Between a rock and a hard plaice
Newbury's Fisheries Minister MP gets a grilling by TV chef
FISHERIES minister Richard Benyon was filleted by TV chef Hugh Fearnleigh-Whittingstall during a quiz to be screened tomorrow night.
Mr Benyon took a battering when asked to name a range of Britain's most popular fish - and was only able to correctly identify cod and monkfish, according to the programme.
He later managed to identify pollock, too, but popular favourites such as haddock, plaice and halibut were said to have eluded him.
Mr Benyon told Newburytoday.co.uk: “We were filming at 5am at Billingsgate and I hadn't had my caffeine rush...”
After being branded a “politician who doesn't know his own subject” by one national publication, Mr Benyon added: “I'm brushing up on fish names fast.”
Mr Benyon will appear on Hugh's Fish Fight at 9pm on Channel Four tomorrow (Tuesday) evening.
The telly chef wants to highlight and change the fact that half of all fish caught in the North Sea is thrown back overboard, dead, due to the current quota system imposed by the European Union (EU) Common Fisheries Policy.
Mr Benyon said: “I think perhaps he thought I was just a suit who was going to defend the status quo but I don't because it's indefensible. The fisheries system is managed, top down, in a very centralised way by the EU and will be reformed in 2012. It will be decentralised if we get our way. But I'm not waiting around for that and that's why we're bringing forward a number of initiatives to cut the ‘discards.'
“Meanwhile, if anyone in Newbury feels as strongly as I do about the situation they can buy fish marked as Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) accredited. This is fish from sustainable resources where discards are limited and fish is only taken from stocks that can support it.”
Mr Benyon was appointed Minister for the Natural Environment and Fisheries as part of the Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government in May last year.
Before that he was the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Fisheries and Wildlife.
