Inshore Industry Fishing Crews: Visas

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

As always, Mr Vickers, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this afternoon’s debate on visa arrangements for inshore fishing industry crews. It is good that it has brought together Members from Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) and Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), as well as, obviously my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), whom I thank for bringing this motion before the Chamber and allowing us to discuss it again.

I say “again” not to be disparaging in any way. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland asked, how many times have we discussed the issues surrounding the inshore fleet? Yet certainly since I first came here in 2015, these issues have not been resolved and the Government seem utterly incapable of properly getting to grips with them, no matter how many times they are raised.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Strangford will recall us going to the Home Office in 2016, 2017, and I think again in 2019, with the representatives of our respective fishing organisations—and indeed, in one case with representatives from the Philippine embassy—to sit with Ministers and try to explain how the chronic shortage of professional seafarers in the UK is having a devastating effect on our communities, and how we desperately needed those professional fishing crews to be allowed to come and work in the inshore fleets, particularly around Northern Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. I am sure that the hon. Member will also recall that, for the most part, we were treated with great courtesy and listened to. Our ideas, we believed, would be examined. But then, every single time, the things that we asked for were rejected out of hand. I implore the Minister to please be the one to break that cycle.

[David Duguid]

In my remarks, I asked for more constructive engagement. However, would the hon. Member join me and others in seeking an actual meeting with Ministers—I know, it is difficult enough for us Conservatives to get meetings with Ministers—and officials, and with key stakeholders from the industry who know the industry far better than we do?

[Brendan O'Hara]

Absolutely. Despite having been there so many times in the past, I—and I am sure he, and every other hon. Member here today—would love to be able to sit down again with the Home Office, and with the representatives of these communities and industries, and say, “Please, let this time be different.”

[Mr Carmichael]

I am never going to give up on this. I think we have made that very clear. However, the reason why I am particularly unhappy about this now is that this feels like it is the final word from the Home Secretary.

The Fishermen’s Welfare Alliance engaged with the Home Office in detail and at length. It explained everything in incredible detail that even the slowest of learners must have been able to pick up. At the end of the day, it just got told a straight no. There comes a point where we must ask, “What more do we have to do to get this case across?”

[Brendan O'Hara]

I absolutely share the right hon. Gentleman’s frustration. It seems that, no matter who we speak to, no matter when we speak to them, and no matter the strength of the case that we put forward, there just seems, historically, to have been absolutely no desire on the part of the Home Office even to see the problems that the inshore fishing industry has, to view it as an exceptional case, and to understand the Department’s responsibility to help these communities and the industry to find a bespoke solution to their problems. We were repeatedly told that, as far as the Home Office was concerned, it was an issue for the fishing industry and was for the fishing industry to sort out.

However, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland have said, does anyone believe that we would willingly continue on this merry-go-round if there were easy, quick-fix solutions to be found, and if there were locally available crews waiting and queuing up to work on the boats? There simply are not. That is why we have come away from every one of those meetings with the distinct impression that the Home Office, rather than wanting to be part of finding a workable solution, sees its role as being there to police the legislation that is already in place.

The hon. Member for Strangford was correct when he said that there is a complete unwillingness on the part of the Home Office to accept that the 12-mile limit on the west coast of Scotland and in Northern Ireland is vastly different from the 12-mile limit on the east coast, and that a blanket one-size-fits-all policy totally ignores the fact that, for smaller fishing boats working out of Oban, Tarbert, Carradale or Campbeltown, the 12-mile limit stretches far out into the dangerous deep waters of the north Atlantic.

We also know that the mainstay of the west coast fleet is the shellfish industry. It has arguably the best langoustine and scallops in the world, which are found in the safer, shallower inshore waters in the Scottish Hebrides. The example given by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland about his fishing communities having to go beyond the uninhabited islands should be remarkable, but maybe in these circumstances it is not. While on the east coast a large fishing fleet can head out to sea outside UK territorial waters relatively quickly, on the west coast we simply cannot. The problem of geography is essentially creating a huge problem for one of the most important sectors of our rural west coast economy. Historically, the Government’s response has been that it is not their problem to find the solution. While I welcome certain things that have been introduced, history and experience tell me that we will not get much further; I hope that the Minister is the one to prove me wrong.

It has already been said that what is being proposed in the skilled worker visa does not create a level playing field at all, as the cost of securing the skilled worker visa is huge. Skippers and owners will have to pay out thousands of pounds getting visas and the ability to bring in workers. While the lowering of the fees and the reduction of the salary threshold are all to be welcomed, as we have heard so often this afternoon, the draconian requirement for applicants to have an English language examination is causing huge problems.

For those recruiting deckhands to work on inshore fishing boats, the demand that every worker achieves level 4, B1 in English showing that they can read, write, speak and understand English is almost ridiculously prohibitive. This is not the first time that that has been raised in the House. Late last year, the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke of a skipper in her constituency who brought in a vastly experienced Ghanaian fisherman to work as a deckhand, but he could not get past the B1. He could not get past that English language test, and it made a huge difference to not just him, but the boat owner and everyone else on the crew, because they simply could not go to sea. The Minister will be well aware of the article in Fishing News in which the Fishermen’s Welfare Alliance told the paper that

“getting fishermen through the B1 English language requirement is now a big issue.”

