1. KAZAKH STUDENT INVITED TO STUDY BURNS IN SCOTLAND
I have invited the Government of Kazakhstan to take advantage of a new European cultural initiative, by sending a postgraduate student to Scotland to study the life of Robert Burns. I have visited the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan three times on humanitarian aid missions, aimed at raising international awareness of the suffering of the local population, who were used as guinea pigs for the Soviet nuclear testing programme. In August this year I was the first-ever foreigner to be made an Honourable Citizen of Semipalatinsk City in recognition of this work.

Now I want a postgraduate student from the University of Semipalatinsk to spend a year in Scotland, funded by the new European ‘Erasmus Mundus’ programme which starts on 1st January 2004. I have written to the Kazakh Government suggesting that the chosen candidate should carry out a research project on the influence of Robert Burns on the celebrated Central Asian poet and humanitarian - Abai Kunanbaev (1845-1904).

It was Abai who translated the works of Robert Burns and Robert Luis Stevenson into Kazakh. He is hugely celebrated in Kazakhstan and Central Asia and several museums have been dedicated to his memory. He was born and is buried in Semipalatinsk. It was the ultimate cruel irony that Stalin should have chosen the home of this national icon of Central Asia, who wrote about love and humanity, as the site of his nuclear tests. Abai wrote “If grief comes, resist, don’t give up!” His words must have given great courage to the people of Kazakhstan who rose up and challenged the might of the Soviet Empire, demanding a halt to the nuclear tests in 1989. For too long the nuclear testing programme in Semipalatinsk was a closely guarded secret. For more than 40 years the Soviet military authorities and the KGB kept the tests hidden from the world. But even after the collapse of the Soviet Empire the legacy of nuclear pollution, cancer and suffering continues. One and a half million people are affected, many of them women and children.

Only last week in Strasbourg the European Parliament approved the new ERASMUS MUNDUS programme, which effectively opens up Europe's universities to the world. We have provided this EU higher education programme with a fund of 230 million Euros to open up Europe's universities and higher education establishments to students from around the globe. The new programme will cover a five-year period from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2008. I am keen that Scottish universities should benefit from this new source of funds and that is why I have now taken this initiative.

The programme will provide grants for more than 4,000 postgraduate students from non EU countries. Indeed, there could be great opportunities for many postgraduate students and academics from Kazakhstan and elsewhere to benefit from Erasmus Mundus funded courses in Scotland over the next 5 years.

Robert Burns is just as famous in Russia and Central Asia as he is here. It is a pity, however, that Europeans know nothing of the revered Kazakh poet Abai. In many ways the works of Abai were heavily influenced by Burns. For example, Abai described the bitterly cold winter in Kazakhstan in the following beautiful words:

Broad-shouldered, grey haired, in a white fur coat
He comes, blind and dumb, with a great silvery beard.

Burns wrote the following lines in a poem about the Scottish winter:

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snow:

Again Abai wrote about love in a beautifully lyrical way. He said:

The language of lovers dispenses with words:
With their looks, with an inner sense they converse.

On the same theme, Burns said:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

Like Burns, Abai was a man of the people. He was born the son of a peasant and spent his early years as a poor farmer in Semipalatinsk, now part of the Republic of Kazakhstan, but at that time part of the Soviet Empire. But, like Burns, Abai was an avid reader and towering intellectual whose profound work was shaped by his difficult and tragic life. There is a wealth of research needed to understand how much Abai was influenced by Burns and at the same time, it will be instructive for Scotland to be introduced to the work of this great Central Asian poet.

2. THE LONG TERM RECOVERY OF COD
A revised plan for the long-term recovery of cod was agreed by the European Parliament in Strasbourg in October, with a view to this matter being discussed and adopted at the Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels in December. I have invited Commissioner Fischler to attend the November meeting of the Fisheries Committee in order that we can discuss the Commission's plans for the December Council. It is imperative that we avoid another shambles like last year and the more consultation that can be undertaken in advance the better it will be for everyone.

Of key importance in these forthcoming discussions will be the ICES Report published in late October. Once again ICES have stated that cod stocks are in such a dire state of collapse that they are recommending the complete closure of the cod fishery in the North Sea, the Irish Sea and the West of Scotland. They claim that years of stringent conservation measures have failed to rebuild stocks and state that only the total shutdown of these fishing grounds will enable cod stocks to recover. Well it was the scientists who called for these failed conservation measures, not the fishermen. And of course, we know from bitter experience that when the scientists once again call for the complete closure of the cod fishery, they also mean the virtual closure of the haddock, whiting, plaice and prawn fisheries where cod is caught as a by-catch. I intend to give a very strong message to Commissioner Fischler. “If there are any more cuts imposed by the Council this December it will spell the end of the UK whitefish fleet. And I don't mean any more drastic cuts like last year; I mean any more cuts at all!”

