UK Sea Bass Stocks

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the quality of his opening speech and on raising this subject. In Essex, we have a lot of recreational anglers who provide a great deal of employment and generate a lot of tourism, but we also have very small-scale inshore fishermen who catch sea bass. Do they have a future in my hon. Friend’s scheme, or will they be squeezed out by the ban on commercial fishing?

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is a vexed issue. There are people who make a very small-scale living out of bass fishing. My belief is that it is likely that in the near term, as has happened in Ireland, the north-east coast of the United States and a great many fisheries where proper regulation has been put in place, people who run sub- 10-metre boats will find that they make a much better living from taking out and guiding recreational fishing than from trawling for a few vulnerable sea bass out in the ocean. Although I would not condone any policy that forced people who fish at that scale from one to the other, particularly in inshore waters, I think that reality will dawn and that most of them will end up in the recreational sector.

In concluding my remarks, I hope you will excuse me, Mr Crausby, for asking the Minister a series of detailed questions. I have given him notice of some of them because they are quite complex, but I would appreciate answers to as many of them as possible.

To protect breeding fish, will the Minister follow the proposals made by the Angling Trust and others and seek a ban on targeted fishing based on catch composition or sufficiently restrictive vessel catch limits to make the fishery unviable from January to May inclusive, to apply to areas VIId, e, f and h and IVc in offshore fisheries beyond member states’ six-mile zones? For the benefit of other hon. Members present, I am simply asking for proper fishing restrictions to be put in place in pretty much all the coastal waters where we find sea bass, and certainly where they breed.

Will the Minister take on board another of the Angling Trust’s proposals and pursue catch limits for all registered EU vessels fishing for bass in areas VII and IV to cap effort, with limits set at a level that reduces fishing mortality by at least 40% across all member state fleets? I have apologised to the Minister for not giving him notice of that question.

To allow fish to reach breeding age, will the Minister work to ensure that a minimum landing size of 46 cm or over is adopted for sea bass at European level? Will he undertake to impose such a limit unilaterally on UK landings in any event? At the very least, will he confirm that the review of the minimum landing size for bass started by his Department in 2012 is still progressing, and will he undertake to publish the results as soon as possible? To help protect the recruitment stocks, will he undertake to look again at the extension of bass nursery areas?

Finally, does the Minister agree that the development of sea bass fishing as a recreational activity is the best long-term solution to both the ecological and the economic sustainability of the fishery, as proved by the Irish sea bass experience, the striped bass fishery of the north-east coast of the US and many other examples?

With the right measures in the right place at the right time and in the necessary proportion, we can make our fisheries policy work for us and for future generations. I hope the Minister will offer us all hope that such a prospect can be realised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on the excellent speeches we have just heard. I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) for calling this debate.

The story of the management of this stock has been a very bad one indeed. The high point was the decision by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) to increase the minimum landing size, and all credit to him for taking it. If we had followed that decision through at the time, it would certainly have made a difference. Why his successor rescinded that decision is something that I could not really determine from reading the excellent Adjournment debate in 2007 to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

When I was in the Minister’s position, I set about trying to reverse that change in policy, and I tried to increase the minimum landing size. I was persuaded that it was important to do everything to conserve bass at a European level, and I believe that it is right to get agreement among our European partners, because many vessels from other countries fish this stock in our waters. To go to the EU was a sensible piece of advice that I received.

However, if we just left matters to the sclerotic processes of the EU, this stock would crash before we could do anything about it. There is a lot that we can do unilaterally, and there is a lot that we can do in this House and beyond as a sort of club of ex-Fisheries Ministers; I do not know what the collective noun for ex-Fisheries Ministers is, but I think it is an “exhaustion” of ex-Fisheries Ministers. We would all say to my hon. Friend the Minister that he has a much more difficult task this December than the tasks that I faced in three or four years of December rounds of talks. He is a very good negotiator and takes his job very seriously. However, my advice to him would be to take precisely the advice of the right hon. Member for Exeter—that this stock will not exist unless tough decisions are taken.

We now face a collapse in stocks. At times, when we talk about minimum landing size, it seems slightly like fiddling while Rome burns, and that there are more important things that we could do. However, it is still necessary to increase minimum landing size and I hope that the Minister will consider doing that, and take forward the work that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already done on this issue and act unilaterally.

I take an old-fashioned view that fish should not be harvested until they have had a chance to breed. It is the spawning biomass that is crashing and it is on that issue that action needs to take place. This situation has arisen before; we can look beyond our borders and see where it has happened before. There is a fishery on the east coast of the United States called the striped bass stock fishery, which is now worth a lot of money. I have heard varying figures, including the figure that now, in its healthy state, it is worth $1 billion a year to the state of Massachusetts in terms of tourism and the added benefits that angling provides. I have also heard that nationally it is worth $2 billion a year to the US economy, and possibly more.

The stock spawns in the Chesapeake bay, but in the late 1970s it was overfished and crashed. Immediately, everyone was prevented from fishing it, whether they were recreational or commercial anglers. The stock has now recovered and it is a massive draw. British bass anglers spend all their savings to fly from the United Kingdom to the United States to exploit this exciting fish. It is branded; people wear T-shirts with the slogan, “I’m a striped bass fisherman.” However, British fishermen should not have to do that in US waters; they should be able to do it in UK waters. Similarly, they should not have to go to Ireland, where there is a very buoyant recreational fishery; I will come on to talk about that shortly.

I would love to portray the problem in the simplistic way that some do, which is to say that it is all about the pair trawlers. Well, I am afraid that it is not all about the pair trawlers. In the area from Felixstowe round to Sussex, the use of trammel and drift nets has increased by 20% or 30% in the past year. We need to look at all the activities in this sector. What is really interesting about the Marine Resources Assessment Group study that my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley mentioned is that it relates to a fishery in Sussex, where every way of exploiting this diminishing stock is used. There are pair trawlers coming over from the continent to exploit it; there are inshore fisheries that exploit it commercially; and there is also a very important recreational fishery. That is why MRAG chose Sussex to conduct this important piece of research.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) said earlier, I suspect that we will hear later today in this House the words, “long-term economic plan”. Well, let us just look at the economics of the issue that we are talking about. In Sussex alone, I calculate—from the figures in the MRAG report—that between 258 and 267 tonnes of fish were harvested commercially in 2012, and somewhere between 10 and 19 tonnes were harvested recreationally. Taking the median of those two, about 5.7% were landed from the recreational sector. However, what is really important is that the economic output per tonne in Sussex is 40 to 75 times higher for recreational than commercial. The employment that is generated, calculated per tonne, is 39 to 75 times higher for recreational bass fisheries than commercial.

The report states clearly that the final economic and employment impacts of recreational bass fisheries in Sussex are estimated at £31.3 million and 353 full-time equivalent jobs. The final economic employment impacts of commercial bass fisheries in Sussex were estimated as £9.25 million and 111.28 full-time equivalents. That is a staggering difference. As my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley said, if calculated across the piece it is more than three times as valuable as a recreational fishery than as a commercial one.

It would obviously be better if the EU had measures in place to put this stock back on track, but I urge the Minister to look at what has happened in Ireland, where there is a recreation-only fishery, a strict catch limit and a high minimum landing size, which I gather is about to be increased to 50 cm, on the basis of scientific advice received by the Irish Government. This is a highly valuable tourist attraction. In Ireland, angling, tourism and coastal communities are integrating in a much better way than in this country. We have a lot to learn in that regard. People who go there are welcomed and find charter boats linked to hotels and pubs. The whole package is there; it is part of a deal that attracts people. I want those fisherman to go to Devon, Sussex and Essex and exploit this exciting game fish.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am going to do something that should never be done in the House of Commons, which is to ask a question without knowing the answer. I do not intend to put my hon. Friend on the spot, but he was Fisheries Minister until quite recently, so why did he not do this? What was the obstacle? Where is the resistance? What were he and his successor having to fight to be able to implement this measure, not just in the EU, but domestically?

