Fishing Industry

Debate between Andrew George and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 28th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George]

Well, he died a fish, and we are very saddened by his demise. I should reflect, as we certainly did in those days, on the risk that people take to put fish on our table, of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) rightly reminded us. I remember that in 1997, we lost seven men in the industry in my constituency alone. It was just after the loss of the Margaretha Maria 200 miles off the coast of west Cornwall, in which we lost four men from Newlyn. We have sadly lost others in the industry since then. It is worth reminding ourselves just what a hazardous trade it is.

It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in his place. I thank him for coming down to my constituency in the summer to visit Newlyn and for the genuine interest he takes in the industry, both in the catching sector and in the processing and marketing sector, which certainly impressed everyone there who met him. I am very grateful to him for making that visit.

I come back to a debate on this subject after a decade’s sabbatical in the real world, which I must say is a very pleasurable place, and reflecting on a number of changes within the fishing industry in that time. Obviously, there is the B word; we do not want to return to the skirmishes of Brexit this afternoon, but it has certainly been a momentous change. During the period I was away, the fishing industry and fishermen were used as the poster boys for the Brexit campaign. I have to say that they were sold a very cruel hoax in terms of the outcome of the vote; they were made a lot of promises that have not been fulfilled at all.

I had been prepared to concede that there was a major opportunity for the fishing industry, and that it was the one sector within the UK economy that could potentially have benefited as a result of Brexit, but such a benefit has not been delivered. Those people who made promises at that time just walked away from the industry after they had come down to places such as Newlyn to have their photographs taken for the purposes of their referendum campaign. That caused a lot of bitterness within the industry. Nevertheless, we move on.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland said, the common fisheries policy was often described as the worst possible policy apart from all the others, because fishing is a very difficult industry to manage, as the Minister knows and, indeed, as we all know. I remember engaging in fishing debates 10 years ago and there was a genuine belief then that we could move the industry away from the annual cliff-edge of the quota negotiations to a multi-annual system that would enable the industry, especially the catching sector, to plan five years ahead. Yes, there would be adjustments during that five-year, multi-annual rolling programme, but nevertheless it would provide a greater degree of certainty.

As I said in my intervention on my right hon. Friend, the science supports a multi-annual programme. If we want a recovery programme for most of the stock, there is no reason why we cannot project forward five years—not with great certainty, admittedly, regarding the situation five years hence, but with an indicative quota going forward over that period. That would help the industry to plan for the future.

Another outcome for the industry in my area has been the detriment to the very significant export trade that existed. A number of companies operating back then —particularly those at the smaller end, admittedly—have gone out of business as a result of the impediments that predictably, indeed inevitably, were placed in their way, particularly for those involved in the export of live fish to the continent. That was predictable but avoidable, and it has clearly had a detrimental impact on the local economy. Nevertheless, our local community adjusts itself to the challenges it faces.

The hon. Members for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) have made some excellent cases on behalf of Cornwall’s fishing industry and the important role it plays in the local economy. Indeed, the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation produced a report, which I know was handed to the Minister, called “The True Value of Seafood to Cornwall”. It shows that the industry contributes £174 million to Cornwall’s gross value added per annum, with 500 full-time equivalent jobs in the catching sector alone. That equates to about 8,000 jobs in the seafood supply chain, so it is a significant player in the Cornish economy. It is often ignored, but nevertheless very important, particularly in my part of Cornwall with Newlyn being the largest port with a significant market.