Two massive decommissioning rounds have reduced our whitefish fleet by around 40%. The harbour-based businesses and ancillary services that rely on the whitefish fleet for a living are now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Any further cuts will be fatal. It would mean that even if the cod stocks ever recover, there would be no UK fishermen there to catch them. No wonder UK fishermen are now united in their condemnation of the CFP and in their demand for the UK government to withdraw completely from this failed policy.

I do not intend to attack the scientists. There is nothing to be gained from shooting the messenger. But this most recent ICES report once again highlights the vital importance of listening to the advice of the fishermen as well as the boffins. Last year the scientists told us that Haddock stocks were dwindling. The fishermen said this was rubbish. Now the scientists agree that haddock stocks in the North Sea are at a 30 year high. They say that there is an estimated 400,000 tonnes of haddock spawning stock biomass. But still they demand severe restrictions on the haddock fishery because, they claim, it is simply due to a strong 1999 year class and there has been no evidence of good year classes since.

What they fail to take into account and what the fishermen could tell them, if only they would listen, is that unless this huge abundance of mature haddock is targeted this year, they will eat the young cod and even eat young haddock, thereby destroying any chance of cod recovery and even destroying future haddock stocks.

Nor does it appear that the scientists listen to each other when arriving at their grand conclusions. According to new scientific research from the respected Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation in Plymouth who have been monitoring the North Sea for over 70 years, stocks of cold-water plankton have been driven hundreds of miles to the north by an unprecedented rise in water temperatures. This is the plankton on which cod larvae feed and this latest report by Dr Chris Reid vindicates what the fishermen have been saying all along. The cod have migrated northwards to where their larvae can feed because of global warming and there is little chance of them ever returning. That is why there is an abundance of large, mature cod around the Faeroes, Iceland and Norway and none in the North Sea, the Irish Sea or the West of Scotland. The Commission can impose all the cuts they like but they will never persuade the cod to return. They will simply destroy the fishing industry.

It is also significant that last year the scientists told us that monkfish stocks were dwindling. Once again this advice has been confounded by the presence of vast quantities of big, mature monks. Despite this, the TAC for monkfish has been drastically cut by 72% over the last four years, making life intolerable for our fishermen. It is high time the scientific assessments were corrected and these draconian restrictions relaxed. This again proves that it is time to listen to the fishermen as well as the scientists. They want to see cod stocks recover, indeed it is only the fishermen who have a vested commercial interest in their recovery. But they also know where they can catch haddock with a minimum by-catch of cod. They know that there is an abundance of monkfish. They know there is a healthy prawn stock. They know that there are plenty whiting. So let's ensure that we divert fishing effort to targeted zones where cod by-catch is strictly minimised but where our fishermen can once again make a decent living and restore faith in the industry.

The CFP has been discredited year upon year. In the same week that ICES published their most recent report calling for the complete closure of the cod fishery around Britain and Ireland, the Council of Ministers tore open the Irish Box, reducing this valuable spawning and nursery ground to one quarter of its former size. The decision bowed to political pressure. It owed nothing to conservation and everything to politics. It is decisions like this that have brought the whole CFP into disrepute. How can our fishermen believe that they are being made to suffer endless hardship in the name of conservation when they see decisions like this being taken which fly in the face of common sense? It is a sick joke.

It is also time the Commission tackled the disgrace of the 2 million tonnes of good, healthy fish that are discarded dead back into the sea every year in the name of conservation. The public will no longer tolerate this needless waste which has become the foremost icon of the failed CFP. A radical new policy is required and I believe that it would benefit scientific assessment of fish stocks if we insisted on all fish that are caught being landed.

To ensure compliance with such a policy would require sticks and carrots. The fishmeal industry is desperate for more raw material. The ban on feeding fishmeal to ruminants is likely to be lifted early next year, thereby increasing demand. The aquaculture industry, of such importance to Scotland, is also expanding and they are major users of fishmeal. But against this background of rising demand, stocks of sandeel in the North Sea, which are the main catch of the industrial fishery and the main ingredient of fishmeal, are dwindling. This year, the Danish industrial fleet caught only around 400,000 tonnes out of a TAC of over 900,000 tonnes. It is almost certain that the Council of Ministers in December will recommend that the TAC for 2004 be halved.

So let us agree that our fishermen can sell the fish they otherwise would have discarded to the fishmeal industry for around fifty pounds a tonne. This would be enough of an incentive to encourage the fishermen to land all of their catch but not enough to encourage them to target such stocks. It would also inject one hundred million pounds of new money into the EU fishing industry every year, creating and maintaining jobs, while finding a commercial use for fish that otherwise would have been dumped dead, back into the sea.

The industry needs new ideas and new incentives if it is to survive.