Fishing Industry

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for the fishing industry.

I place on record my appreciation of the Backbench Business Committee for making time available for this debate and for bringing it back to its rightful place here in the main Chamber of the House.

The Prime Minister and his colleagues often tell us, rightly, that food security is national security. The focus of our discussions about food security is often what we farm on land, but we should never lose sight of the fact that we are an island nation and we are surrounded by seas which, if managed properly, can provide us with a source of good quality protein that can be harvested in a carbon-efficient way.

The people who work in our fishing industries often do so in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Still too many of them lose their lives in pursuit of our food and we should record our appreciation for what they do to keep us fed. I say “fishing industries” for a reason. Too often, we talk about fishing as if it were a single homogeneous industry, when the truth is very different. Even in my constituency, the issues facing inshore crab boats are very different from those facing the larger white- fish boats, which are in turn different from the issues facing the pelagic boats. Layer on top of that the interests of aquaculture, and we begin to get a sense of the complexity of seafood harvesting and production.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

As many Members may know, warmer sea temperatures brought unexpected numbers of octopus to the waters around South Devon last year, and my crab and lobster fishermen have seen their catch decimated. They have lost up to 80%, hauling empty pots for weeks on end. That means fleet members are now cancelling maintenance work and having to lay off crew. Our fishing communities desperately need support, whether to enable them to stay in the industry or to help them decommission and leave. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that support is desperately needed from the Government?

[Mr Carmichael]

It is critically important. I heard that for myself from my hon. Friend’s constituents when I visited Brixham not once but twice in the run-up to Christmas. It remains to be seen whether the invasion of octopus will be permanent because of changing water temperature, or whether it is just another of those blips that I think last happened in the 1950s. Whatever the truth of the matter, something has to be done for the industry that is there at the moment when the truth is finally established.

We speak about aquaculture as being all about finfish, but in my constituency and elsewhere the role of shellfish aquaculture is enormously important and deserves more attention, especially as we anticipate the conclusion of a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the European Union.

Fishing is still a predominantly community-based and family-run industry. It may not shift the dial massively in terms of UK-wide GDP, but in those areas where it matters it is nearly always essential. In Shetland, caught and farmed fish account for approximately one third of our local economic product. We have benefited over the years from the presence of oil and gas, and now from a growing visitor economy, but they do not define our community in the way that fishing does. I labour that point because it matters. People would be forgiven for thinking that this is an industry determined to plunder the seas and extract every last living organism from it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fishing is predominantly a family business, and the people working in it want to hand on their business to the next generation. They have more of an interest in ensuring that there is a business to be handed on.

Fishing is an area of Government policy where good co-operation between our Governments makes a difference. That is what the industry needs and expects of us. Sadly, it does not always get it. The recent controversy around the fishing and coastal growth fund illustrates how it is fishers who lose out when that goes wrong. Let us remember that the roots of that fund lie in the decision of the Prime Minister to sign up for a 12-year extension of the catastrophically bad deal that Boris Johnson got us in the trade and co-operation agreement in 2020. Given that the EU was looking only for a five-year extension, it is quite an achievement to have managed to negotiate it up to 12 years. Let us also not forget that the loss of fishing effort traded away by the Prime Minister is worth about £6 billion over the 12-year period at today’s prices. If we were able to get half or even a quarter of that, the fund would never have been necessary.

To my mind, it makes perfect sense for the fund to be administered on a UK-wide basis, as was the case with the previous fund delivered by the last Government. That would, in fact, have been an opportunity for Scotland’s two Governments to work together collaboratively on the delivery, and might have been more reflective of the fact that Scotland’s fleet accounts for more than 60% of the UK fishing effort.

Instead, the Government in Whitehall acquiesced to demands from the SNP Government in Edinburgh to devolve the administration. With devolution, there inevitably followed the application of the Barnett formula, and, as a result, we receive only 8.3% of the fund. Madam Deputy Speaker, I could weep. On one of the rare occasions when they do manage to agree on something, they still manage to do it in a way that works to the detriment of the fishermen in my constituency.