The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth also mentioned the need for a fishing and marine strategy, and I hope the Minister will take that on board. There are both opportunities and challenges associated with rolling out, as the Government must, with our support, the offshore wind programme in the Celtic sea, which we in Cornwall are keen to ensure achieves maximum benefit to the local economy and the community. There is no reason why it cannot be rolled out in a manner that enhances fishing opportunities rather than creating a detriment to the industry, but that requires the Minister, Energy Ministers and others to engage in dialogue with the industry to ensure that the location of those sites is planned with great care.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to one of the—probably—unintended consequences of the decisions taken, through a little story of an individual fisherman from my constituency. An inshore fishermen from Cadgwith, who fishes from Newlyn, has been affected by the cut in pollack quotas. As the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth said, compensation was offered to the industry, and many who received the funds used them, naturally, because they are fishermen, to go into other sectors where in fact there was pressure. For example, the industry is trying to protect the crawfish sector and implement a recovery programme. By then, there was no reason why the fishermen could not invest in the gear necessary to catch crawfish, and that had a detrimental impact on the recovery programme efforts.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

I want to clarify something in relation to pollack. My understanding is that the scientific advice given out in June was that the total allowable catch should be set at zero, but it was not set at zero. The quota was set at 925 tonnes; even now, the stocks are much lower this year because the decision was not in line with the scientific assessment.

[Andrew George]

I will come to that in a second. The nature of what happens off the Cornish coast, and certainly in the south-west and other areas, is that pollack is caught in a multispecies environment. It is impossible not to catch pollack even when targeting other species—the hon. Member helps me to make the point—so my constituent went and targeted hake. The first thing to bear in mind is this. While he was targeting pollack, he was between 8 and 20 miles off the coast. To target hake, he had to go 40 miles or beyond, and that placed his small boat in significantly greater danger. In other words, it put him at greater risk to pursue an alternative fishery. That is point No. 1 to bear in mind.

The second point is that there is a pollack by-catch if someone is targeting hake. During one month—March of last year—my constituent caught more than 100 kg of by-caught pollack, which he was entitled to land in the market. Indeed, he was required to land it in the market; he could not throw it overboard. He was obliged to land this fish, as a result of which his licence was frozen by the Marine Management Organisation. Following some dispute, he was fined £1,000, and he then had to move out of that fishery. Of course, he was not targeting pollack at the time; he was trying to avoid it as best he could. The MMO did not offer him any kind of solution to the problem that he found himself with.

As a result of all that, my constituent has come out of that fishery and has since been targeting crawfish, of which the industry itself had undertaken voluntary measures to increase the minimum size and to help to recover the stock. Indeed, the minimum size proposed by the industry and implemented in Cornwall has since been picked up, adopted, in national legislation. The crawfish season is now over, so we now have a fisherman who has tied his boat up and is no longer able to fish.

The point is that I hope that the Minister, when looking at this issue, bears in mind that when we propose regulation affecting the industry, that is in effect a two-dimensional policy affecting three-dimensional reality. That is the problem. I hope that the Minister will reflect on the lessons learned just from that little anecdote when considering how policy is implemented, and on the unintended detrimental consequence. The measure does not actually help even the species that it is supposed to protect.

I hope that we are not coming back here in 10 years’ time, gnashing our teeth about the same issues and continuing this annual bunfight in which we do not even know what the quotas will be in just a few weeks’ time; I hope we have multi-annual quotas. One of the best ways of helping the industry is to provide it with all the capacity to manage itself better and for us politicians to try to stand back and keep out of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that I sat down to receive my hon. Friend’s intervention because she is entirely right. What she said goes to the remarks made by our hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) who, because of illness, is no longer in her place. She made a point about ensuring that consultations happen in accordance with the tides so that fisherfolk will actually be at the consultations and not out at sea. Her point was very interesting because that is not always appreciated.

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be implying that the fishing industry is resistant to any conservation measures and would resist the proposed management measures that inevitably have to be brought into the industry. From my experience, the industry itself often proposes changes in order to protect its stock for the future. For example, the Trevose ground closure off the north coast of Cornwall during spring of each year was proposed by the industry itself.

National Health Service

Debate between Andrew George and Barry Gardiner

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Lezli Boswell, the chief executive of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, wrote to me on behalf of the consortium about concerns that have been raised, including by the unions, saying that once the national pay review has concluded under “Agenda for Change” it would then be appropriate, if it is at all appropriate, for any further local discussions to proceed. Without union involvement in the work of the consortium, I agree with the hon. Lady that the proposal is irrelevant and potentially disruptive and dangerous, given its impact on staff morale throughout the NHS in the south-west. My hon. Friends will be listening closely to this debate, and to the concerns that have been raised by many Members and, indeed, by staff across the south-west about the consequences for staff morale and the impact on NHS services. I certainly hope that the Secretary of State will address those issues when he concludes the debate.

