Shellfish Aquaculture

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Anthony Mangnall

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I know how hard he works on behalf of the aquaculture businesses in his area, but also that he sees the wider picture across the United Kingdom. He is absolutely right about the spatial squeeze that is closing out our fishermen and aquaculture businesses. I suspect that this will not be much of a debate; it may just be a moment of violent agreement across the House to talk about how we can work together to find a collaborative approach that allows us to grow the sector and bring enormous benefits to our coastal communities, and indeed to the sector itself. The right hon. Gentleman will find no disagreement with me on this matter and I will certainly come on to that point later on.

We need to change our approach to address the decline and recognise that we must be fleet of foot to not just save the sector, but build it up, develop it and let it become the success that we all know it can be. With the Windsor framework almost agreed, it should not be wrong to expect an improved relationship between the UK and Europe. If that is the case, we can rightly expect to take advantage of this situation and see to it that sectors that are so readily dependent on close-to-home export markets have the opportunity to address some of the problems they have experienced both at home and abroad.

I will point to specific examples both at home and abroad of where I believe we can take the necessary steps to help our aquaculture sector enormously. As a representative of south Devon, with one of the finest coastlines, I can tell you, Ms Elliott, that there are few delights as good as fresh oysters and a pint of Guinness. In fact, I invite you and the Minister down to south Devon, and, even more, I shall pay for lunch—I don’t know if this counts as bribery—to welcome you down any time you like to experience such a delectable combination.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

What about the rest of us?

[Anthony Mangnall]

The Chair of the International Trade Committee is more than welcome to come as well. On the basis of cross-party co-operation I am happy to invite the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), as well. However, this lunch, which is rapidly becoming more expensive for me, is conditional on addressing the problems facing the mighty Pacific oyster. For over 100 years, the Pacific oyster has existed in our coastal waters. In fact, in the 1960s, to mitigate the inability to farm many native species in certain parts of the United Kingdom, the Government reintroduced Pacific oysters to help expand and cultivate the aquaculture sector, so that we could grow a proper aquaculture industry.

The lack of clarity around the status of the Pacific oyster has held back the ability to farm it and benefit from its presence in our waters. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been absolutely clear in correspondence to me and the chairman of the shellfish aquaculture all-party group, my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), that there is no doubt that Pacific oysters are a non-native species. We do not disagree with that point. However, given the prevalence of Pacific oysters, and the almost indisputable presumption that we will not be able to rid them from our waters, it is surely time for DEFRA to recognise that the Pacific oyster has become naturalised to the UK environment.

It is worth pointing out, but I am happy to be corrected on this, that in the guidance on section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, paragraph 18 states:

“A species would be considered to be ‘in a wild state’ where the population lives and fends for itself in the wild.”

If we were not farming them, those Pacific oysters would continue to exist in our waterways. Why not take advantage of what we have?

As the Minister knows, DEFRA has moved positively for those farming Pacific oysters south of the 52nd parallel. However, for those north of the line of latitude, the future looks desperate if not deathly. One only needs to consider the issues with Lindisfarne Oysters, which has been restricted from expanding by Natural England. North or south, east or west, the future of the industry is still in jeopardy because we are failing to be clear about the status of Pacific oysters in our waters.

The knock-on impact of the issue is that shoreline owners stop supporting the sector. I will give the very specific example of the Duchy of Cornwall, which has decided to phase out all Pacific oyster farms over the next two to three years on sites where they exist. It says the reason is that Pacific oysters remain classified as non-native and invasive. That decision alone will close three to four businesses in my constituency, and impact hundreds more across the country. It will also provide an example for other shoreline owners.

To compound the problem, Natural England has already issued advice to Natura 2000 sites, saying that it believes that,

“there should be no new pacific oyster farms and no expansion of existing ones should be allowed”.

Stopping the farming of Pacific oysters will not reduce or eradicate their presence in our waters, so why are we not taking advantage of the chance to build up the sector? To use comparative figures, the UK produces in the region of 3,000 tonnes of oysters while France produces 145,000—95% of which are Pacific oysters.

An hon. Lady from Cornwall—whose constituency I have totally forgotten—cannot be here but would make the point that in parts of Cornwall they do not want Pacific oysters to be introduced. It is important to put on record that the oyster farmers of Cornwall take a different approach.

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[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I utterly forgive the hon. Gentleman for using his intervention as an advertisement. After all, I mentioned many companies involved with shellfish in my constituency, so it is only just and right that he similarly uses the opportunity.

The right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) mentioned water purification, which has become an issue, particularly in recent years, since Brexit. He also mentioned a pop band: The Undertones. We have just left the “Rock Lobster” unturned—that is the only one we have left. We have certainly put every bit of music into this—the debate has gone almost like a symphony.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is never usually left out of any debate. I think I heard him ask when anything logical has ever come out of the EU. I do not know whether that was a criticism of Brexit. Did I mishear him? I definitely misheard him—I know what he was saying. The point is that the UK is now trading like a third country and will have the barriers that third countries have. The trade and co-operation agreement helps, but a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement would help further.

