Fishing Industry: Government Support

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on securing the debate and making a strong case on behalf of his region in Scotland. He focused on the fishing and coastal growth fund, which is £360 million over 12 years, as he understands, so it is spread over a very long period. When one looks at it across the whole UK on an annual basis, it is spread very thinly.

Coastal communities in particular have been left behind following Brexit, as the hon. Member mentioned. In Cornwall, for example, we were entitled to objective 1 aid from the EU. Following Brexit, we were promised equivalent funds from the Treasury to make up for the loss of EU aid; it was equivalent to £100 million a year coming into Cornwall, which is one of the most deprived regions not just in the UK, but in Europe. It is now 2026 and there are no funds at all: over the years, that replacement has simply not happened.

A paltry amount is available through the fisheries and coastal growth fund, but it is being spread around the country and, as the hon. Member rightly says, it is a relatively small fund. It is welcome, of course—one should not decry the Government for making the offer—and I entirely understand that the purpose of the fund is to modernise the fishing industry and the seafood sector, build resilience and support coastal communities. However, I hope that the Minister will ensure that the funds go to those areas that need it most, rather than simply allocating it on a flatline basis across the country, based on the size of the existing fishing industry. Not all communities are doing as well as one another.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on adding to what must be a world record for Westminster Hall debate contributions. I thank him for emphasising the social and cultural as well as economic consequences of the fishing industry in his part of Northern Ireland. I also congratulate the new hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Lara Bird), who is already proving hyperactive: this is her second debate in Westminster Hall today. She made a very telling contribution that illustrated brilliantly the impact of changes in recent years, the demise of the haddock fishery and its consequences on the community.

On the future of the fishing industry, we must recognise and acknowledge that the best type of fishing policy is one in which politicians do not need to get involved. It is one in which scientists, fishermen and marine conservationists work together in a framework created by politicians in which they can come to an agreement on the future management of stocks. In my early days in Parliament, I was a member of what was then the Agriculture Committee. We visited a number of countries, including Spain and Iceland, where it was quite evident that the relationship between scientists and fishermen was much better established than in this country, where—at that stage, at least—scientists were seen in the industry as some kind of enemy. The presumption, wrongly, was that they were working to shut the commercial fisheries down.

Now those relationships have significantly improved. Recently, in April this year, on the initiative of the fishing industry itself, the Cornwall fisheries science board was established. We need to see a great deal more of those kinds of positive initiatives. We have just had the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum, so it is appropriate that we take a moment to reflect on that, as it has been mentioned on a number of occasions.

As someone who campaigned to remain, I had to acknowledge in the debates we had at the time that the one sector in which one could easily identify potential to thrive and improve in Brexit circumstances was the fishing industry, if there were an opportunity to regain control out to the 12-mile limit.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew George]

Briefly, as I do not want to test Sir Alec’s patience.

[Ben Maguire]

I will be brief. My local fishermen in North Cornwall have been waiting three years for the inshore fisheries and conservation authority and DEFRA to implement a byelaw to restrict vessels above 12 metres in the inshore Cornish waters within 6 nautical miles. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is urgently needed and would do exactly what he has been calling for by restricting those larger vessels and helping to manage the stocks that he is talking about?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Had we secured control between the 6-mile and 12-mile limits, as was promised at the time but has not been delivered, one could see circumstances in which local IFCAs, local management and indeed the Government would agree that there would be an opportunity to achieve that within the 6-mile limit.

It is telling that, after the flotillas up the Thames and certain campaigners using the fishing industry as the poster boy of the Brexit campaign, on occasions like this debate, when they should come along to explain what happened as a result of the promises they made, they are conspicuous by their absence. They are not here to answer for themselves and for the claims they made at the time. Where are they? They should be here to explain why the industry is still struggling post-Brexit.