A key issue is one that dare not speak its name—it affected staff morale under the previous Government as well—but it is the increasing pressure on front-line NHS staff. The staffing levels at the coal face have never been sufficient to provide a safe staff to patient ratio. Many people have been critical of nursing and care standards in the NHS, but they often overlook staffing ratios.

I have also expressed concerns about the out-of-hours service in Cornwall—I know that we will not have time to discuss that—and the Care Quality Commission will produce a report as a result of those concerns, which were also voiced by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton).

On pay for staff in the south-west, the chief executive of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust said to me in a letter:

“In recent years NHS organisations have largely exhausted other avenues of potential cost-saving (including reducing reliance on bank or agency staff and implementing service improvement initiatives). Monitor…has also estimated that NHS organisations with a turnover of around £200m will need to produce savings of around £9m a year for each year until 2016/17 to remain in financial health.”

She goes on to say that the consortium, which consists of 20 organisations in the south-west,

“is looking at how pay costs may be reduced, whilst maintaining a transparent and fair system that is better able to reward high performance, incentivise the workforce and support the continued delivery of high quality healthcare.”

Does the Secretary of State agree with that, and how does he intend that that should proceed? How will he protect staff and staff morale, because the consequences will, I fear, derail national negotiations on “Agenda for Change” and drive down pay and morale, particularly in an area of very low wages? I hope that he is listening.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

rose—

Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Andrew George and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Of course ecosystems interact with each other, and in so far as the hon. Gentleman makes that point it is absolutely unexceptional. None the less, scientists and fishermen look at those ecosystems. Of course there are migratory stocks, straddling stocks, nurseries where fish spawn and spawning grounds that need to be protected, but the point is to look at this as part of the ecosystem and not simply to divide it up into national countries’ interests. We need a regionalised framework based around significant ecosystems so that we can manage those stocks more effectively.

At present, even detailed technical decisions are taken centrally in Europe. The Lisbon treaty provides that the EU has exclusive competence under the CFP. However, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report makes an interesting case for a lawful way of qualifying the EU’s exclusive competence over the conservation of marine resources, thereby creating a framework for genuine regionalisation. It argues that exclusive competence does not apply where the CFP does not apply. Therefore, if the CFP regulations were amended to exclude certain marine conservation policies, the scope of the exclusive competence would be limited to the amended CFP.

The establishment of regional advisory councils is cited as a key success of the 2002 CFP reform because they have served as forums for stakeholders to inform policy implementation at a regional level. The trouble is that they have no decision-making powers. Although the draft basic regulation that sets out the main rules for the CFP would address centralised decision making through a combination of multi-annual plans and regionalisation of decision making, I think that a fully regionalised management system should include the following features: quotas allocated on the basis of ecosystem regions in order to manage fishing pressures according to the necessities of those different ecosystems; regular scientific assessment of all marine species, not just fish stocks, within a given eco-region in order to establish the impact of fishing on the ecosystem as a whole; and quota allocation on the basis of eco-regions with different licences used in different ecosystem regions and with no transfers between those regions.

Certain decision-making powers need to be devolved to regional management bodies in order to tailor the application of central policy objectives for EU fisheries to the specifics of each ecosystem. The main tool for fisheries management is the annual setting of total allowable catches. Currently, the European Commission requests scientific advice for the establishment of fisheries management plans on the basis of sustainability. However, the European Council is under no obligation to adhere to that advice when agreeing total annual quotas for stocks.

The result is that the European Fisheries Council sets total allowable catch limits that are on average 34% higher than scientifically recommended sustainable limits. In the period 1987 to 2011, European Fisheries Ministers set fishing quotas above scientific recommendations in 68% of their decisions. In the case of one hake stock, quotas were set 1,100% higher than scientists advised.

