The Dutchman who is doing his best to save our fish suppers

A recent study by the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society estimated that stocks of fish which live near the sea bed, such as haddock, halibut and plaice, have declined by an incredible 94 per cent since the 1880s, while cod stocks have dropped by 87 per cent.

Anyone who's been a loyal patron of their local chippie over the years will have noticed the effect this growing scarcity has had on prices.

Unsurprisingly, the principal cause for this shocking slide has been identified as over-fishing – something that the EU's strict quotas, forced on our hard-pressed Scottish fishermen every year, are supposed to address.

The system is far from perfect. It encourages the wholescale dumping of vast quantities of perfectly good but over-quota fish, dead, back into the ocean. It would be far better to move to a Norwegian-style scheme, whereby fishermen had to land everything they caught on their allocated days at sea, to end this horrific waste.

Of course, any system to regulate catches so that our fish stocks recover can only work with proper enforcement. When I joined the European Parliament's fisheries committee, in 1999, there was a mythology throughout the fishing nations that they were being singled out for extra harsh treatment by over-zealous inspectors while their neighbours were getting away with murder.

It was clear to us that the only way to resolve the problem and ensure a level playing-field was to create an EU-wide fisheries inspectorate.

So, back in 2002, when I was president of the committee, we floated the idea of a Community Fisheries Control Agency (CFCA) which could pool all the resources of fisheries inspectors from every coastal member state.

It took until 2005 to set up the CFCA, in Vigo, Spain, under the leadership of Dutchman Harm Koster, who now has a team of around 60 staff and a budget of 7 million.

Visiting the CFCA is like stepping into a high-tech war room at the Pentagon. Teams of skilled officials sit in front of banks of computers on which the movement of virtually every EU fishing vessel in sensitive fish breeding grounds can be monitored.

Aircraft and helicopters, as well as large fishery protection vessels, are in direct contact with the Vigo command centre, ready to swoop on anyone suspected of breaking the rules. Miscreants can find themselves facing hefty fines or even imprisonment.

With 80 per cent of European fish stocks overexploited, Mr Koster assured us that fishermen understood the gravity of the situation and were generally happy to comply with inspections.

Of course, with European waters now a tightly controlled zone, the temptation is for those who don't want to play by the rules to go elsewhere. European trawlers are travelling as far as West Africa to fish, well out of the CFCA's reach.

Mr Koster is confident that the CFCA could extend its scope beyond Europe to ensure European fishermen aren't exploiting these areas to exhaustion.

In the current climate of cutbacks, that dream may have to wait. In the meantime, we have to hope that the CFCA's work in Europe itself pays dividends. I, for one, don't want to witness the extinction of the fish supper.

Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEP