Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Eric Ollerenshaw

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for the report and for the way in which she introduced the debate, and I thank the Minister for his support in the past.

I am in a somewhat different situation from other hon. Members in this regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) talked about the cuts in Lowestoft. In Fleetwood, we already have hardly any boats left as over time there has been virtually a complete destruction of the fishing fleet. I remember as a child on holiday in Blackpool, because my father would only take us to Blackpool— [Interruption.] Well, he always used to say that Blackpool has got everything you want—it has got the sand, it has got the sea, and there is always something to do when it rains. On some days, we used to go to Fleetwood to see the fishing boats coming in. For 100 years, that was the core of Fleetwood’s very existence. It has been sad to see, now as its Member of Parliament, the heart almost ripped out of it over the years.

To be fair, that was not just due to the common fisheries policy: it began with the cod war. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is in his place, for giving me an induction lesson in cod war compensation schemes when I first entered the House, as well as teaching me how to deal with fishermen. I thought that dealing with farmers was complex, but dealing with fishermen is certainly so—and, one hopes, rewarding. I have certainly learned a lot.

Every hon. Member has referred to the failure of the CFP. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) talked about mismanagement of fish stocks by coastal communities, but the mismanagement of this policy has been much worse. Anyone can go to Fleetwood and listen to people’s stories about seeing boat after boat disappear and trying to deal with the quota system, and then the disgrace of the discard system, which has finally come to the fore publicly. The CFP has been an absolute and utter failure that could have resulted in the destruction of the town were it not for the resilience of Mr and Mrs Fleetwood in getting on and doing other things, although they still feel the loss when they see the harbour. I think that we have 27 licensed under-10-metre boats that go out part time. The number of boats that fish full time is probably fewer than the fingers on my hand, and they are usually fishing for shellfish, particularly Dublin Bay prawns. I thank the Minister for ensuring that there were no cuts to the quota for Dublin Bay prawns in the Irish sea in 2012. That was extremely welcome.

Unless there is some chance of bringing home these powers, and therefore some possibility that we might get new Fleetwood people going into fishing, this is, for them, an intellectual debate that they have heard many times before. Perhaps understandably, their distrust of politicians of all persuasions is massive. As the Minister secured the quotas, it would be fantastic if he could come home with some other measures showing that there might be a possibility of British ships and British seamen fishing in British seas. That is what people are after.

We have discussed the worry about regionalisation, which has been mentioned by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations and by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who is not in her seat at the moment. Are we going to end up in a similar situation to that under the cod management plan, with the appearance of regionalisation but still with all the rules set centrally so that all that is left for the region is to try to deal with that while seeing more people go out of business? As a north-west MP, I have to ask what will happen in the north-west if we get proper regionalisation? What will that mean on the ground? Presumably we will still have to deal with the situation in the Irish sea. Perhaps there could be an Irish sea forum between us in the north-west, the devolved Scottish Parliament, the devolved Welsh Assembly, the Isle of Man Government, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I am sure that common sense could prevail in terms of what the fishermen of all those countries know and do.

Again, I take issue with the hon. Member for Brent North. Conservation is the sole interest of all the fishermen I have met, because they see it as vital to their future business. They want to do it, but they distrust all the scientific evidence because it has often come from Europe and resulted in scientists telling them to follow the policy of discard and throw back healthy fish that they could have landed. That is what has taken away their belief in any so-called scientific analysis of what is going on.

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not want to take up time, but does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it is the scientists who have been pressing for the discards to be landed so that they can make a proper assessment of the biomass and look at the ecology as a whole?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I do acknowledge that. However, I am trying to explain how a Fleetwood fisherman who now has to fish part time sees a wealth of different evidence and wonders who pulls the strings on the evidence.

I want to introduce another matter—one which I know will delight the Minister. Once he has dealt with the problems of the common fisheries policy, another issue that we face is that of wind farms and wind farm applications in the Irish sea, and the compensation for fisherman resulting from those developments. We have to deal with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on that matter and on new transmission lines, with the Department for Transport on ferry links, and with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the so-called common fisheries policy. This might sound revolutionary, but perhaps we need a Secretary of State for the Seas to bring those issues together so that fishermen can go to one door and find out what is going on.

I do not want to detain the House any longer. As I have said, I feel as though I am in a different position from other Members. To people in Fleetwood and beyond, this is a test case of whether the coalition Government can deliver. They are enthusiastic about much that the Minister has done. I am grateful to him for the extent to which he goes out to meet fishermen. However, this remains a test case of what is possible. People in Fleetwood hope to see the day when one or two more people can at last take up fishing in what they regard as their waters.