Over-fishing has made the fishing industry economically vulnerable, but over-fishing does not have just economic costs; it has social and environmental ones as well. At the Johannesburg world summit on sustainable development in 2002, the EU committed to achieving MSY—maximum sustainable yield—for all fish stocks by 2015 at the latest, but in 2010 it estimated that 72% of its fisheries remained over-fished, with 20% fished beyond safe biological limits, risking the wholesale collapse of those fisheries.

The zero draft for the forthcoming United Nations sustainable development conference in Rio calls on states to maintain or restore depleted fish stocks to sustainable levels, and further to commit to implementing science-based management plans to rebuild stocks by 2015.

The EU marine strategy framework directive requires that all EU fisheries achieve good environmental status by 2020, including the attainment of sustainable fishing levels for all stocks.

[Andrew George]

On the primary thesis that the hon. Gentleman seeks to advance, he claims that fishing communities are in decline because of over-fishing, but might it not also be because of inept policy, whereby fishermen have to catch far more fish but most are thrown back dead?

[Barry Gardiner]

Discards have been widely debated in this Chamber, and I shall try to come on to that issue, but time is limited, so I must press on. I acknowledge the force of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, however.

MSY is the largest catch that can be sustained over the long term, but there is FMSY and BSMY, fishing maximum sustainable yield and biomass maximum sustainable yield. The argument that I made to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who speaks for the Scottish National party, was precisely to that point, because we can go on getting FMSY out of a small stock, but if we want to achieve the largest possible catch we need to build the biomass MSY to ensure that we then get a sustainable yield out of that much larger biomass.

That is why I absolutely urge the Minister to support Commissioner Damanaki in saying that we have to achieve FMSY by 2015, albeit that biomass MSY might not be achieved until sometime after that—I hope as soon as possible, but no later than 2020, as the stocks demand.

Achieving that aim by 2015 will necessitate the following key measures: first, rendering scientific advice binding, thus preventing quotas from exceeding biologically sustainable limits; and, secondly, introducing stock assessments and management plans for all fish and shellfish, including non-commercial species that are currently unmanaged, in order to establish sustainable limits for harvesting. Ensuring that all fish and shellfish are harvested at sustainable levels is an absolute prerequisite of the future profitability and survival of EU fisheries.

But we also need to think about the issue in terms of biomass—something that the Committee’s report does not address. A biomass MSY is the biomass that can support the harvest of that maximum sustainable yield. Achieving MSY as set out in the draft CFP means rebuilding fish populations to a level of biomass maximum sustainable yield in order to support the level of annual catches—and viable fishing communities, their economies and their social needs.

In an effort to limit fishing to sustainable levels, EU regulations under the common fisheries policy prohibit the landing of commercial species above a given annual quota. In practice, however, that often results in the discarding of thousands of tonnes of saleable fish—but just at the point when I am about to answer the question asked by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), I fear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you are going to tell me that I have run out of time.

Fisheries

Debate between Andrew George and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

I know; I blame myself. I apologise for having drawn myself into the very cul-de-sac that I was saying was the reason why we failed to make progress before.

As a result of the regional advisory councils, we were able to develop measures such as the Trevose ground closure, around the north coast of my constituency, each spring, which ensures that large numbers of vessels are not going in and plundering the stocks in that area. We have seen a significant improvement in the health of several species following that measure. The proposal was originally made and instigated by local fishermen, but rolling it out required international agreement.

[Barry Gardiner]

I seek to bolster the hon. Gentleman’s position, not to attack it. Does he agree that if we are to have truly ecosystem-based management of stock, it must be based not on regional advisory councils but on regional management?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman emphasises my point. We need to move from advice to management. We have a far too centralised common fisheries policy and, as we have been saying for decades, we need to decentralise it.

The fundamental problem, as many hon. Members have said, is the blunt instrument of the quota system. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test implied, we do not want to replace that overnight with the blunt response of stopping all discards. That could have immediate catastrophic consequences. We need to move to a situation where there is no need for discards of dead fish from trawlers.