I know that he will be aware of that, because the hon. Member for Totnes just told him that Crew Services Limited said that of the 325 non-UK crew on its books, only six have that certificate.

Earlier this week, I was in contact with a number of boat owners and skippers in Argyll and Bute. I talked to Malcolm MacKinnon, who owns five vessels in Tarbert. We discussed what the situation on the ground there was, and he told me that because of the chronic shortage of deckhands, his 22-metre fishing boat, The Elegance, has been tied up since 9 April. Malcolm employs hugely experienced skippers, and his opinion is that the requirement for deckhands to be able to speak and understand English may well be reasonable, but the demand that they are also able to read and write English to that level is a completely unnecessary hurdle, and utterly disproportionate to the tasks they will be asked to perform while on his boat.

Malcolm pointed out that a tied-up boat does not affect just the skipper, his crew and their families through a loss of income; it has a huge knock-on effect on the local community, where businesses rely heavily on each other in a way that perhaps does not exist in more urban areas. He told me that over a 10-week period, the boat would normally have spent money on 80,000 litres of fuel, 50 tonnes of ice and £3,000 of local groceries and supplies, as well as a supply of gloves, overalls and various other items from the chandlery in the local area. He also told me he was in the process of buying a new vessel, but decided to pull out of the purchase because he knew he could not get the crew. 

In Mr McKinnon’s opinion, the whole of the west coast of Scotland would probably get by on only 300 foreign crew members. That is the level we are talking about; that is the reality of the situation on the ground in the west coast of Scotland. Mr McKinnon’s case cannot and should not ever be seen as being unique, because it is multiplied many times over across the west coast. The impact on already fragile rural communities and their economies is enormous.

All we are asking for is a level playing field—one that does not penalise small fishing communities simply on the basis of their geographic position in these islands. I ask the Minister, after all of the years, after all the meetings and after all the pleas that have been made from across this House, will he be the one to finally break the cycle, so we can get that level playing field for our small, local, rural communities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My Department has told me that stake- holders have welcomed it, and I think it is a good package. We are already starting to engage with firms and representatives who are responding to it. The sector is well catered for under the points-based system, but I will come in a moment to the changes that we propose to make. Those in a range of eligible fishing and processing roles—including deckhands, which the right hon. Gentleman referred to earlier—have had access to the skilled worker visa since April 2021.

We believe that with the right level of support, the sector should be able to further navigate the existing immigration system. Building on that, and further to representations from a number of right hon. and hon. Members present, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan, we have decided to add further fishing occupations—share fishermen, trawler skippers and deckhands on large fishing vessels—to the shortage occupation list, all of which the Migration Advisory Committee recommended in 2020 as part of its SOL review. That will ensure that the fishing sector can continue to access the talent that it needs at reduced cost, and the Government will implement that during the summer on an interim basis until the wider MAC review into the SOL has been completed.

[Brendan O'Hara]

What exactly is the definition of a large fishing boat?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Member’s knowledge of the fishing sector is superior to mine. I do not know the exact definition, but I will happily get my officials to write to him and we will place on record in the Library of the House what the Home Office considers the official definition to be.

We strongly encourage the sector to engage with us to ensure that firms can attract the workers that are needed. The sooner that happens, the less disruption the sector will face. My officials, along with officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stand ready to help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes said—echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan and others—the long-term, sustainable answer is not to rely solely on international labour but to train more domestic workers to embrace technology and automation to the extent that that is applicable. We all appreciate the challenges that the sector faces and the difficulty in recruiting domestically at present. Nobody is blind to that, and the Home Secretary and I are certainly not.

On broader non-immigration aspects—this point was raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and others—DEFRA continues to run the access to labour working group that was launched in June 2022 with the purpose of improving relationships with the industry, ensuring that it has a voice at the table, and Home Office officials are represented on that working group. That includes representatives from the catching, processing, aquaculture and shellfish sectors across the United Kingdom. I have encouraged my officials to play an active part in that so that we can have the dialogue that everyone present seeks to achieve.

In terms of helping the sector to recruit and train the next generation of fishermen and women, the Government have provided funding through the £100 million UK seafood fund to remove some of the barriers that new entrants to the sector face, and DEFRA has awarded £1.1 million through the fund for skills and training to help industry with recruitment and retention issues. Seven projects across the UK have received funding to improve the quality of training, promote career progression and help to attract new people into the sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to make further inquiries and come back to the right hon. Gentleman. As I understand it, 12 nautical miles merely represents the standard definition of UK waters. If that is the case, it seems difficult to hive off particular parts of UK waters for the purposes of our immigration system. I am happy to be corrected if that is not an accurate description.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I appreciate that the Minister is being very generous. It is not about carving out certain parts of UK territorial waters. This affects the entire west coast—certainly of Scotland—and it takes in all of Northern Ireland and large chunks of England. It is not a small tweak that is required, but a complete change in our understanding of what the 12 nautical miles means for both the west coast and the east coast. This is not a tinkering point.

[Robert Jenrick]

I understand that, and I apologise if I gave the impression that this affects a small part of UK waters. Either way, the Home Office has taken a standard definition of UK waters and applied it for the purposes of our immigration system. Ostensibly, that sounds like a reasonable way to proceed, but I am happy to make further inquiries and revert to the hon. Gentleman if there is another way to do so within the confines of the law.