Yorkshire and Lincolnshire: What no Cod!

Rod Jones Political Correspondent, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

Latest on Broadband debate

North Sea Cod is an endangered species. The EU Commission plans draconian measures to remedy the situation.

Will North Sea Cod disappear from the chip shop?

Politics might not be at the forefront of your mind when you tuck into your fish and chips.

But one of Britain's favourite meals is proving to be, if you will pardon the pun, a real hot potato for Europe's leaders.

Cod is the most popular fish sold in UK takeaways. We used to have a plentiful supply pretty close to our doorstep: trawlers would sail out of East Coast ports like Hull and Grimsby to the rich fishing grounds of the North Sea.

But, as the Politics Show reports, that has all changed. Cod stocks in the North Sea and some other European waters have been declining at an alarming rate.

The European Commission says the bottom line is that for years we have simply caught too many fish and if we don't give stocks chance to recover there's a real danger that they'll just vanish altogether.

North Sea Cod stocks suffer an alarming decline

Measures introduced over the last two years, including reductions in quotas and temporary fishing bans, have not done enough to reverse the decline.

The EU Commission says a long-term recovery plan is the only solution. Without it, the fishing industry won't have a future.

The Commission's four-pronged approach involves:

• setting low quotas for the amount of North Sea cod that can be caught
• reducing the time fishermen can spend fishing
• tougher monitoring and inspection to make sure everyone is obeying the rules
• financial aid packages for boats which are hardest hit.

Those proposals will be discussed at the European Parliament in October, but they have already provoked outrage from fishermen and from the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, who represents the North East Lincolnshire port of Grimsby.

North Sea trawlermen can point to some fairly stark statistics to back up their case. Today, the total number of fishermen in England and Wales is only a quarter of what it was at the end of World War Two.

Between 1997 and 2001, catches of cod and haddock fell by 67% in Hull and 30% in Grimsby. And 90% of the cod eaten in the UK now comes from further afield - landed by foreign vessels in the waters around Iceland and the North Atlantic.

Fishermen hotly dispute the basis of the EU Commission case

The fishermen hotly dispute the whole basis of the Commission's case.

They argue that the recent enforced lay-offs have already allowed North Sea cod stocks to recover to levels that can sustain the UK's much-reduced fleet.

They are warning that the Commission is in danger of preserving cod for the future, but inflicting so much damage on the industry in the meantime that there will be precious few UK boats left to catch them.

Have your say

E-mail Cathy Killick with the form below ...

The Politics Show

Join presenter Cathy Killick for The Politics Show every Sunday at 12 noon on BBC One.

---