|
Ian Hudghton (Verts/ALE
). –
Mr President, normally I would complain that one minute is not enough to
sum up a presidency in its latter stages, but not in this instance. UK
Presidency: no progress.
It is interesting that Mr Straw
commented on the sparse attendance here and made an extremely limp attempt
to be humorous about it. The fact is that most of my colleagues had better
things to do than to listen to him give the same speech today that Tony
Blair gave at the start of the Presidency and then repeated with minor
variations just a couple of weeks ago.
I had hoped, had Mr Straw still
been here, to ask him the same question that Mr Alexander failed to answer
when I put it to him directly a couple of weeks ago, but I will ask it
again. Will the UK Presidency give an assurance that the interests of
Scotland’s fishing communities will not be traded away in the interests of
something more important to Whitehall in the mess of horse-trading it has
stored up for itself for the December Council, and for the subsequent
Fisheries Council, which will be almost the last act of the Presidency?
|
