Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous]

rose—

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

rose—

[Luke Pollard]

I am going to make some progress, because I only have limited time and I do not want to take time away from people at the end of the call list; apologies.

On safety, progress is being made towards making fishing safer, but much work still needs to be done. I want to see fishers wearing lifejackets all the time that come as standard with personal locator beacons which take the search out of search and rescue when boats go down or fishers are washed overboard. I want more work on stability, especially for smaller boats when they change gear. Remote vessel monitoring and CCTV on board—another amendment won in the Lords—will help to ensure that fishing stays within the law, but will also incentivise fishers to wear a lifejacket and come home safely to their families after each trip. I know that this is a cross-party concern, and I commit Labour to working constructively to help to save more lives, as we have in recent years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill as a representative of Brixham, Salcombe and Dartmouth, Brixham being the most valuable port in England and, of course, far superior to any Cornish port out there. Over the last nine months, I have had the privilege of engaging with representatives across the fishing sector, from Jim Portus to Beshlie Pool, the team of the Brixham Trawler Agents, and the harbourmasters of the three towns that I mentioned. Each of them has expressed their opinion on the Bill, each of them has been universally supportive of the Government’s proposals, and each of them has given me some suggestions for the development of this important sector that I would like to put to the Government for them to consider in the future.

I welcome the Bill, I welcome what the DEFRA Secretary has done, and I welcome the work that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), has done with Members across the House in listening to our concerns both before and during covid. She has been a huge support to the fishing sector, and I know that I speak for many in my constituency when I say how grateful they are to her and her team.

Members have already been drenched in facts and figures about the fishing sector and its relative decline, but the 29% decline in the fleet since 1996 and the 60% decline in fish landed in the United Kingdom since 1973 shows the adverse impact of our membership of the common fisheries policy. The Bill recognises the potential to rebuild those fleets, to increase the amount that we land across the United Kingdom, and to create new industry, whether through processing, boat building or other methods, to help our local and coastal communities.

I take some issue with what the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) said about the Government not offering support for the fishing sector. When I look at the seafood innovation fund, the maritime and fisheries fund, the covid fisheries fund, the fisheries response fund and the domestic seafood supply scheme, I see a Government who are supporting fishermen and helping them to grow in the years to come.

Over the covid crisis, we have seen markets withdraw from our fishing sector, unable to export to the far east or closer to home, but we have also seen the resilience and determination of our fishing sector to respond in new and innovative ways in order to supply its produce across the United Kingdom. The Government must learn from this and support those mechanisms. Some supermarkets closed down their wet counters, and fishermen and shell fishermen went to open up their own local delivery slots; we must look at how we can support those structures in the future. We must engage people with the fine British seafood on our coastline in the coming years. I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) said about supporting fine British seafood, and hope that we might start with every Government Department serving only British seafood.

I am sorry to return to the shadow Secretary of State, but I consider him to be wrong about clause 18. He talks about market access and ensuring that fishermen are only selling into British ports, but what we need to do is provide infrastructure spend on those ports so that they are the most attractive ports to European vessels as well as our own. My own constituency includes Brixham, which is, as I said, the most valuable fishing port in England, but with further investment, as the Prime Minister saw last year, it could double its revenue and put that money back into the local economy in an effective way that will secure the UK’s future fishing sector.

There is also the value and benefit of fleet improvements. Where we spend on infrastructure in our ports, we can help to grow our own fleet and rebuild our coastal communities—in places where we can retrofit our own vessels and create processing plants. All these things can come with such infrastructure; let us build our own vessels here. I am very pleased that the company Waterdance in my constituency has just taken possession of its brand new vessel, the “Georgina of Ladram”. With more vessels on the way, it has the potential to grow, and we should be supporting that.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) so aptly made the point about fishing charities. We are extraordinarily lucky to have Seafarers UK and the Fishermen’s Mission here. The work that they have done throughout covid has been extraordinary, and we must ensure that we are listening to their recommendations about supplying and selling local produce in the United Kingdom. Finally, I have been very sad to hear that so many Members of the Opposition have not even opened the Bill and read the first page, which is completely directed towards sustainability. This is a good Bill and I look forward to voting for it.

Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

All from the devolved authorities would like to see that, and the hon. Lady will recall that at the recent roundtable discussion between the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation the Minister said that a consultation will be taking place on the distribution of quotas between the devolved authorities. We are certainly looking forward to that. [Interruption.] And it has been launched today—good to hear.

New clause 3 would also mark a useful first step—long overdue—to giving effect to the agreed commitment in the Smith commission report. Fiscal transparency and accountability and a proper and thorough review of current arrangements would help determine whether an equitable share is being received and how to address any issues. This Tory Government may have forgotten the commitments made as part of that process to bolster devolution and strengthen Scotland’s powers, but we have not.

The Secretary of State made it clear the last time we debated this Bill that the involvement of the devolved nations had greatly improved it, but as that example shows, and as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) has mentioned, the Bill is simply still not good enough. It is a hastily cobbled-together mess, as we see when we look at the dozens of technical amendments tabled by the Government in a frantic attempt to tidy it up. I feel sorry for the civil servants who have had to operate under these conditions. We are left simply wishing that the Government had listened to the devolved Administrations when they were saying that we needed an extension before leaving the EU or, even better, when they argued against leaving the EU altogether. Here we are being asked to agree skeletal framework legislation simply to cover this Government’s intransigence and their British exceptionalist view—it is a fig leaf for the absence of a realpolitik attitude in Whitehall, and a failure to appreciate the situation that the UK found itself in before the pandemic arrived or the massively worse situation that unfortunately it finds itself in now.

We do know, but I will remind the House, that the law of the sea will be the fall-back position if, as looks increasingly and disturbingly possible, we end up in the worst of all possible worlds, with no deal. I know that some people have laid heavy bets on that scenario and stand to make a lot of cash from it, but massive wealth in the hands of some is no substitute for a decent living for many.

The Prime Minister, in his best Bertie Wooster chant, wants to, “Get Brexit done”, as if there is a crock waiting for us at the end of a rainbow, but even if we get a deal done, we have no certainty of the position for fisherfolk. As I mentioned, the Minister has announced just now that a consultation is being launched that will debate how any additional quota will be divided between the four nations, but that is if any additional quota is there to be shared. As the scientific advice and information from the Marine Stewardship Council makes clear, stocks are not in the best of health, so there may not be extra quota to share over that three-year extension to the transition period. Equally, the Government have not outlined what they intend to do about the large chunks of England’s quotas vested in foreign vessels or what they think might be a sensible way forward for reallocating those quotas over the next few years. Will it be the fishing equivalent of a Government land grab, or will things just be left well alone, so that the “sea of opportunity” remains nothing more than a “Narnia” tale to be recounted in years to come. The referendum was a couple of Tory Prime Ministers and two snap elections ago, but there still has not been anything worked out about how to deal with the fall-out. The light is dimming on our EU membership and only now, after this painfully long journey, is the question being asked about what to do. We recognise that some sort of legislative framework is needed; I should speak here to amendment 57 before I conclude. We propose inserting the word “short” before “long term” to ensure that sustainability is not an objective that can be kicked down the road and not dealt with until later, but must be worked on at all times. The UK, it must be admitted, is not achieving a sustainable fisheries management, so the amendment would encourage the UK Government to take into account sustainability when carrying out their duties. Our hope is that this will be seen as the constructive proposal that it is meant to be.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

If the hon. Lady has such a concern about sustainability, will the SNP start addressing the Scottish salmon fishermen?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

I will speak to new clauses 1 to 7, which we tabled to try to improve this legislation. I spent 15 years in the European Parliament, alongside the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), working largely on fisheries reform, among lots of other issues. It is safe to say that the CFP is not the Scottish National party’s favourite policy and a number of things need to be done to improve it. It is the primary reason why Norway and Iceland are not EU members, although they are proudly part of the EU single market, for reasons also largely to do with fisheries and fisheries products.

If I learned anything in my time in Brussels, it was particularly about the marine ecosystem: everything is connected to everything else, and if one does not look at the whole picture, one makes poor conclusions. This Bill really is only part of the picture and it leaves the big questions—the existential questions for all our fishing communities and the people employed in fisheries—unanswered. Passing this Bill tonight, as I suspect Conservative Members will, is the easy bit; making good on the fine promises we have heard this evening will be an awful lot harder. Four years after the vote to leave the European Union and a year after we left the European Union—a fact that I regret deeply—we have yet to see the much vaunted advantages of that Brexit. It is a poor state of affairs that we are this stage in this stage of the proceedings.

The fishing industry is complex. It is not just about boats going to sea and catching fish. In Scotland, it is even more complex. We have a structurally different set-up to our industry in Scotland from that UK-wide. As we have heard throughout the debate, for every one job at sea, there are—depending on how one counts them—seven to 10 jobs on shore.

Stirling—by way of a counterintuitive point, as it is a generally landlocked constituency but for the tidal Forth—is one of the biggest UK producers of farmed prawns. The aquaculture department at Stirling University is engaged in world-leading, planet-saving research that is crucial to our economy. Tens of thousands of people are employed in aquaculture: in the prawn sector, the salmon sector and the inshore fishery, catching scallops and langoustines, and in the wider processing sector. All those thousands of jobs and all that GDP are utterly dependent on access, by which I mean tariff-free and frictionless access to the EU single market. That really does bring us to the nub of our scepticism about this Bill, which, as we have heard, the Scottish Government and Parliament have consented to because it is necessary, given that we have left the European Union. There is a need for a new legislative framework; we just do not think that this Bill answers the big questions.

The Norwegians joke that there is nothing in such a hurry as a dead fish on the back of a lorry. There are going to be lots of dead fish on the back of lorries wondering where they are going if we do not get a deal that ensures tariff-free and frictionless access. The vast chunk of fisheries’ economic activity is in grave danger in these ongoing talks, and this Bill answers none of their concerns and takes account of none of their interests.

This Bill is a framework for catching fish, and it is meaningless unless there is a deal for market access for all the other fish and fisheries products. The big questions are unanswered, so we have tried to make the legislation better with new clause 3 on the sea fish authority. We believe that more transparency in that structure would very much help the evolution of the organisation in the new challenges ahead. I urge Members to support the new clause, much though we have heard of the Minister’s scepticism this evening.

I am struck by the tone of this debate, as I was struck by the tone of the debate back in December, when I made my maiden speech, on the withdrawal agreement—the withdrawal agreement that so many Members on the Government Benches are now lining up to trash and the Government are looking to resile from in a “limited and specific way”, barely nine months later. The promises that have been made this evening are cheques that will not be cashed in the real world. When Government Members fail to deliver on their grand rhetoric—or, indeed, sincere hopes, genuinely held—they will have nobody to blame but themselves.

[Anthony Mangnall]

It is always a pleasure to be asked to speak briefly; brevity is one of my strengths, I am sure.

I have four points to make, and I feel that this may be—for those who were here on Second Reading—something of a rehash of my previous speech, not least because I want to speak against two amendments tabled by the Labour party, notably amendment 1 on UK landings. The Opposition talk about the need for specifying percentages for what our fishermen should be required to land. Rather than restricting where our fishermen can go and where they can land their catch, is not the answer to develop our ports to make them competitive with European ports, so that we can attract not only our own fishermen, but fishermen from Europe to land their catch here? That is a more efficient way of building and sustaining the processing plants across the United Kingdom, and building the ports such Brixham in my constituency. That is what we need to be doing—not restricting where our fishermen go.

My second point is on the sustainability principles and amendment 2. The first page of the Bill talks about the principles of sustainability; it is sustainable at its core. This is a finely tuned balance between the economic values and the sustainable values. The Opposition need to have a little bit of faith in the fishermen who fish our waters, who are determined to look after that stock, and to see their children and grandchildren go into the sector. That really matters.

A point that has been touched on by a number of people is how we develop and encourage our own “buy local” campaign.

I spoke during my maiden speech about the idea that the best of British—that British local seafood—should be on every menu across the country. That remains the case and we have a great opportunity to be able to create that campaign. I hope the Government will look carefully at how we can do that with cross-party support.

Lastly, I am going to sea next year for three days to see what goes on on a trawler vessel. I know that when they look at the Bill and hear us talking about it, they are proud of what the Government are trying to achieve. They are proud of the fact that it takes back control of our coastal waters, and they are proud of the fact that we will no longer be part of the common fisheries policy. I look forward to being able to report what it is like at sea and how the Brixham trawler fishermen operate —and I end my speech there.