GUARDIAN

Paul Brown, Environment Correspondent

Britain must speed up the promised reduction of its- Fishing Deer, the European Fishing Commissioner said yesterday. or the industry will not receive a single ecu towards restructuring.

"The UK is behind by about 10-15 per cent, so it has to make efforts which it failed to make earlier, as other member states did," Emma Bonino said. "The UK did not comply with reduction rates and the penalty is that the UK has not been able to use the community funding available. The present situation is very difficult because of this lagging behind."

The industry was missing out on millions of pounds of aid for restructuring and modernising.

At a press conference to launch the 1996 round of negotiations on the future of EC fishing policy. Mrs Bonino made a stinging attack on the Government's repeated inability to keep promises to ad here to European Union policies. British fishermen would continue to suffer because access to available money would be blocked.

She refused to sympathise or the issue of "quota hopping", whereby Spanish boats are registered as British to land carches allocated to the UK. Quota hopping made no difference to the overall picture of Britain's failure to adhere to policies on reduction of the fishing effort.

The commissioner said Britain was the worst Offender in Europe in failing to cut its fleet.

"Too much fishing is killing fishing.' Mrs Bonino said.

She admitted the union's efforts to cut fishing effort had failed. A new and much more stringent round of destruction of fishing vessels was required, running from 1997 to 1999.

It would cause difficult economic and social problems, and the burden of unemployment would be heavy. But it was necessary to cut the fleet further to give it a future. Over-capacity was the main reason for over-exploitation of resources, and fish stocks had to be brought intobalance with the fishing effort.

Six hundred million pounds, however, was available for decommissioning and 500 million for new boats and improvements.

British reductions in fleet size had begun in 1983 but the UK had consistently failed to reach its targets. At the beginning of the current round of reductions in 1991. Britain was 10,000 tonnes short of its required total.

A further 25,000 tonnes' reduction had been required between 1991 and the end of 1996, making 35,.000 tonnes in all. Only 15,000 tonnes had been achieved which meant none of the money available for modernisation could be distributed to the UK.

She warned Britain that there may be penalties if it failed to achieve its current reduction quota by slimming its fleet by around 10,000 tonnes by the end of the year.

Mrs Bonino, who begins a visit to Britain on Friday travelling to Aberdeen. Peterhead. Newlyn and Brixham before going to London said she was not prepared to help Britain on the issue of "quota hopping".

The principle of free movement. of people, capital and goods was fundamental to the single market and gave the Spanish the right to register their boats and operate from Britain. It was the same principle that would allow a British farmer to buy land and cultivate crops in Italy. It was not possible for pressure groups to reserve the water round their Island solely for the benefit of British fishermen.

About 150 foreign-owned boats - 100 Spanish-owned - are registered in Britain and fishing under British flags, taking about 20 per cent of the UK's offshore fishing quota even though their crews are Spanish and most of the catches are landed in Spain.

A recent European Court of Justice ruling gave Spanish owners the go-ahead to claim compensation if Britain attempted to stop them fishing against British quotas.