UK Fishing Industry

Alan Campbell Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) to her role on the Front Bench. She will be a strong voice for fishing and fishing communities.

In view of the frankly ludicrously short time available for this debate, I intend to keep my remarks brief and my points very local. My first point is about the continued availability of funding for infrastructure repair. North Shields port is the premier fishing port on the east coast and the biggest prawn port in England, landing around £7 million-worth of catch every year and sustaining around 300 jobs, but a recent report on the condition of the quay found that between £6 million and £8 million is needed for infrastructure repair. On 1 December, the projection jetty—an important part of the port where many boats are moored—was closed, and there is a real dilemma for those who make repairs. Does the North Shields Fish Quay make a bid? As a private company, it would be able to access only 50% of the funding from the European maritime and fisheries funds. Does the Port of Tyne do it? It can potentially access more funding but, like most trust ports around the country, it is not a small or medium-sized enterprise, so it does not fit into that category. We are therefore left scratching our heads as to where the money will come from, and fishermen are being prevented from going about their daily business. I wrote to the Minister earlier this week, and I hope that he will read of our concerns and ask his Department or, perhaps, the Marine Management Organisation to look into them, because getting an outcome and finding funding is urgent. In life after the common fisheries policy, will resources for infrastructure funding remain in place as they are now, because it is important to ports such as North Shields?

As for what post-CFP will look like, different areas will have different priorities. As I have said, North Shields is the biggest prawn port and therefore has an inshore fleet and a 12-mile limit is crucial, but it would suffice. Frankly, a 200-mile exclusive economic zone really is not relevant when, I am told, perhaps only one or two foreign vessels a year may fish those areas. Local fishermen are not particular exercised about that. North Shields has the biggest prawn port exports, with 95% of the prawns being exported. They are not processed or frozen; there are five days between them being caught and being put on tables, which are usually in European Union member states. Lorries cannot afford to wait at a hard border, and we cannot afford to have tariffs. The MMO currently issues around 300 catch certificates a year for exports to non-EU countries. If a certificate is required for every single lorry that goes to France, Spain or Italy, an estimated 21,000 certificates would be necessary, which would be a disaster for North Shields. What is the point of catching all that fish if there are no accessible markets? What is the Minister’s plan? What arrangements will be in place after we exit the CFP?

As for the salmon drift net fishery, there are only about a dozen licences on the north-east coast. They are being phased out, and that decision is based on evidence that is at least questionable because some of our rivers in Northumberland have had salmon runs for the first time in many years. We were previously told that licences needed to be phased out because the EU wanted to make them part of the whole sustainability issue, but the pressure does not come from the EU; it comes from landowners who want to protect their fishing rights to ensure that they get their share of the catches, because it is a big business. Post-CFP, will the Minister stand up to the landowners’ lobby? The fishermen in the heritages fisheries have enormous respect for the environment and a fantastic record of restocking our rivers, and it is in the interests of the fisheries that the fishermen’s interests are looked after.

In the seconds I have remaining, I invite all Members to come to see our new memorial to fishermen lost at sea, Fiddler’s Green, which was unveiled in September by Julie Myhill, the partner of James Noble—the most recent fisherman to lose his life. It reminds us that fishing is a dangerous job, and every policy maker must have that at the forefront of their mind.