UK Fishing Industry

Alan Campbell Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

I will attempt to do exactly that, Madam Deputy Speaker, with a brief contribution.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) not only on securing it, but on her speech. In our annual fisheries debate, we remember those who have lost their lives at sea over the year in what is still the most dangerous peacetime industry. We thank those who work to keep fishermen safe, particularly the volunteers at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and those who work with and support fishing communities, such as the Fishermen’s Mission.

In my experience, fisheries debates follow a familiar pattern: we bring a shopping list from the fishermen and fishing organisations in our constituencies, and then the Minister responds to the debate and goes off to the Fisheries Council. In all honesty, we are often more interested in what he brings back from Brussels than in what he says at the end of the debate—I mean no disrespect to the Minister, but that has been the pattern of fisheries debates for as long as I can remember. Today will be very different, however, because this is the first post-referendum, pre-exit debate, and we and the wider audience outside the House, particularly fishermen, will be looking carefully for signs of what exiting the EU will mean for UK fishing.

I know that the Government are reluctant to share their exit plans for fear of damaging negotiations, and it might be that in some policy areas they do not actually have a plan, but they cannot say that about fishing, because in every one of the five general elections I have fought, my Conservative opponent has stood on a platform of getting out of the common fisheries policy. In 2010, the Conservative candidate in my constituency, who is now the excellent hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton)—I imagine her seat does not have a big fishing fleet—launched her campaign on Fish quay in North Shields with the slogan “A Fresh Face for the Future”. I remember that because I launched my campaign the next day holding a rather large fresh salmon under the slogan “Fresh Fish for the Future”. That was the end of the sloganising for that campaign.

The serious point is that Conservative policy has for two decades been about getting out of the common fisheries policy, so surely the Minister must have worked out what that means. As well as fishermen, the public, especially those who voted leave—I voted remain, but if I had been a fisherman, I would have voted leave—were encouraged to believe that the UK would have greater control of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. They were also encouraged to believe that there would be a 12-mile limit, which is essential to protect the inshore fleet, which is the mainstay of the North Shields fleet in my constituency.

If the UK has more control of our waters, we should have control of—or at least a fairer share of—what is caught in those waters. We need a fit-for-purpose management system that is based on proper science, with scientists working alongside fishermen, as far as possible in real time. We need environmental standards that are at least as high as those we enjoy inside the European Union. I do not think fishermen should have anything to fear, because someone who is a fisherman has to be conservationist and an environmentalist—that is their livelihood. Given that much of the prawn and shellfish landed at North Shields are put on to lorries and taken to the continent for consumption, we also need to make sure that we get a fair trading agreement. When the Minister responds to the debate, I hope that he will at least begin to sketch out what such a policy will look like. That is what we are looking for, and all the people he is going to meet at the Fisheries Council will be looking for those signs, too.

I want to raise two local issues. I make no apology for having raised them before, because we are now working and thinking in a different context. The first is about access to the Farne Deeps, which is the most important prawn fishery. The prawn fishery is the most important element of the viability of North Shields. I thank the Minister not just for the action that he and his Department have taken to protect and safeguard stocks, but for the action he has taken, and plans to take, to deal with the twin-rigged trawlers that are doing a great deal of damage to the marine environment. Does the Minister believe that exiting the common fisheries policy will strengthen his ability and that of the UK Government to act in such situations? If the Minister prefers to write to me about that, I am happy for him to do so.

My second local issue relates to access to funding, and the need to repair and regenerate North Shields port. North Shields is virtually alone on the east coast in retaining a sustainable fleet. It has a fish market—ironically, it was paid for by EU funding—and an integrated port structure. It is at the central part of the North sea and the heart of the prawn fishery, acting as a hub for the east coast.

The port is profitable—anyone speaking to fishermen would be told that it was profitable—and sustains somewhere in the region of 1,200 jobs, but it does not have access to resources for either large-scale repair or long-term infrastructure investment. Work has been completed on the west quay, but the part of the quay that is nearest to the fish market, where the boats land the catches, needs urgent work.

The interested parties are already working together—the Port of Tyne, the company that runs the fish quay, the local authority and many others. Often, however, when it comes to the question of money, there is a lot of shuffling of papers and staring at the floor, because the reality is that the resources are not available to carry out repairs of such size and cost. Infrastructure investment is therefore needed, for which the area has traditionally looked to the European Union. It beggars belief that the EU will agree to make a large amount of money available if we are going to exit at some point in the near future, so I ask a simple question: if not through EU funding, where will the funding come from?

We were told—we saw it on the side of a bus—that we would save £350 million a week if we exited the EU. I work that out at £50 million a day, so the amount that North Shields needs for such important work is equivalent to the contributions that we would make in the length of time allowed for this debate. I want to know from the Minister what help we will get in the future. Will the Government guarantee funding where the EU in the future cannot? Unless we get that guarantee, the viability of North Shields—and, I imagine, other ports—will not be guaranteed, and the jobs that depend on the port will not be guaranteed either.