UK Fishing Industry

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to take part in this most important debate. I apologise to the House now, as I did to your predecessor in the Chair, for the fact that, unfortunately, I will not be here at the conclusion of the debate. I am very aware that I will shortly be travelling towards Storm Caroline, and it is worth pausing for a second, as we debate in the relative calm of Westminster on a Thursday afternoon, to reflect that many of the fishermen in my constituency will be at sea in those conditions. It is worth remembering that they do a very difficult job in very dangerous circumstances, which is why we should be grateful to them for the work they do and to organisations such as the Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the Fishermen’s Mission and others that do so much to support them.

It strikes me that this may be a small piece of history, as this is perhaps the last of these fisheries debates we will have in their current form. This time next year, we will be looking towards the final Fisheries Council in which we will part of the EU, which brings me to my first ask. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and the Shetland Fisherman’s Association have both made it clear that they see it as obvious that for the first three months of 2019 we will remain part of the common fisheries policy but thereafter they seek bridging arrangements that will take them to end of the year, so that they might honour the arrangements that are made at the December Fisheries Council next year. That would then be the point at which we would properly exit the CFP. There is an elegant simplicity to that arrangement, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that that is the approach the Government will seek to pursue.

Fisheries management cannot continue as part of the CFP during any transitional period that follows after the end of March 2019 for one simple reason: we will not have a seat at the table when the decisions are made at the December Fisheries Council. I put that point to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions earlier this year, but she was less than clear in her answer—I realise that she perhaps does not have the background in fisheries of the Minister at the Dispatch Box today. I hope that he can confirm that that is the position and the Government will not leave us in a situation where our fishing industry is left having to abide by rules and decisions of which we have had no part in the making.

As the Shetland Fishermen’s Association put it to me in its briefing for today,

“water and markets don’t mix”.

By that, it makes the point that the fishing industry and the fishing rights should not be traded off against other sectors. When it comes to the negotiations around our departure, will the Minister confirm that he will do as I have urged him on other occasions and ring-fence the fishing industry? There are plenty of good historical reasons why that should be done. No other coastal state is forced to trade access to waters for access to markets, and I say to the Minister that the fishermen in my constituency would see any arrangement of that sort as nothing short of a betrayal of the undertakings given to them at the time when they voted in the EU referendum.

Of course we will remain subject to a variety of different concerns as the Brexit process continues. We need to address the question of markets, because we can catch as many fish as we like but we have to be able to sell them to somewhere, so we will take a close interest in that part of the negotiations. We also need to address the issue of employment for crew members, some of whom come from within the EU, with many then working in the processing sector. That is where certainty needs to be given to the industry as early as possible. It simply is not going to work if we are left in the same position with crew members coming from outside the UK as we are currently left with visas for fishing crew coming from outwith the EU.