As a result of his decision to go back on the commitment made by his predecessor to increase, in the interests of conservation, the minimum landing size of bass, I am not here to praise the Minister but to challenge him. His announcement of 25 October on retaining the minimum landing size for bass at 36 cm rather than increasing it to 40 cm and then to 45 cm by 2010, as recommended by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science just two years ago, flies in the face of scientific evidence and has been greeted with understandable anger and dismay by hundreds of thousands of sea anglers, as well as by conservationists. He himself admitted that his decision was based on looking after the short-term interests of the inshore fleet rather than the long-term interests of the species and the environment.

The recreational sea angling sector in England and Wales is worth more than £1.3 billion a year to the economy and provides 19,000 non-subsidised jobs. The entire commercial fleet employs only 12,000 people, with considerably fewer in the under-10 m inshore fleet. We should be concerned about the impact of any decision on jobs, but let us not forget the devastating impact that unsustainable fishing has had on all sectors, both commercial and recreational. The livelihoods of charter skippers, who take anglers to sea and depend on healthy fish stocks to maintain a viable business, are every bit as important as those of the commercial fleet. Everybody suffers when a fishery collapses, as we saw in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and in the American striped bass fishery, or as was nearly the case in respect of North sea cod stocks. Future generations will not remember kindly those politicians who duck the challenge of creating the sustainable harvesting of the resources of our planet.

We were promised that Britain’s most popular fish in terms of its sporting and eating potential would be managed sustainably and primarily as a recreational species. That was a promise made in Downing Street, and it should be kept. In 2002, the Prime Minister’s strategy unit commissioned a report on the benefits of recreational sea angling. That report, “Net Benefits”, was eventually published in 2004, to wide acclaim. It said:

“Fisheries departments should review the evidence supporting arguments for re-designating commercially caught species for wholly recreational sea angling, beginning with bass by the end of 2004.”

The Minister’s predecessor, Ben Bradshaw, made good that promise when he launched the DEFRA consultation in 2005 to increase the minimum landing size for bass, in order to produce a sustainable fishery with more and bigger bass for the commercial and recreational sectors. That proposal was based on sound science and in the interests of conservation and the environment.

The optimum spawning size for female bass is 42 cm. It is a simple act of conservation science that every species should be given the opportunity to breed once. The science shows that, although the minimum landing size for bass would mean a short-term depletion in the fish available to be caught by the commercial sector, there would be a long-term increase. The difference between 36 and 45 cm means doubling the weight of the sea bass, which is a valuable species for recreational fishing. Just as people spend a lot of money to catch quality salmon-far more than salmon would ever fetch on a fishmonger’s slab-people will spend a lot of money to enjoy quality recreational bass fishing on the fly, by bait or by using lures, plugs and spinners.

Bass is an immensely valuable resource, which we should protect. Global warming means that stocks of juvenile bass have risen to some extent, but the recreational fishery is undervalued if only stunted bass are available through the removal of a great proportion of the stock at too early a stage in its life. That is why the decision is wrong and represents short-term thinking. That is bad for local economies in the long run.