Fisheries

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark, and to follow the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and congratulate his father on his birthday. I also congratulate Hartlepool on having a fishing fleet left. Unfortunately, precious few ships are left in Fleetwood, and much of our quota goes to the Anglo-Spanish fleets. To be fair though—this is part of the complexity of the industry in our region—much of our catch is hake, and I am told that there is no market for hake in Britain. The precious few boats that we have are under-10 metres. Like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is not in his place, I want to thank the Minister for securing a deal that ensures that there are no cuts in the nephrops catch in the Irish sea, which has benefited the few boats that commercially fish from Fleetwood.

Let me now come on to another area of complexity in our industry. Despite the fact that we have very few ships—only two or three ships fish for nephrops—tons and tons of fish come into Fleetwood, by road, from across the United Kingdom to be processed by families who have been processing fish for years and who have developed their skills alongside the fishermen. Therefore, although we have seen this decline in actual catches on the dock in Fleetwood, we have extremely thriving fish processing businesses. Can we acquire any kind of support to modernise the premises from which those businesses operate so that they can gain further orders? At the moment, they are stuck in buildings constructed in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which supermarkets will not go near. It is down to the local and county councils to get some support for a new fish market for Fleetwood. That illustrates the complexity of the fishing industry: from the catch, to the processing and, most importantly, to the market in Britain. We have a simplified market in this country and we need to maintain it.

Fishing is still in the blood of Fleetwood, even though the main fishing fleet has gone, but the key point I want to make is about wind farms at sea. Many hon. Members have questioned, with my support, wind farms on land, but it is convenient to think that wind farms at sea cause no problems, are more viable and do not lead to complaints from local villagers and landowners about how they look. In February, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change opened two new wind farms in the Irish sea, Walney 1 and Walney 2, which I understand are the biggest in Britain, but are now to be extended by DONG Energy. At the same time, the Isle of Man, which is also positioned in the Irish sea and can be seen from Fleetwood on a clear day when it is not raining—

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Seldom then.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

Indeed. There is a proposal for another wind farm to be built on the Isle of Man by Centrica. We have already lost our ferry from Fleetwood to Larne, and if the wind farms go ahead there would be no possibility of a ferry.

Furthermore, when we look for some solid science about the impact of wind farms on fishing grounds, we find much contradictory evidence. Fishermen tell me that they change the nature of what is there, and if that is so, can they get in to fish them anyway? Others say that they drive fish away. I can find no solid evidence—perhaps the Minister will point me to some research—about the impact of the creeping development of wind farms out at sea.

Another aspect of the complexity is the effect on fishermen of the cables that go out to the wind farms, which is often discounted. In about 50 years’ time, I imagine the whole Irish sea will be layered with endless cables like the London underground. There will have to be new transmitters for those cables that come out of the sea, and that will cause further problems for Lancaster and Fleetwood as a coastal constituency.

The few fishermen that are left in my area have raised with me the issue of compensation. Why must they negotiate single-handedly with giant companies, with no statutory system of compensation, and why is the compensation simply for disturbance? The fishermen are “disturbed” for good; there is no way back for them after those wind farms have been built.

Then there is the issue of community compensation. We have seen absolutely no community compensation in Fleetwood. Having spent years in local government negotiating section 106 planning agreements, I find it unbelievable that community compensation is being decided by the companies themselves, with people having to ask for something as if it were a charity involved. The company is judge and jury, deciding how much compensation it hands out.

I have great respect for the Minister, but I am aware that wind farms are a matter for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, so I will finish my contribution on the point that other Members have made about the complications faced by fishermen in trying to deal with different Government Departments. They have to deal with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on fishing and marine conservation zones; with DECC on wind farms and cabling; and with the Department for Transport on shipping and ports. In all that confusion, the poor fishermen could end up spending week after week attending meetings about compensation on a particular matter, or asking, “Where is this new wind farm going to go?”, without actually doing the fishing that they want to do and are capable of doing.

I will finish by repeating a suggestion that I have made elsewhere, which may seem slightly out of bounds. Perhaps we could consider for the future a long-term reorganisation of Government and the creation of a “Secretary of State for British Seas and Coastal Communities”. If we were to do that, I suggest that my hon. Friend the Minister would make a really good Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will try to keep my remarks brief. I see my five minutes not as a target to aim for but as the amount of time I have to get a number of issues out.

I want to pick up on a few issues relating to the west coast of Scotland, and particularly the Hebrides. My constituency is the longest in the UK, and it has a very large coastline. Prawn fisheries are very important, and we welcome next year’s 18% increase in the nephrop quota. We also welcome the management of effort, and we feel that the kilowatt-days should not be reduced. However, we are in favour of more effective stock conservation controls. The best method at the moment is controlling fishing days per month; at about 16 days, that has worked quite effectively since August, and it could perhaps rise to 18 days next summer. The 12-day plan for January seemed to be acceptable all round to my fishermen, and the approach has had a steadying effect for them as well as securing onshore jobs that depend on the fishing industry.

[Mrs McGuire]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the shellfish stock that is fished off the Outer Hebrides—lobster, crab, langoustine and prawns—are among the best in Europe? However, there is no sustainable infrastructure to take them down to the mainland British market, and much of the catch from his islands goes to the Spanish market, which is causing uncertainty at the moment.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Lady is very well versed in the fisheries in my constituency, and I should tell Members that her son, Paul, fishes from my island and fishes very well, and has done so for a number of years. She makes an absolutely great point about the abundance and wealth of great food that comes from the west of the Hebrides. That is not properly appreciated in the UK, and that food often goes to markets in France and Spain.

At this point, I should point out that there is a big infrastructure behind that industry, and there are lorries transporting the shellfish. Tragically, about a month ago, a young man from my island, Michael MacNeil, who had taken shellfish to France, was killed coming back along the road from Bordeaux to Angoulême with his empty lorry. It was a very sad day for the island and for the wider fishing community, which he knew very well.

I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to the issue of non-targeted dogfish, or spurdog. I should probably declare an interest, because I fished it as a targeted species in 1995, so I am perhaps partly responsible for its ensuing difficulties. They regularly appear in the Minches every winter, and they are worth about £60 a box. Sometimes on a tour, a boat can dump up to 10 to 15 boxes of these good, healthy fish because there is no quota to land them. If the boat did not have to dump them, they could be worth about £600 to £900, which could give the boat a good extra margin. The fish could be sold as rock salmon, as they used to be in a number of places, rather than, unfortunately, ending up on the rocks. I hope I am not making that plea in vain, because in the past, I have raised the issue of haddock in a debate such as this.