The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) is the chair of the very distinguished all-party parliamentary group for shellfish aquaculture. I am sure he relays his august position to all his constituents in his constituency correspondence. If I am not a member, can I make an application?

[Anthony Mangnall]

Yes.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Thank you. Reflecting the tone the hon. Member for Totnes took in his speech, my application has been expedited in record time.

The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness said that original thought in Parliament does not seem to get us anywhere, but I think he may be wrong when it comes to some areas of aquaculture. More power to his elbow as he carries on that noble pursuit.

Scotland’s mussel production increased by 52%, to 8,590 tonnes, between 2020 and 2021, and oyster production was up 70% in the same period. Combined, their value was £9.8 million—up 61%. That is a success story. It is also a success story in this particular form of aquaculture. Oysters are kept in protective cages, as I have seen myself at Isle of Barra Oysters, and mussels hang from ropes, feeding on what passes by in the sea. In fact, they clean the sea, in many ways.

I am very much indebted to Gerard MacDonald of Isle of Barra Oysters, who said that Brexit has made export more difficult for him, and the import of specialist equipment more expensive. That is a very interesting point. He feels that Brexit has damaged the industry, limited prospects for expansion and hindered jobs in rural areas. He pointed out that Renault took much of the production. He said that France has huge production, but it imports a lot from Ireland, the Netherlands and England. He also points out that the Irish are now selling an awful lot of oysters directly to China at very good prices. He says that the cash is good for oysters from Ireland to China. We can learn from what is going on there, especially at this time of Brexit. Whether we are inside or outside the EU, that should not hamper our exports to China.

I am anxious to hear what the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and the Minister have to say in reply to the hon. Member for Totnes, and I want to leave him time to wind up. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak, Ms Elliott.

Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Anthony Mangnall

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I hear exactly what the right hon. Gentleman says, and he is right to an extent. However, let us suppose I were to give him £1 this year and £1.50 next year, and ask him how his income from the Member for the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar had changed. He could say that it had grown by a staggering 50%”, but it would have grown by only 50p. When you are starting with something very small and you say that the percentage is going to be very big as a result of the growth, you still have something very small at the end of it. We should bear that in mind.

I return to the point about the Brexit damage of 5% of GDP and the effect of this Australian trade deal, depending on which type of modelling we use. The first model gave us a 0.02% gain—that was on the Armington trade theory spectrum, which all members of the Committee know just like that. When we moved to the Melitz-style spectrum, we were given a figure of 0.08%, which represents growth of 400%. That is a fantastic bit of growth, but this was still only 0.08%. If Brexit is 5%, this is like saying, “I am losing £500 but the Australian trade deal is taking in £2, if I am using the pessimistic option, or £8, if I am using the optimistic option.” That still leaves the UK economy as a whole £498 to £492 out of pocket by this entire transaction. The joy and boosterism that comes from some parts of the former Government, at least, should be seen in that context. If we add in all the other trade deals—the American trade deal represents 0.2% of GDP, the New Zealand one that we are considering today represents about 0.1 % or 0.2% of GDP and the CPTPP represents about 0.08% of GDP—we might find ourselves up around the £40 mark. It is a bit like going to the races with £500 and coming back with 40 quid. That is basically what is happening here.

[Anthony Mangnall]

The hon. Gentleman is bamboozling us with some of the statistics, but is it not the case that in every trade agreement signed either by the UK or by other countries, every economic forecast has been underestimated? Trade deals evolve as they go on—professional services or manufacturing develop, which actually enlarges the benefit. So the forecasts are not accurate and they are usually a fantastic underestimation of where we end up.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is a very fine member of my Committee, if not the finest, bearing in mind that there are at least two fine members in front of me. He is right that the modelling can be wrong, but it is not usually out by £492 to £500. It may be out by £2 or £3. I caution him that if those models say that the outcome could be better, the flipside is that Brexit could be worse than the 5% that has been modelled using the same sort of criteria. I hope it is not. I would rather the optimistic side, but let us be aware that this thing can go either way.

We are often told that there are winners and losers in these trade deals. We have certainly identified losers today, including the crofter I alluded to. Certain losses are hitting agriculture. I decided as Chair of the International Trade Committee to write to the Australian high commission to ask if it could identify some losers in Australia we could speak to. It wrote back and told us that everyone was a winner in Australia and nobody at all was a loser. We set that in the context of the figures that were mentioned earlier for Australia and New Zealand. For New Zealand alone, agriculture, forestry and fishing will lose between £48 million and £97 million.

