FISHING fleets in parts of the North face a make-or-break year unless there is an agreement on landing quotas in the North Sea, it has been warned.

European MP for Yorkshire David Bowe said: "I am concerned that some sections of the fishing industry are still refusing to accept the scale of the crisis, especially the threat to cod stocks, and that in the end consumers will also be affected by ever-smaller fish and ever-rising prices."

Mr Bowe, the Labour Party's European environment spokesman, said: "The agreement reached recently by European Union fisheries ministers is an important step forward in that it does include a commitment to introduce long-term recovery programmes for cod and hake, rather than the annual last-minute haggling we have seen in recent years.

"If these measures are to work, everyone involved with the industry needs to recognise that this could well be the last chance there is to avoid a total disaster.

"There is widespread scientific evidence that cod stocks in the North Sea are now just a tenth of the levels they were in the 1970s."

He said that scientists with the International Council for Exploration of the Sea had their calls for a total ban on cod fishing throughout the North Sea rejected for the past two years.

He said: "If this new agreement fails to deliver, then I am sure the scientists will again be making a similar recommendation in 12 months' time, and by then there could be no other choice."