Royal Yacht Britannia: International Trade

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Oliver Colvile

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr MacNeil]

And Plymouth, sorry.

It was pointed out that Her Majesty is Queen of 16 realms, and that perhaps Commonwealth countries could contribute to the yacht, which might mean that they would want it themselves for rambling trade expeditions across the world. Who knows? I think they would be reluctant to call it Britannia in that case; they might want to call it The Commonwealth. Otherwise it might fuel awful sentiments, such as republicanism in Australia, if people were paying their taxes to contribute to a yacht for a far-off country.

That brings me to the name: Britannia. I thought some hon. Members might have looked at the opportunity of having the yacht for the 100th anniversary of the UK, which will fall in December 2022 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland becomes 100 years old. That opportunity was missed—perhaps there is some nervousness that Britannia as currently constituted might find itself being two states before that date, with the boat perhaps needing to be called Scotia.

The answer to the calamity facing the UK is not a yacht, which I think a number of hon. Members, in the backs of their minds, really do feel. The answer is not the superstitious notion that all future trade success depends on having a royal yacht. The idea that getting to the front of the queue is based on having a royal yacht belongs on the back of a fag packet. It is not the back of a yacht that gets nations to the front of the queue; it is the professionalism of being a good trading nation and having negotiators—the UK currently has twelve, but it needs about 200. There is a real danger that the UK could be mugged at international negotiations because it does not have the experience of small places like the Faroe Islands or Iceland, which have 50,000 and 300,000 people respectively. Those are the issues that should be bothering the UK.

Top trading nations do not have a royal yacht. China does not have a royal yacht, the USA does not have a royal yacht, Germany does not have a royal yacht. Nor do South Korea, France, Hong Kong or Italy, and all those nations are ahead of the UK.

[Oliver Colvile]

The countries the hon. Gentleman has just talked about do not have a royal family; we do.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman is making, because they are ahead of us in trading. As a monarchist myself, I do not particularly like the republican sentiments he is leaning towards by indicating that we might be better off in trading if we were a republic. I do not find that at all appealing.

If the UK were able to build a ship, could it not be doing so now? The idea that the Conservatives have suddenly become Keynesians and are looking for a fiscal stimulus to ignite industry across the country rings hollow, particularly when we have seen the fetish of austerity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said.

The hostility to the gin market today has surprised me—I would have thought that people could have supported the gin industry, but no. Hon. Members have shown some hostility towards it this afternoon, although happily the whisky industry, in which Scotland excels, was not included in that.

The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) made a serious point about a royal yacht being a very big target. A lot of royal naval assets would be tied up in ensuring its safety. In the world we are in at the moment, it would be a sitting duck, and it would cost an awful lot of money to make sure it was safe. In fact, although the costs were put at £7 million a year to finance the boat back on charter from her owners, the crew of about 250, which the royal yacht had, would cost about £7.5 million to £12 million in wages, and the officers would cost a further £1.2 million. That is not including the cost of defending the yacht, which was the important point that the hon. Gentleman made.

Reality came crashing into the debate in the fantastic speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, which some of the hon. Gentlemen present greeted with, indeed, great honour and gentlemanliness. She made a great point about food banks and cuts to social services. To add to that, with the pound crashing, the current projections of costs for the royal yacht may go further north. She correctly made a point about the shortage of armed forces equipment. It is a rose-tinted fiction that we will have a royal yacht, and then all will be well with the situation the UK has found itself in.

This debate has shown that the UK has found itself in some sort of trouble, but I say to colleagues that the answer is not the comfort blanket of a royal yacht. In fact, to the outside world the idea will look bizarre. I cannot wait to see “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah; the previous presenter Jon Stewart had great fun a few years ago with the UK’s fetish for shipping on the Thames, but this will be seen as high comedy across the world. The idea is that a royal yacht will make Britain great again—I cannot remember which hon. Member said Britain was not great. He did not exactly say that, but he implied that Britain was not great by saying that the yacht would make Britain great again. Another hon. Member said that Britain would stand tall in the world, indicating that Britain does not stand tall in the world at the moment. Indeed, it does not, because of Brexit. It is a laughing stock from Reykjavik to Buenos Aires—that is the reality, and building a royal yacht would only add to that. I am sorry to say that to hon. Members, and I wish them well in what they are trying to do, but the idea of having the comfort blanket of a royal yacht is barking up the wrong tree.

Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Oliver Colvile

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on securing the debate, and add my tribute to her. I have known her for 30 years since she worked for the European Democratic group in the European Parliament. She has retained her interest, vision and energy in a very big way.

As many hon. Members will be aware, I represent a constituency that has one of the principal fishing ports in the south-west—it is second only to Brixham, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). The port has been significantly affected by the former and late Prime Minister Edward Heath’s disastrous decision to hand over fishing waters to the Common Market as part of those 1972 negotiations. The arguments at that time were that European fishing waters should not be owned by one country, but be considered as a common European resource. That approach has been far too isolationist and protectionist, and has failed to take fully into account the impact that other parts of the world, and specifically the Antarctic, have on the Atlantic ocean’s fishing grounds.

In just a few days’ time, on 29 March—coincidentally the birthday of the former Conservative Prime Minister, the right hon. John Major—we will commemorate at St Paul’s cathedral the centenary of the deaths of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions on the ice during the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. Just days earlier, Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal will come to Plymouth, around the corner from where Scott himself lived, to rededicate a memorial that represents courage supported by devotion and crowned by immortality, with fear, death and despair trampled underfoot. That is a very good approach. At the base of the memorial is an inscription from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Those are very fine words.

I was delighted that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was able to pay a private visit to the Scott memorial when he recently came to Plymouth to meet 3 Commando Brigade. I am very grateful that he has taken such a keen interest in this son of Plymouth.

While until recently Scott was considered by some as a failed British hero who lost a race to the south pole to Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, he is now recognised by many as the father of maritime and scientific research, and 29 March will be a very proud day for all of us who revere this great British hero. The legacy of his research and that of the British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, shows us very clearly the impact that climate change is having on the world’s seas and fishing stocks.

During a recent visit to the British Antarctic Survey, I learned how it is extracting 800,000 years of ice. Its analysis of the captured air bubbles allows it to estimate the atmospheric composition and the temperature of the planet over those 800,000 years. While for much of this time there has not been much change in the global climate, there has been significant change since industrialisation began some 300 years ago. The BAS explained how plankton—a staple diet for many of our fish and which can be found in the Antarctic—are in much shorter supply and, combined with over-fishing, could have a significant impact on our fishing stocks.

Just last month, my hon. Friend the Minister and I visited Plymouth marine laboratories on the Hoe. Staff there confirmed that climate change is responsible for changes in our fisheries. They noted that European anchovy and sardine—southern, warm-water species—can now be seen in the North and Baltic seas after about 40 years of absence. They believe that the dynamics of the Atlantic’s fishing stocks are strongly affected by the atmospheric conditions of all the seas throughout the world. They confirmed that half of European fishing stocks are in trouble and that there has to be better international co-operation, especially where UK waters overlap with France, Holland and Ireland.

As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, I personally continue to be a strong advocate for bringing the 200-mile UK fishing waters back under UK control, and I would be grateful if he could indicate where this suggestion has got to in his discussions with other European Fisheries Ministers.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Colvile]

With great trepidation, yes.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman need feel no trepidation. It has been acknowledged in common fisheries policy documents that the successful area for a fishery under national control is up to 12 miles. In the event of a possible failure by the Minister to bring back a 200-mile limit as the hon. Gentleman wants, perhaps we should look to extend the 12 miles to 199 miles, thereby leaving the area of the common fisheries policy between 199 miles and 200 miles.

Fisheries

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Oliver Colvile

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on selecting the motion and my hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on convincing the Committee to discuss it. This has been a useful and helpful debate. I also welcome the decision to hold the debate in the main Chamber. Many of us were concerned that the main fishing debate was not held here last December, and I hope that that can be put right later this year. I also hope that the Government will support the motion, so that we can send a clear, unanimous message on discards back to the European Commission. That would strengthen the hand of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) when he negotiates with what I perceive to be our European competitors.

