism. It is not that the policy being common is wrong but that the policy is wrong. You have to have a common policy; otherwise you can only make these decisions with the marlinspike. It is just not true that we had 75 per cent of it before.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: The noble Lord and those of his view have been saying this now for 30 years. It has not happened and it is not going to happen. The solution for this country is to leave the common fisheries policy and take back our waters to the median line and whatever we had before in territorial waters into our own control. Then, when our own fishing industry, which has been decimated by the common fisheries policy, has been rebuilt, we can share any surplus and lease it out to people who want to buy it.

Lord Davies of Stamford: I do not know in which amendment the common fisheries policy arises, but I have to tell the noble Lord that if he is interested in that policy, he will rapidly find that the only explanation consistent with the facts is that the common fisheries policy suffered from an excess of member state sovereignty and an insufficiency of federalism. At every stage the European Commission, being the regulatory agency, has proposed quotas that, if they had been accepted, would have preserved the stocks. It is the member states pursuing their own individual interests that have always resisted those proposals on the part of the European Commission. As a result, the quotas have never been sufficiently tight and all these waters have been overfished. Under all circumstances, whether we had our own fisheries policy or not, it would be necessary for us to have regulation, quotas and some effective enforcement mechanism. If we disbanded the European Union, the next day we would need to set up a new common fisheries policy by agreement with a set of quotas and a common enforcement policy.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, when we leave the European Union, we will not do as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggests. We will take back those waters that were our waters, take back those fish that were our fish and re-establish our national fishing industry. That is what we will do. As the noble Lord has mentioned, this was not actually in the amendments but as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, mentioned it in connection with me, I thought that I would just touch on it in closing.

There are two problems here. One is that, as anyone who has ever looked at the Common Fisheries Policy knows, the real policy is one of equal access to all the waters right up to the shores. All quotas and other agreements are merely derogations that are due to expire next year.

Secondly, the idea that if we run our own fisheries we shall still need a common fisheries policy because we shall have to have agreements with other fishing countries shows muddled thinking. An agreement between two or three countries is not the same as a common policy decided on by 27 countries through Qualified Majority Voting at best and consensus at worst and imposed on the fishing countries; an agreement is negotiated directly in the interests of the two or three participants.