The chair of the Trade and Agriculture Commission Professor Lorand Bartels told us:

“I cannot think of another country that has significant agricultural production— so not the Hong Kongs or the Singapores of this world—liberalising fully in agriculture, even over what is almost a generation. … That is unusual.”

So the UK has done something very unusual here in opening up. It comes back to the point about free trade that was mentioned earlier. None of this is free trade. It is trade that still has restrictions. Rather than paying a tariff, now you need the paperwork. As people have found, paperwork itself is quite costly.

I am reminded of the man in the weekend paper—the brewer, I think from Kent. He had lost a large part of his £600,000 export market for beer to the European Union. It has now become a £2,000 market. He has lost 99.7% of his exports. He is now not exporting and cannot export to any country in the world. When he exports to the European Union, he is going to need paperwork, and the paperwork costs him. It is a hurdle to 99.7% of his trade.

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[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am honoured. I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), the second most humble crofter who is at home in this place. I pay tribute to him, because he has been and is an extraordinary Chair of the Select Committee. Despite some of the disagreements that we might have had throughout our deliberations on this deal, other deals and other trade matters, he has carried on and managed to get through a very lengthy trade agreement—at times with great frustration. It is right to pay tribute to him, as well as to the secretariat, who have done an extraordinary amount of work and have found it equally as frustrating as we have when we have not had the scrutiny or access to Ministers that we would like.

It should be no surprise that I support the Bill. Given the course of the debate, we have not spent a great deal of time speaking about the contents of the Bill, which is because it is remarkably uncontroversial in this instance. Wherever we have gone in our objectives and ambitions to sign new trade agreements, we are confounding expectations. It was not that long ago that, when we talked about signing a trade agreement with Australia or New Zealand, those on the Opposition Benches said that it would be impossible and we would not be able to do it in the timescale. Well, we have done it, and now we are looking faster than expected on New Zealand. As I said in an intervention, we are also already in discussions with the Gulf Co-operation Council, India, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership and Canada, and we have the Singapore digital partnership and the Japan agreement under our belt. To discount those is an enormous mistake, because what the UK has done in terms of Japan and the benchmark for digital trade is truly remarkable. The world is now following our digital trade agreements, and that will be an enormous benefit to our businesses and services, and to this country.

The striking thing in the course of this debate has been the discussion of import impacts versus export opportunities. I am not remotely surprised to hear the Opposition talk about imports that will impact us in the most adverse possible way, but our export opportunities have been underestimated and not given the full attention that they should have been given. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) talked about such opportunities, including the exports of machinery and professional services. We have to look at this in the round and not just cherry-pick the bits we think are going in a good way or a bad way; we have to look at them as a whole.

When we look at the Australia trade agreement, we are saying that farmers may have been adversely affected. I do not believe that. What I want to look at is all the trade agreements that we will have signed by the end of this Parliament. When the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar and I visited the middle east to study whether we should join the Gulf Co-operation Council, we sat with representatives of the small amount of farming done in that region who said that, actually, a trade agreement with them would be hugely advantageous. The NFU has gone on the record saying that an agreement with the GCC will be a massive boon for our farmers and food producers in this country. We cannot look at one trade agreement on its own.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Reflecting on the big dairy production we saw in the desert, did the hon. Gentleman not get the feeling that that was born of Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar, and that Qatar might be keen to protect and defend that trade interest? For that very reason, it might not result in what we assume it will result in for farmers across the nations of the UK.

[Anthony Mangnall]

That is a perfect example. What we saw in Qatar was small compared with Saudi Arabia’s industry—a 30,000-strong herd milking parlour versus one in Saudi Arabia for a 200,000-strong herd—so yes, that is a fair point, but there also is a meat market there whose doors are opened to us, so I think the NFU’s insight is particularly useful. It is important that we do not cherry-pick; we have to look at the agreements in the round.

In an intervention on the Chair of the Select Committee, I made a point about the economic forecasts. One of the best examples of a fantastically low forecast that was a total underestimate relates to America’s membership of the North American free trade agreement. Initially, very low growth and very low opportunity were predicted; the reality has been very different because, over time, businesses evolve and take advantage of opportunities. The onus is now on the Department for International Trade to ensure that we reach out to businesses across the land so that they take the opportunities available to export and to benefit from imports of parts and anything else that comes under an agreement. The figures might seem low or insignificant at this point, but we must also think about our expectations—how we want our economy to grow and our businesses to develop, and how we want to be able to exchange the benefits of services and industries.

A related point was made by the former Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), about professional qualifications and equivalence. We have an enormous opportunity to share and develop those sectors.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me again. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, may remember from your time as an august and esteemed member of the International Trade Committee that we discovered very early on in the negotiation and discussions with trade interests in Australia and New Zealand that one thing that could be done overnight was for the Home Office to ease up on work visas. This process requires Departments across Government to be aware that these things can happen if they are not being silly and obstructive in what I think is the most silly and obstructive Department in the Government, no matter who is in power.