I have campaigned on the issue of bringing our fishing waters back under UK national control, and on the issue of discards, in my constituency for the past 10 years as part of my campaign to sit on these green Benches. During the past decade, I have spoken to the academics at Plymouth university, the local fishing industry and the many experts who work in those agencies that make Plymouth one of the major marine scientific research global players. They say that, by bringing UK waters back under national control, we can conserve fishing stocks and potentially discourage the large Russian and other foreign factory ships and industrial trawlers that come into our waters and do so much damage to our fish stocks and our fishing industry.

I want at this stage to pay a real tribute to those people who, as the nursery rhyme goes, “put the little fishies on our little dishies”. Fishing is one of the most dangerous industries in our country. Our fishermen go to sea each day, in all kinds of weather, day and night, in winter and summer, to put Britain’s No. 1 traditional signature dish on our plates. It is ironic that, only recently, the House has been served a very real reminder of just how dangerous fishing is. I want to express my own personal tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, whose husband died in such tragic circumstances a few weeks ago. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Minister for coming to a packed funeral, where the local fishing communities on both sides of the Tamar river came together to pay tribute to one of our top fishermen. The Minister’s attendance made a real impact, and may I take this opportunity to thank him for buying me a drink afterwards as well?

However, I do not need to be reminded that sacrifices such as Neil Murray’s are a regular occurrence among the peninsula’s fishing communities. Anyone who walks down the Barbican in my constituency will see a large wall covered in memorials to Plymouth fishermen who were killed trying to feed us on a regular basis. The last time I went out on a boat, it was shortly after a force 7 gale and I have to admit that I was a little bit ill on several occasions. I learned that anyone who is able to get their boots off in time once they have fallen overboard will probably survive for about three minutes before almost certainly dying either by drowning or of the cold. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will speak to our hon. Friends in the Department for Transport to ensure that no more lives will be lost because of policy changes relating to our coastguards.

I am not going to pretend that I am as well informed on this issue as others, including my very good and hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, who has demonstrated her excellent understanding of the issues that face the industry. I am aware, however, that fishing is a totemic issue in the south-west, and that it focuses attitudes towards our membership of the EU. One of the biggest mistakes that Britain made in joining the European common market in the first place was to sign up to the common fisheries policy. It was designed to make European fishing grounds a common resource by giving access to all member states.

[Mr MacNeil]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the initial mistake, but surely that mistake has been compounded, decade after decade, by successive Conservative, Labour and coalition Governments who have done absolutely nothing to correct the error that was made almost 40 years ago.

[Oliver Colvile]

I do not disagree, but I hope that we now have an opportunity to turn the tide as far as that matter is concerned.

The stated aim of the common fisheries policy is to help to conserve fish stocks, but I believe that in the current form it is a wasteful policy which damages the environment and our fishing industry. It determines the amount of fish that each national fleet can catch. Employment in the industry has declined dramatically, especially here in the United Kingdom, and, despite reforms, fish stocks have continued to fall. I have always understood that the requirement for Britain to sign up to the CFP was a last-minute act; the six countries of France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and Italy put it in at the last moment. This country was so keen to join the European Common Market, as it was then, that Geoffrey Rippon, who was leading the whole debate and our negotiations with our European competitors, agreed that we would sign up, much to their surprise. At the time, few envisaged that Austria, which I remind hon. Members has no coast, would also have the opportunity to vote on the CFP when it joined the European Union in 1994.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman makes a classic, tremendous point: Austria has a say but Scotland does not. Does he understand why I might be a Scottish nationalist?

[Oliver Colvile]

I do not, as it happens. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that this situation becomes a bargaining tool for other bits of policy which can be played around with.

Over the last few days, I have been inundated with e-mails and letters from people calling on me to support this motion and Channel 4’s Fish Fight campaign, and I suspect that a large number of other hon. Members have too. I give my support very enthusiastically. The idea that fishermen, who do such a dangerous job and are not particularly well paid, are fined for landing fish which do not fit a specific regulation and are thrown back into the water, is a total scandal. I welcome the Government’s commitment to fight for changes to the size of nets, but I hope that the Minister will press our European competitors to reform the CFP further, to allow us to decide which fish are taken out of our seas and who takes them out, and to stop this discarding policy.