[Richard Benyon]

I did set about trying to increase the minimum landing size. I regret that we did not move faster when going through the process of consultation and further consultation, and trying to ensure that this was agreed at European level, because the evidence is all there. When you are a Minister, people tell you that someone cannot be prevented from doing something without enough evidence and judicial review, and that there are threats of infraction, and all the other things. However, I freely admit that if I had my time over again I would steamroller this through and take the consequences, because the consequence now is a crashing stock. The stock will disappear, along with the economic value.

To the fishermen in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), I say this: I have met them many times and I have great respect for them, but they will not be fishing for bass, not because of any decision taken by any Minister of any party, but because there will be none. They have a great future ahead of them exploiting other stocks, such as thornback rays and other things that are prevalent in those waters, but they really will have an economic benefit if they can get the fishermen on their boats to catch recreational bass in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I do not intend to detain Westminster Hall for more than a few minutes.

Do we not all share a feeling of rising anger and frustration, which almost brings tears to our eyes, as we listen to the debate? We have heard about the manifesto commitment on which the Labour party was elected, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), the former Fisheries Minister, has said he wishes he had acted when he was in office—a candid response to my remark.

Like many of those present for the debate I am a fisherman, and like thousands of others I have caught sea bass off the Essex coast. I treasure the species from an emotional point of view, but also from the point of view of the coastal communities. It brings life to seaside towns such as Harwich and Brightlingsea that have become so dejected in some respects because they are out on a limb and are no longer the economic centres that they became when they built ships, when there were big fishing fleets and when they were the links to the continent.

[Richard Benyon]

As Fisheries Minister, aside from my personal interest in fishing and angling and what my fishing friends would have told me, I do not think I would have known about the problem until it reached its present stage if it had not been for the Angling Trust coming to see me with a group of people who really know what is going on. We could then put in train a process—which I wish had happened earlier—involving the Government working well with organisations that are informed and rational in how they work with Ministers.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said, the debate is not anti-commercial interests, anti-jobs or anti-employment. It is pro-economic, social and environmental development. It is about what all the political parties in the House believe in, yet we have had 10 years of debate and have achieved nothing.

As Chairman of the Select Committee on Public Administration, I have the word “accountability” in mind: that is the crunch. All the democratic pressure on successive Ministers was to get something done; my hon. Friend the Minister must ask himself why it has not been done. I invite him to consider what my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury—and indeed the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw)—said about wishing they had been tougher with their officials. It is not right to blame officials, who give their best advice, but there is also the question of legal advice.

Legal advice is not an instruction on how to behave; it is something to be taken into account in making a decision. If the risk of being taken to court—to judicial review—is balanced against the risk of losing the fish stock, which is the bigger risk? The Minister must be accountable for the decision. He is not being accountable to this House if he just submits to the legal advice. Legal advice is to be listened to, but in many cases it is to be overridden. It is to be disregarded—well, not disregarded; it is to be taken into account. The judgment that the Minister then makes is not about blindly accepting the legal advice. Otherwise we do not have accountability; we might as well be ruled by lawyers.

We have seen European law, human rights law and fear of judicial review take over the whole of government in some Departments—DEFRA may be one of the worst instances—but we expect our Ministers to govern. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister please to exercise his best judgment. He will then be vindicated for what he does. If he submits to the legal advice, he will be condemned.

When we think about why our system of government feels so unaccountable with respect to so many Ministers, the question we should ask is how they respond to the advice that they are given and whether the House should empower them to act in the national interest rather than submit to the rather blind legal advice they are often given. That advice is given for the best of reasons; that is the job of the lawyers. However, in my experience, lawyers always advise doing the more cautious thing from their point of view—not necessarily from the point of view of the public interest.